Waiting on sellers / Rent is up - WWYD

[lazymumsmh]

My in-laws have recently put an offer in on a house and had it accepted. They are cash buyers and offered asking price. If it all goes through this house will be ours to live in (my DH and DS and I) and the idea is that we will pay my inlaws a small amount of rent. We are very lucky that they can afford to do this for us.

We have been renting our current house for 3 years and every year in July when the 1 year contract is up the lettings agency ask us if we want to stay and put the rent up (its gone from £750 initially to now proposed £880) we have just received the email asking us if we'd like to stay for another 12, 24 or "other" months.

The sellers of the house my in-laws offered on are apparently still "in negotiations" about a house they like, but have been for the past 2 weeks. The offer was accepted on 9th April, all the searches and surveys are done and clear on our end and the money is ready. I'm worried the sellers don't seem in a rush to move, and may drag this out. In the meantime we need to figure out if we need to sign up for another contract on our rental house - however the letting agents may not let us have less than 12 months, in which case we'll be stuck paying another 12 months rent here. We have til 5th July on our current contract.

If we say we don't want to stay and this house falls through we'll be stuck with nowhere to live.

What would you do? Am I being impatient?

until you've moved into the new house, you can't rely on anything.

Sellers (and buyers) change their minds, try to change the price, find a better deal, delay and lie.

Don't act as if the house is yours until it is.

You should even continue watching the market so you have a second choice if this one falls through.

Sometimes house sales take a year or more.

Have you asked to go onto a rolling contract? I'm pretty sure they can't force you to sign a new 12 month contract.

Legally you can stay where you are without signing up to another fixed term contract. If the landlord is unhappy he would have to serve you notice and a process begins that can take months. This may buy you the time you need to complete on the purchase.

Alternatively the landlord may be happy enough collecting your rent money every month as he has been doing, without you and him paying a contract renewal fee. You would just need to offer him 2 months notice when you want to leave.

Google “section 21 notice” and you’ll see how he can get you out. It takes months.

Shelley54 is right - you can tell the agents that either you stay on a rolling agreement or they can give you notice to move out (which takes longer).

The agents usually try to put tenants on fixed terms as they earn more fees that way.

The sellers need somewhere to go to before they can move, the chain needs to be complete so everyone can move on the same day. The average house move takes 12 weeks but if you're at the bottom of a chain this can be a lot longer. We were recently 3rd from bottom in a chain and it took 17 weeks from our offer being accepted to completion, so would have been around 20 weeks for the bottom of the chain.

Your best option is to try and be on a rolling monthly tenancy for your rent of your landlord is happy with that.