Short term renting?

[FingersXrossed]

We're supposed to be handing over the keys to our buyer at the end of the month and having been unsuccessful at buying a couple of houses are going to need to find a short term rental until we can buy somewhere new.

I've never rented before so don't have a clue about the process! Do we need references or anything? My husband is from overseas and has a pretty low credit score, will that affect anything? Also been told that you need to watch your credit score doesn't get affected if you end up staying somewhere previous tenants haven't been paying bills etc

Starting to get nervous because we have been concentrating on selling/viewing houses but there's been so much competition we've had no luck yet.

Thanks for any advice.

Start here
www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-to-rent/how-to-rent-the-checklist-for-renting-in-england

Minimum let will likely be 6 months.

Credit score doesn't get checked only check for CCjs.

Bills are responsibility of person who owes the money they dont become yours when your take on a property if the previous tenant has not paid so will not affect your credit rating. Just take meter reading when you move in.

You should be asked for employment ref and previous landlord but that isnt applicable for you so wont matter.

You may also need a guarantor. I managed to get a private rental through an agent with a guarantor because I had a ccj because an ex partner got a loan out in my name and defaulted! So I'm sure you'll be fine.

It's incredibly difficult to find a short let. When waiting for our house to be built we had to rent a minimum 12month let, and pay 6m in advance in order to negotiate a break clause after 6m. Be prepared to be flexible - it might take you longer than that to find somewhere/complete the sale anyway and you will have more options if you look at longer lets too. Move quickly if you find something appropriate. Good luck!

Thanks for the info! I'm in Scotland so will see if there's an equivalent government link for up here.

There does seem to be a lack of short term lets. So I guess we can just go for somewhere and play it by ear. Can you get penalised if they're expecting you to stay longer or can you give notice that you're leaving in a month etc? I guess circumstances change anyway.

My brother rented with his family for 6 months while waiting on his house to be built but the landlord was a friend who was overseas so he just sent him the money upfront and that was them until they got their new place. I wish I'd bought somewhere first but then I might have ended up paying for 2 mortgages.

How long are you looking at renting for OP? I'm not sure how it works in Scotland but in England a standard rental agreement is 12 months with a six month break clause (meaning you can give notice prior to six months to move out after exactly six months). We ended up doing this whilst waiting to find and buy a new home. I know the Scottish system is different, but given the vagaries of the English system our purchase took 5 and a half months to go through anyway, so we didn't lose too much money in rent. Locally to me people seem to find short term lets by posting on our local Facebook group, it might be worth considering? Also a lot of people respond by offering their AirBnB lets for a few months at a time, I guess its easier for the owners than having to do changeovers every few days? It might be worth contacting a few and seeing what deal they would offer for a rental of a few months rather than a few nights?

A landlord cant evict you until you have been there a minimum of 6 months which is why you wonr find a shorter tenancy easily. You might find you are tied into a minimum term of 6 months. Holiday let's dont fall under the housing act which is why they are short term

If you want shorter than 6 months you will have to do a holiday let.

Renters have a lot of protection in Scotland - there’s no short-assured tenancy any more so you can leave with a month’s notice. Landlord must give you two months’ notice.
The difficulty will be if you are being honest about the length of time you wish to stay - some landlords will ask your intentions and may not be keen to rent to you on a short term basis. You could just not mention the time scale or say you don’t have any plans to purchase at the moment & then if your dream house comes up come clean then. Nothing the landlord can do but depends how honest you’d like to be.
We struggled to get a short term key when renovating last year but did get something that n the end & were honest about it bring a six month stop gap so you never know!
Best of luck

Hi OP, not sure if this is useful or not as England but we rent our flat out on short-mid term lets as well as AST-type rentals. The situation arose because in London there's a 90-day limit on Airbnb-type rentals, so we advertise on a few different platforms with differing rental lengths. We have a management company called Houst who do all the paperwork for us - they have places in Scotland so you could potentially call them and chat to a human about what they'd need in theory from you guys?

We've had a few tenants in your situation and they pay a fair monthly rent, comparable to the regular AST letting rate but with more flexibility.
Plus it's furnished so they don't have to "move twice" (although they do put things in storage, at least I assume they do!) Just FYI! If you find a LL who is set up to handle short term lets as part of their normal run of things you might find things like the break clause easier to wrangle.

Best of luck!

If you go on somewhere like gumtree, they will sometimes have properties on there which are flexible on rental terms.

Thanks for the info everyone, very helpful. Hopefully seeing places this week. Imagine it will be 6 months minimum, will keep an eye on what's available for buying also and see if things calm down. A month's notice sounds fine will see if they mention that.

I was hoping to have bought somewhere new by end of the year (am nervous of Covid/Brexit implications) but will see what happens.

There's no minimum tenancy period in Scotland, hence lack of "proper" short term lets!

We thought we'd be renting short term but there's not actually been anything we want to buy on the market, so we've barely even viewed anything, so it's been 4 months already!

Airbnb. Lots of owners do longer rentals.

Well we'd had our eye on two properties (on Rightmove), one is now gone and the other I can't get through to the letting agency.

Wondering if this is going to be a whole new world of crappiness to deal with. Letting agencies, am I correct?

Am thinking Gumtree/private renting might be the way to go.

We’re Aberdeenshire & I used ASPC & local letting agencies to keep an eye out. Gumtree & local Facebook groups are also useful. If you have a local buy, swap, sell you could stick a post on & see if anyone has anything coming up.

Found a couple of properties on Gumtree that we're going to view but nervous about the competition. My mother said we can sleep on her living room floor if we don't have anything in time.

Stressful and I'd have started looking ages ago if I knew it was going to be this difficult to a) find somewhere to buy and b) find somewhere to rent.