House buying dilemma - advice needed!

[TheChineseChicken]

Looking to move from the city we live in to a lovely country town. Hardly any properties come on the market in this town so we hadn’t put our house on the market. Few weeks ago, the perfect property became available so we quickly put ours on the market and sold within 3 days for full asking price. Great! Started to mentally move ourselves in. Except that, after messing us around for a couple of weeks, the vendors of the house we want have now decided not to move.
So now we are stuck with a buyer but no options for properties to move into. And it’s a couple of months before Christmas so I’m expecting the market to slow even more until the new year.
What should we do? Pull out of the sale - but what if we don’t get full asking again? And what if a property comes on the market the next week and we’re not proceedable? Ask the buyer to wait but that could be for months? And they might find something else while they’re waiting. Continue with the sale and find a rental? But there’s no knowing how long it would take to find a house we like.
So disappointing / frustrating / upsetting...

In your situation I would proceed with the sale, look for a rental property in the location you want to be, and let the estate agent know that you are in an even better position to proceed with a sale should they decide to sell after all.

Then when something else suitable comes on the market you are in the best possible position to proceed.

However.... You need to look carefully at your mortgage details to understand the implications - ours will let us "port" to another property with a six months gap between buying and selling, but I understand that this is quite unusual now and you might find that you have to repay your mortgage in full (plus early repayment penalties) when you sell your house then take out a brand new mortgage (possibly at a higher rate, if rates go up) to purchase the new house

Thanks for the reply. Luckily our fixed rate expires on 30th December so as long as we complete after the new year we won’t have to pay a penalty. So the timing is good in that way.
I’m just a bit concerned about moving into a small rental and having to put things in storage. We could afford something larger but think it makes more sense to downsize for a bit and save some money every month.

For context, we have a toddler...

Personally I wouldn't look to step off the property ladder. Its a huge gamble & it costs a lot of money to rent. If your area of interest is so small id be looking at doing a leaflet drop in roads you like. I have done this before & it does work. At least then you will of exhausted all options & know what is likely to be available in the near future before deciding what to do!

If your budget allows you to buy a small investment property that you can live in while you wait for another house to come back on the market then you can keep it and rent it out. Otherwise you should consider a different village maybe? Don't go into rental, you may be there for years. We made that mistake, it's been horrible.

Hmmm... I’m starting to move away from the renting idea. Would be crap if we lost our buyer though

Don’t think k we could really afford to buy an interim property. We need all we can get to but the kind of house we want and don’t have any spare cash!

We were in a similar position. We decided to sell at tbe end of July. The property prices in our area were already starting to decrease and we needed the sale to fund a purchase. We are "homeless" and are living in a friends derelict flat which is due for remodelling in Jan. We found a second house to purchase in September but looks like that is falling through too as the vendors purchase has fallen through. Im at my wits end as we are desperate to start a family but are waiting to be in our own property first however i still feel we made the right decision to sell even after all we have been through.

The properties in our old area have decreased by around £30-40k. The purchase area has also decreased so we have made a bit of capital just by selling. Our main aim now is to purchase before the market changes again. Wish us luck xxx

You just need to be honest and say you wish to sell but yours has fallen through, let thr buyer decide if they want to hang on. If you sold so quickly you will again, don’t worry.

Just tell the buyers you've lost out on your purchase, but are out looking at other properties and are keen to hang on to them as you are very keen to move.

Thanks all. We’ve told our agent to let the buyer know our situation and to be honest. Handy to talk it through though and to help me realise we don’t want to rent

If you're totally sure about the town you want to move to then I'd defo go through with your sale. If you let these buyers go the next lot could pull out & leave you with no option but to pull out of a purchase yourself in future which would be aWorse position to be in.

If you're not there long term you may be able to get a 6 month rental lease, that's what we did when our house sold quick & we were waiting for the right property to become available. It's honestly not that much hassle & quite fun living in rented for a while-you can explore another area.

If properties in your desired area are so scarce Id want to be in pole position as a buyer should one come up