Renting to Break Chain

[milkshakeandchips5]

Hi!

We sold our flat in April after a long slog but lost the sale on our lovely house four weeks later. Nothing else has come on the market that's suitable so we're looking at moving into a rental property in the next month as we don't want to lose our buyers who have been super patient.

We are currently in a two bed flat that has a surprising amount of storage and we have a newborn (four weeks) so space is important.. we're torn between finding somewhere similar price to our current mortgage that is two bed, small and might be a challenge on space or increasing our budget to get a house where we just don't have to worry about space! A house would be significantly more expensive (around £500 a month) which is affordable but spending that much on rent drives my saving brain insane.

Has anyone been in a similar position and has any tips for sucking it up and not feeling like you're throwing away money?

Thanks!

PS - I hate buying houses.

Could you rent a small place but stick stuff in storage?

Is the £500 pm the difference between the rental flat and a rental house? That would cover the storage and then some!

Renting you’ll have to rent for 6m minimum, if you think you’d need for less time, perhaps look at an Airbnb? Then stick your stuff into storage. I know people who did this, but obviously not in summer and not in a pandemic :)

If it is only for six months to a year I’d stick it out in a smaller space and bank the savings. As pp says put stuff in storage if you have to. You might find you don’t miss it!

We did this in a slightly easier position with a 3 year old, moving from a small house to a bigger one. We also had lovely buyers, who had offered way over our asking price, so we decided to sell anyway when our purchase fell through.

Things we considered:

• it was a rising market, and we worried about house prices leaping away from us while we rented
• we had 6 months to port our excellent mortgage deal
• houses in our target area usually sold in a day or two, with numerous good offers on the table, so being very proceedable was a great advantage
• we had no idea where to live! Didn’t want to waste a lot on a lease in case we bought quickly. We did a combination of staying with relatives, storage and staying the last two months in short term let (expensive but found somewhere small and convenient for work).

It worked well for us.

Don’t do it - honestly we have broken the chain and are massively regretting it, overstayed our welcome with family and no where to rent. Honestly finding a new buyer would be so much easier x

It’s definitely worth really looking into the rental market in your area first. We offered on a lot of places to rent but missed out, decent places were snapped up almost immediately. We have now found somewhere but have had to be flexible on space / price etc rather than being able to pick and choose. For us, we want somewhere we know we won’t be desperate to leave if buying takes longer than planned - we don’t want to be buying under pressure basically - but we are willing to live with less space on the basis that it won’t be forever.

We are renting to break the chain. We are happy with it. We have had an offer accepted on an onward property and it's all less stressful. Because we are relocating (only 45 mins away) to a cheaper area, we actually have a bigger place for less money than our mortgage so that's worked out nicely too. Obviously it's wasted on rent rather than being invested in a property, but we see it as a necessary means to an end and it will be worth it when we are living in out new family home.