Selling and moving into rented.

[Beringer]

We have found a buyer for our house and have searched for weeks and can't find something we want to buy. We are probably going to move into rented accommodation to allow our sale to go through. If you sold and moved into rented, how long did you stay there before you found a property you wanted to buy? Thanks!

About 2.5yrs. Planned to sell house (which we thought would take a while) move to new area & rent for 6-12mths then buy.

Sold house in a week but couldn't move to new area (jobs, school etc) so rented for 6 months in "old area", moved to new area but took about 2 yrs to find house & get through conveyancing.

Worked brilliantly for us. Sold at absolutely the right time, gave us time to find the "right" house, beat off quite aggressive competition for this house because we weren't in a chain & could move to their timescales and then kept rental house for about 2 weeks after we got the keys for new house so urgent repairs / decorating could be done whilst we stayed in rental.

@africa2go Thanks for your reply! We are also moving to a new area and are finding all the travelling to find a house exhausting. We are limited to weekends and find that we are too late for the better properties when they become available. I'm afraid that we will compromise on a property too much if we buy now. I'm so glad it worked out for you! I just feel a bit nervous at the prospect of two moves but it would really take the pressure off us right now.

Sold our house at the end of June, went into rented and then two weeks later the perfect house came up! We got our offer accepted over others as we were chain free. The competition for the house was insane! We’re due to complete in 1-2 weeks so when our 6 month tenancy is up we’ll be leaving.

I’ll be honest, we’ve not really enjoyed being in rented (the house has been a nightmare) BUT it has enabled us to get the perfect house for us. We wouldn’t have got it if we hadn’t been in rented/chain free.

We've done this 3 times and although stressful, it's been brilliant for us. I just can't be doing with being in a chain, and it puts you in a great position as a buyer. First time 6 months, second time 8 months and last time just a few weeks so we stayed in a holiday cottage.

Still in it so I can't say exactly, but we sold last year and have been in rented for 12 months. We have decided to stop looking for a bit and let Brexit, Covid and the stamp duty break (that has hugely overinflated prices in our area) blow over and then look again.

We also moved to the area we want to eventually buy in so we are a lot more confident with which streets and areas are best.

We are very happy we did it!

We're thinking of doing this as well as we're moving to a town we don't know that well. It's nice to hear some positive stories.

We did this once some years ago, we'd not found anything and were renting, found a property to buy the day I completed on my house, that fell through and we stumbled upon the next one almost by accident (above our price bracket, but their chain had fallen through and they were happy to accept an immediately procedable lower offer)

So it could work well for you.

We did it once and it was for a few months. It put us in a great position as buyers + the house was a fixer upper so we were able to get most of the work done without living on a building site.

If you’re moving to a new area, then it seems like a very good idea as you’ll get to know it better and work out which parts you want to live in.

Thank you all for your replies. I'm so glad it's worked out for everyone. We're also finding that the prices are too high at the moment and we are worried we are going to choose an area that's not so good. I feel much better about the decision knowing its allowed people to get their perfect house, get to know a new area and be in a stronger buying position.

We are doing this! The plan is 12 months renting which should give me time to decompress and see what comes up in march. I think there will be lots available

Currently in a rental having sold up and relocated to be near family back in August. We actually found a house 2 weeks before we were due to move down, so we didn’t get the benefit of being first in the queue for viewings.

The elderly owners of our rental have sold their huge place and want to move in to downsize so we’ve agreed to cut short our tenancy to enable them to move in here when they complete next week. It means we are AirBnB-ing for 10 days between the rental and the purchase property, which sounded OK at the time we agreed to it as it avoided £5k of wasted rent, but is now proving to be a major worry as our vendor is faffing about trying to add a purchase to what was a straightforward transaction of us buying hers & her moving in with her partner. Thankfully solicitors have managed to convince her to break the chain today & go with originally agreed dates. We were ready to complete weeks ago!

We found it just as hard to secure a rental as it was to look for purchase property, from afar. There were big waiting lists for any family sized homes that came up and they went in the week. Also landlords had first lots of people to pick from so, despite being able to sign up straightaway and having good references and credit scores, it was like waiting to be picked for sports teams!

We’ve also felt super nervous living here due to the immaculate condition they expect it to be handed back in and the ridiculous wooden worktops we have to oil each month!!

Hopefully it’ll all be worth the pain and stress, but at the moment all I want is my own roof over my head and all my boxes unpacked rather than feeling like a nomad.

