Imminent exchange, rental woes

[Hopepark]

We are imminently due to exchange on our house sale (next couple of days!). Unfortunately, we have not been able to find anywhere suitable to buy. Our buyers are happy to delay completion but only by around 4 weeks.

I think in the current market we are very unlikely to find something to buy now (and maybe it makes sense to hold out a little until the current feeding frenzy, and hopefully overinflated prices, calm down). So, it’s looking like we need to find a rental.

We have been looking already but the agents won’t entertain us until we have exchanged, to the extent that they wouldn’t even accept a holding deposit from us pending imminent exchange, and we have lost out on a couple of ideal rentals already.

How long have people needed to delay completion to find a rental property in our situation? The rental market feels as fast moving as sales in our area.

Starting to get a bit worried now about being homeless and would really rather avoid paying to put our things in storage, moving into temporary accommodation etc while we sort things, especially with two young children. If our house hadn’t been so difficult to sell I would at this stage be considering pulling out, even though I would really hate to let our buyers down, because we didn't even sell at asking price and now the market has overtaken us somewhat, but that’s another story!

Any tips in our situation welcome!

Expensive but can you go into a holiday let or Airbnb for a couple weeks? That's what I'm doing. For logistical reasons we are moving into one hotel for a couple nights, then another in another location for a couple nights, then in to a holiday let for two weeks, hoping that we will have completed on new house by then.
In your case, book a place so at least you have somewhere to move to, then you can find a long term rental.

I second the Airbnb option. Ideal for this kind of situation.

With all the uncertainty in the sales process I can understand why an agent won't accept you as a prospective tenant until you've exchanged - there's too much risk that you will experience a delay and where does that leave everyone. Also the newish rules on not being able to charge tenants upfront costs mean the landlord has to pay. so again the risk in you needing to delay is a financial burden on others. The only issue with the likes of Airbnb etc is you are likely to have to commit to the cost on whatever your best guess is in terms of timeframe. Prices are currently really high. I think you need to exchange first and then look at all the options as quickly as possible, don't really see an alternative unless you are willing to commit a huge amount of money to a rental or Airbnb you may never use.