Moving into rented accommodation

[Werk]

We accepted an offer on our house in August. Our buyers are chain free.

We haven't found anywhere to buy.

The reality is we will have to move into rented accommodation if we want to keep our buyers (they want to be in for Christmas) as the window to get somewhere ourselves in that time scale is rapidly closing.

However, this makes me nervous.
I really cannot see the property market going up in the next six months, especially after the end of the stamp duty holiday (unless it is extended) but what if it does?

We are already struggling on our budget to find what we want (this is a self imposed budget, we can afford to borrow more but DH is dead against it) and I worry we will be priced out altogether.

Every house we look at has something wrong with it! I really would like to have at least had an offer accepted on a house before we exchange contracts (we would not mind having a few months' overlap between renting and buying), I just don't feel comfortable not having anything in the pipeline but then I don't want to rush into anything as this is supposed to be our "forever home".

We made offers on two houses previously which were rejected because we were not under offer ourselves at the time and so there are houses out there but nothing new seems to be coming on the market and this isn't exactly the best time of year for selling, is it?

I don't want to mess our buyers around, they have already had their survey done (no feedback yet) and are (so far) committed to the purchase.

What are your opinions? Keep the buyer and rent or is this madness?

I think it’s a good idea to just move on. Once in rented, you’ll be more motivated to find somewhere. You probably are realistic enough if you’ve offered on 2 properties recently.

You also need to consider you might have to deal with a 6/9/12 month rental.

We moved into rental, and because we were desperate because of new jobs and schools we had to accept a 9 month contract when we really only wanted a 6 month contract.

We also don’t want to be paying rental and mortgage for more than a month overlap......

It’s a tricky quandary.

@Didicat that is an issue - knowing how long we might rent for. We would be more up for buying somewhere that needs a bit of work if we didn't need to move straight into it.
A bit of an overlap would be ok, up to 6 months wouldn't be a problem.
An additional problem would be the landlord serving notice - we had this when we rented before, it was served the week after we moved in and we had to leave after 6 months when we had planned on staying longer. This time we have 2 DC and the upheaval... ugh.