We are doing this as we did not find anywhere to buy. However, we are going to rent the house back from our buyer for a period of 6 months - they own the property next to ours and are also in talks to buy some land adjacent to that. They plan to redevelop the whole site into flats. My worry is that we won't find anywhere in six months and will have to move out before we find something to buy.

I also worry that house prices will go up and we will be priced out.

I basically worry constantly

We're also doing this. @Katkincake, thank you for sharing your experience. I assume the references they're looking for are from your previous landlord - how on earth do you get one having sold your house?

@PowerslidePanda - no work ones to prove we were in permanent employment and our level of income.
@werk - worrier here too, I’m sure you’ll find somewhere in that time and sounds like a good plan

We are sort of doing this but with a twist as we are currently living in rented but in Canada.
We sold our UK house in July, we are now looking to buy back in London but waiting to see if prices slide a bit, it's a hard move back into London, we move out 1 hour away about 8 years ago, we had great fun with a doer upper house, but now want to return to London and our money isn't going very far ☹️
In the meantime with are in Canada with my DH work, I'm hoping I can find something to buy in the spring and that being a cash buyer will work to our advantage.

[quote Katkincake]@PowerslidePanda - no work ones to prove we were in permanent employment and our level of income.
@werk - worrier here too, I’m sure you’ll find somewhere in that time and sounds like a good plan[/quote]
Ah, I see - thank you

We are currently in rented; we moved here in August having sold our house to cash buyers (we didn’t want to lose them). We’ve moved to a different area (only about 40 mins from where we were, but still, we didn’t know the area very well at all), and whilst it’s been hard at times, it’s been invaluable on the whole.

Pros: you’ll be v attractive to any potential vendors; you’ll be able to get to know which areas you do and don’t like (we’ve learnt so much from this); you might even get an insight into what you do / don’t want from a future property (e.g. we’re renting a beautiful Grade II listed farmhouse...I would definitely have bought something just like this, but realise now it’s not for us). Finally, if you find a fixer upper, for example, you may choose the luxury of renovating before moving in.

Cons: I don’t feel at all settled as I’m very aware how temporary it is; we also happen to be in the middle of nowhere and I’m finding that v tough as we’re used to being around other houses, but that’s personal to us.

Good luck. We definitely don’t regret our decision.

@ServeTheServants agree on it helping you realise what you want / don’t want in a house as well as age. We now know how impractical wooden worktops are as it takes 24hts plus for a thin coat of osmo to stop being sticky which makes the worktops unusable during drying. We also fancied engineered wood floors and a gravel drive - no longer.

But it’s also convinced us to put in a kitchen diner and we like a pull out drawer bin, so handy for scraping in veg peelings when cooking

Sold in January this year. Moved into rented to keep our buyer and had an offer accepted on our purchase a couple of weeks later (we'd already viewed it at Christmas time)

We were in rented until July, as lockdown happened. We even reduced our offer during that time (shoot me!) Being in rented was a huge advantage.

Just under a year. It was the right thing for us to do as we were relocating to a different area and needed to get to know it first. I'm glad we did it that way.

@Katkincake Thanks for the heads up regarding rental properties! I didn't realise that securing one could be so problematic. We have a cash buyer for our property so I thought if we were moving into rented then it would be a faster process. Solicitor advised an average of 14 weeks to sell. We were hoping not to have too long an overlap so we weren't paying a mortgage and rent for too long. I think we'll get something arranged as soon as possible. I'm a worrier too!

[quote Beringer]@Katkincake Thanks for the heads up regarding rental properties! I didn't realise that securing one could be so problematic. We have a cash buyer for our property so I thought if we were moving into rented then it would be a faster process. Solicitor advised an average of 14 weeks to sell. We were hoping not to have too long an overlap so we weren't paying a mortgage and rent for too long. I think we'll get something arranged as soon as possible. I'm a worrier too![/quote]
Be careful though, OP - if your sale falls through and you've already signed a tenancy agreement, you could be paying both mortgage and rent for a long time! Our plan is to start looking at rentals when the sale is progressing well, but hold off on signing until after we've exchanged. We'll negotiate a longer period between exchange and completion than we otherwise would.

Yes most letting agents said to hold off signing a lease until exchange had happened. I wanted to get DS started in new school for start of new school year so would have moved anyway even if our sale was delayed / fell through, we were committed to the relocation. Thankfully we had a savings buffer to cover off any rent / mortgage overlap. It also meant I was able to take up the property when other families had applied for it but couldn’t commit to the lease as they hadn’t exchanged.