Renting new house between exchange and completion

[PistolAnnie]

I'm going to ring our agents this morning to see if our vendors might entertain this as a possibility. The house we are buying is empty and was a rental property for about 7 yrs.

DH is really struggling to get any time off work to complete and whilst I could do it alone it will be quite stressful with 2 kids to get to and from school and 1 toddler underfoot all day. If we could pay to rent the house for a week before completion we could move piecemeal and have time to give the current house a proper clean before handing it over.

Has anyone ever done this before? How did you negotiate it if so?

We did something like this. It was down to our vendor really as they sprung on us at the last minute that they had a mortgage redemption to pay off one month after we were due to complete so we either had to string out the completion date and possibly lose our buyers or rent our vendor's house after exchanging contracts for one month ( we had to pay them a proper months rent).

There was a special name for it ( i can't remember what our solicitor told us it was ) but it is possible. Ask your solicitor and get him to ask your vendors?

You must have been a bit surprised by that being sprung on you!

My estate agent has just mentioned a Key Undertaking, where you have the key during the day in order to move bits over but not sleep there as you return the key to the agent at the end of the day. If the vendor is happy to let us store stuff in the house with that arrangement through the solicitor then that would be great.

It seems a bit too good to be true though!

this one comes up quite a lot. Worth asking but be entirely prepared for your vendors to say 'no'. Our buyers asked and we agreed that they could bring round their garden stuff, but not put anything inside the property as that would have caused moving day mayhem. On the day we left I just told the movers 'there's nothing to take from the garden' so that was an easy boundary.

I think you would be better spending the money to get packers/removers, ideally you take the kids to school from one house and bring them home to another. Is there a nursery place for the toddler for the day?

Special subject: the house is currently empty as the last people to rent it out left about 6 weeks ago so that might make things easier.

oops - you said that, my mistake.

always worth an ask. Remember you need to insure the building from exchange - contents insurance doesn't normally start until completion so consider that, certainly don't leave any valuables.

We've done a key undertaking for the empty house we're buying which needed a huge amount of work - we've done the work between exchange and completion, with a separate contract for an agreed list of renovations. However was advised can't move stuff in because if someone in chain fails to complete then it gets very difficult re your belongings.

We did this with a rental property. There is a formula whereby you are charged 4% (iirc) of the outstanding amount as rent, you are responsible for all repairs etc. We did it because the freeholders were being very difficult and the buyers had given notice. It was agreed that if we couldn't obtain the right piece of paperwork that was holding the whole business up within our months, the sale would be cancelled. It all went through (eventually).

The solicitor says it can be done with £10,000 as the amount put down on exchange rather than it all being based on simultaneous movement of equity iyswim.

We'd like to have the house re carpeted and some painting done ands plumber in to add a radiator so we might be able to do that at least.

If the house does not have a mortgage on it then there should not be a problem - all at the current owner's discretion.

If it is mortgaged then its probably not worth the hassle for the owner.

Good luck on moving in after 7 years rental. Most rentals I've seen at destroyed/knackered after 5 years. mainly due to the LL not having a maintenance schedule.

Ours had a mortgage, it wasn't a problem.

Hereandtherex the house is very shabby indeed. Part of the reason we'd like access it to measure and order new carpets and curtains and get a quote for re decorating.