Is this a really stupid idea? Advice!

[Cockpark]

We have seen a brilliant house that completely fulfils all our wishes! Yay! Problem is it is on the rental market.... The estate agent thinks he can talk the man into selling as it is an inheritance rather than him being a developer for eg. We have now put our house on the market with not a huge response but we are so desperate to buy this house we have made a crazyoffer.

We have offered to rent the house from now with a (legally sorted out) agreement that when we sell our house he sells his to us for a prepared amount(we have offered 10K under the price the estate agent said he would recommend the vendor sell it for) for a period of 12 months.

Obviously there is a huge risk that we will not sell our house in a year, will pay £1200 rent a month as well as our £900 mortgage, using our savings to do so, and end up about £15,000 worse off.
On the other hand we could secure a house for the next thirty years and sell ours within a month, saving about seven grand along the way.
Please tell me we haven't lost our marbles, or maybe someone has an even better suggestion!?

Well, I'm sure others will tell you it's s bit crazy but it's exactly the sort of thing I'd do to secure the house I really wanted.

Good luck!

Ooh thanks! Keep your fingers crossed!!!!

can you afford both the rent and the mortgage ?

its a lot of money to lay out but it could work.

Well typical, we have 5K savings so that will cover 4 months and then DH 's mum has offered us some money to help us so we could do it, but could lose so much money if it goes tits up....

We were in a similar situation recently, but in Scotland. We had a couple of months to sell before we had to come up with cash for new house. Legally binding contract. I told myself, you can always sell a house, it's just a matter of how much you are willing to drop the price to attract the buyer. So you could lose out on the sale price if things get panicky. But as long as you have enough equity/ savings etc to cover new house even with a reduced sale price for existing house, you should b ok.

Thanks mum, well we are a bit squeezed really, we can drop our price by 10k but that is in......! Eeeeek! The guy has been thinking about our offer for a few days now but no response yet!

Good luck :)

I know many would say you are crazy, but I would do exactly the same thing if it was THE house and you were planning on staying for ever.
Make sure you are prepared in case it does go wrong though. As long as you are aware of that from the start then i would risk it!
Good luck!

Good luck. You'd think 12 months would b ok, but you might have to b prepared for a stressful 12 months. Hopefully the property Market not too slow in your area.
I will say that I did find our move very stressful. We got a buyer, but they nearly pulled out before contract was signed and it was a bit scary. We were trying to play it cool and not look like we desperately needed the sale in case they dropped their offer. And we were actually lucky that we had a fall back of me increasing to full time hours, if we had ended up needing to take out 2 mortgages.
Is it was all worth it in the end for us. So worth the risk, but just wanted to warn you, it can be very stressful.

I don't think it is crazy per se but ... if you would have to borrow money in order to rent and pay mortgage after 4 months, would you have enough to pay stamp duty , legal and any mortgage fees if it all came together in month 5 ?!?!?
Also, i have a feeling that it would be difficult for you to get any kind of binding legal agreement which would secure you the house while not being overly onerous on bother parties.
Do double check the agent's valuation against comparable sold prices as the cynic in me says he will be thinking of his commission.
Hope it works out for you.

On both parties. duh, smartphone.

That is where it gets a bit risky narmada yes it would eat into our fund for that but we would have a bit left. All a bit scary....

Can you sub let the house, i.e. if you are staying in your existing house can you find a short term tenant for the "dream house" until such time as you can buy it or the deal runs out?

I would try to make sure that the lease allowed me to do this.

Or, can you move into dream house and let out your existing house (but that could mean moving twice if you don't sell and have to go back to existing house).

Thanks mini am really hoping that we don't have to go down that road but hadn't considered that to be honest. Could be a useful piece of advice!!