Landlord wants to sell

[FruitSaladIsNotPudding]

Hello, I'm looking for some opinions on what is the best thing to do.

The situation is that we are privately renting our house. We've been saving hard and have managed to get together a 10% deposit and are planning to buy this year. This isn't likely to happen quickly though because we are looking at lots of different areas ( basically anywhere commutable to central London plus a couple of areas in London).

Trouble is, the ll has announced he wants to sell (despite telling us this was a long term tenancy but hey ho, that's the peril of renting i guess).

So the way i see it, we have a two options:
Stay put until the house sells - this means we will have to allow viewings which with a 4mo and a 3yo is pretty inconvenient, but it would likely give us at least 4-6months to find something. But of course there's no guarantee it won't sell before we've found somewhere in which case we'd have to find another rental.

Or give our notice (or refuse viewings in which case the ll will give us 2 months notice) and find another rental while write look.

Tbh, I'm veering towards the second option because it galls me to still ne paying rent while the ll sells bit obviously that isn't a good reason for uprooting everyone.

So mumsnetters, wwyd?

Excuse typos, on phone juggling baby!

Could you buy it?! Sorry, probably not helpful
I'm not sure, I'd probably stay put and keep eyes peeled for another rental. It might not sell quickly...

Many if not most buyers wouldn't consider the place unless tenants were given notice. So you're forgetting option 3. LL gives you official 2 month notice when he puts it up for sale, when he accepts an offer, if he suspects you won't be as accommodating to viewings as your OP suggests or even when advised by estate agents when he's signing up with them.

He's already said he wants us to stay.

We could buy it, but don't want to - the area isn't right for us and the house has too much going wrong with it.

The other problem is that finding another rental and moving will cost a lot, so we'll be back to saving again before we can apply for a mortgage.

Hmm, that's not a bad idea poltergoose.
I guess if we resign ourselves to moving we may as well try that first. Any lls out there? Would that sound reasonable to you?

I found myself in exactly the same position at the end of last year! Landlord gave notice of sale and gave me first refusal. I investigated financing (didnt really but he didnt know that) which bought me an extra month. Declined his offer but asked for min 2 months notice from day property sold, and volunteered to do viewings. Over 2 months there were 2! While I bought all that time I finished saving deposit and found house that we moved to end Feb. Landlord house still up for sale.

We are renting a flat that is also up for sale. We have allowed viewings but they have to give us 24hours notice minimum for viewings, however, I can see that it would more irritating with the kids. Do an analysis of the local housing market and see if there is demand for your kind of property. Is it priced to sell or just to test the market? if its the latter then i would stay; by the time they realise its too high you will be well on your way to your new home. If you decide to stay see if they can lower your monthly rent (£50 off?) as a goodwill gesture for you to ensure place is tidy and clean for viewing.

We decided to stay bse we knew that it was overpriced, needs work and competition from other flats in the estate up for sale; ours is the closest to a railway line so others further away would have been more appealing in that sense but I don't think the current asking price reflects this fact. I also knew that even at a good price the estate management fees of £3k a year would put a lot of people off. It has been on the market since sept 2012 with an average of 2-3 viewings a month. Flat opposite sold for £172k last year yet our is offers over £190k.

We needed 6months to reach our savings target so we knew by the time LL realises that it's to overpriced we would well on our way to buying our own place.

I see done cross posting re reduced rent.

Could you do an open house viewing on a Saturday when you're out for the day?

I could buy some time by pretending we are interested in buying. Also I think it's a bit overpriced.

But how quickly could we realistically find and move into a new house? We won't even have mortgage agreed in principal until the end of this month.

We want to move out of the area as well, which complicates things - I don't want dd to have to move preschool twice!

Oh, what an arse. WHY are tenants so poorly protected in this country?

How long it takes for you to find a house to buy will depend on where you want to move to. If you wish not to move twice then you will need to narrow your search areas down. By the time we found out that LL wanted to sell, we had narrowed our search areas down from the whole of the southeast and a bit of Kent down to 2 postcodes. (easy reach of DH parents, sister and train station for my commute). We moved away from our families' areas thinking we did not want to be close to them but instantly missed them 1 month after thus our search areas now.

We needed to keep saving till April 2013 to have enough money for deposit and fees but we got the ball rolling in feb 13 for the AIP. We assumed that it would take months before we found anything suitable but it only took us a month to find the house we are buying now after viewing about 9 houses all together.

We've now been moved on from four houses (with kids) because the LL wanted to sell, and it's a pain no matter which way you do it (staying put with viewings or moving when house goes on the market).

If you do stay, know your rights about notice of viewings, and push for the Open House arrangements Mumzy mentioned (less work for agents, for you, LLs like more potential pressure on buyers...)

If you look for a new rental, try to register w/agencies before the house goes on the market. Letting agents -ahem - seem to take advantage when they know it's a forced move.