Question for those moving/living in rented to ‘break the chain’ when buying.

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We are due to move into temporary accommodation (moving in with a friend) at the beginning of October so we can complete on our sale. We have not yet found an onward purchase.

I’m worried about how to handle some of the ‘onward address’ issues this is going to throw up and wondered if anyone has any advice?

Plenty of things can just be cancelled or transferred to the temporary address I guess, but what about the following:

Phone number - can we keep our number if we are not able to port to a new home straight away? Obviously we can’t take it to our friend’s house!

Business address - I run a small business and our home address is the registered business address. The friend we are moving in with also runs a business so I can’t re-register there. I’m thinking accountant?

Mortgage - we did have a full mortgage offer for a property we were buying that fell through. This expires in November. If we need a new one (rather than a reworking of the existing one) how will we get that with a temporary address. We will not have any utility bills as proof of address.

Schools, dentist and GP - we are staying in the area (both temporarily and with our permanent new home when we find one). Will it cause any issues?

Is there anything else I’ve forgotten or need to be thinking about?

Thank you!

I'm in a similar situation - in temporary accommodation. Just had an offer accepted and for the mortgage they have accepted a bank statement with my temporary address (I don't have bills either, like yourself).

Things like dentist, doctor etc, I just didn't tell them I'd moved, it hasn't been a problem.

Hopefully someone else can help with your other questions as they're not situations I've dealt with!

I did find it very useful to pay Royal Mail to forward my mail for 3 months, just to catch anything I'd forgotten.

Thanks for your reply Charlotte, that’s good to know.

Anyone else able to weigh in?

I would think it depends how long you envisage yourself there, we had house fall through on day of exchange and moved in with family. We had a new offer accepted within days and so we used our original address which had a post redirect. The biggest issue I can see is the electoral role address which can impact mortgage applications and takes months to update.

Can you change your address, register to vote etc from your friend’s address? Change your business address to there’s - basically make it your address for any purpose you need to? Have your post redirected initially and then update your address with all the relevant parties. I think since you’re going to be there for a few months at least, it won’t be practical to be without a proper address for so long.

Meant to add, we broke our chain but took on a lease for 6 months so we have updated our address to the new one.

I set up mail forwarding with Royal Mail as couldn't be bothered to contact every Tom, Dick and Harry with our temporary address. Apparently it's illegal not to update DVLA but I haven't done that...

I had to open new utility accounts in my name with the rental address and that was accepted as proof of address by the estate agent when my offer on a new house was accepted.

We did the same thing but have moved in with PIL.

Business address - We registered this with the accountant. Royal Mail is a nightmare to get them to forward business post so change this ASAP. You need a utility bill in your business' name otherwise they won't do it. Useless for home buisnesses. Even the multiple people I spoke to at RM thought it was stupid.

Mortgage - You need 1 form of ID and 2 proof of address. Speaking from experience you will fail your digital address check for the temp accomodation so you will need this sorted. ID can be passport so that's easy. For address, I did my driving licence and one bank statement. Driving licence is free and was surprisingly fast (4 days to arrive). You can do 2 bank statements as long as they are different banks. My bank statement took longer to arrive than my new driving licence!

Phone Number - We have ours 'held' for 6 months then we will lose it. Call your company and ask.

GP - If you can still get to your GP if needed, I'd be tempted to leave it registered there until you move. If you tell them you have moved then they will force you to change. It's a pain. As we had no bills here we had to get a letter writting by MIL to say that we were staying there.

Definitely get Royal Mail to forward personal post. We did 12 months to mop up the letters we only get bi-annually or annually.

Good luck in finding your onward purchase. Breaking the chain we the best decision for us as we got a great house with loads of competition as we were in the best position.

Thanks all - lots of good advice there, especially from @blacklilypad. I’ve moved the business address today to the accountant’s office, so that’s one thing done, but the to-do-list seems to be growing ever longer!

We have redirected our post and
I have changed the address on our car insurance.