Sell, Rent and Buy?

[anneofGreenGable]

Dear mumsnetters, May I seek your vice advice? We were selling and buying our home. Day before the exchange the horrible vendor of the property that we were going to purchase pulled out. We have a booked mortgage offer until first week of January. Our buyers wants to progress with our house. We are thinking about selling to them and moving to rental home. We have been looking at few rentals and the rent is considerably expensive than our current mortgage and we will not be able to save a lot during the rent period. With the inflation being 18% and the cost of living crisis I am worried that if the house prices still go up we are making an expensive mistake. Please what would you do in my situation?

Stay where you are and keep looking. How desirable is your property if you have find another buyer? Did you have many offers? Have you got young children? All these are factors re rental. Can you face the upheaval? A similar thing happened to us, except we pulled out as the vendor was playing games. We've now got until end oct to complete on new house as our buyers offer expires then.

You will have to apply again in Jan anyway, you're better off sitting tight and seeing what happens (in my opinion! Others may differ). Good luck, it's so bloody stressful and expensive

We did it last year and it was a very stressful period but worked out very well in the end.

If you are not good with stress and chaos then it might not be for you.

if Your buyers are that keen they may be willing to wait for your house. Depends what their situation is though. Are they first time buyers or have they sold their house and desperate to move? Personally I’d avoid renting if I could or find the cheapest possible and just suck it up that it will probably be a bit of a dump so that you can still save a little.

Stay put!

People who are saying stay put, is it because of the upheaval?

Our buyers have already sold their house and in an air b&b waiting to move to our house. We have a 10 year old. We thought that we might get the no chain advantage if we are in a rental. Our house took few weeks to sell as we are not in a super popular area

No, because how long is a piece of string? How long will you be renting, how long till it takes you to find the perfect home?

That is one of our main worries with looming recession there won’t be many houses in the market

Yes because of upheaval and you have no idea how long you will be renting for in this current market

Yes true, do you think we would be able to find a property in this currmarket before our mortgage offer expires

I think you should be able to find a place before the mortgage expires. Don't forget they can extend it, esp if you in the process of buying. It usually takes 10-12 weeks depending on chains and issues.

I wouldn't move into rented as you will have to stay for a set time and you don't know what will happen to the property prices. If they continue to rise, you may find yourself having to get a smaller place than you had for more money. It's a risk.

It was your Buyers choice to do what she did, so not your issue she is sadly in an air B&B. Until exchange nothing is certain, it's always risky to just think it will all go head!

it’s a lot of upheaval.

also Most rentals don’t have break clauses of 6 months these days. you would likely have to sign up for a year and if you are ready to move in that time you will have to hope they will let you terminate early and don’t have too much extra rent to pay til they have someone else paying rent.

it can work out well as we’ve been in rental two years the area we are buying in doesnt have many suitable houses and I genuinely don’t think we would have been able to buy the house we are hopefully about to exchange on without our particular set of circumstances. However it’s been really expensive!

in your situation if you think you can buy a house within the next few months I would try staying with family, air bnb or a caravan park.

Lenders won’t extend mortgage offer by much, maybe a week or two max - recent experience of a friend.

We went into rented - had to because of work relocation so had to be in new location by certain time. There are pros and cons:
Pros: you make yourself chain free so if there's competition to buy you can put yourself ahead of the others.
Flexibility when moving - we are staying in rental whilst building work takes place so we can make new house as we want it and thoroughly clean before moving in.
Got to know new area a lot better by renting here first - we have ended up buying somewhere we probably wouldn't have considered otherwise.
Having a stable 'base' for both DD and for WFH has been great. We haven't had to camp out anywhere and I've been able to work throughout.

Cons: two lots of moving costs. TBH we haven't unpacked half our stuff as no point. It has made us declutter a lot.
Rental market is competitive and we found it hard to find somewhere suitable. We also had to take out a 12 month minimum tenancy as that was all that was on offer. As it is, we needed more than that to cover selling, then buying and renovation period as there are so many delays ATM.
Renting is a LOT more expensive than our mortgage so we are locked into a period of haemorrhaging money.
It's also quite intrusive - the affordability checks are v intrusive, the property isn't maintained to the standard I'd maintain my own home because the landlord can't be bothered, the letting agent is a pain.

In the long run it's made sense for us to do it, but it has been expensive and stressful. Admittedly it would have been even more stressful to attempt to buy and sell in one go though!

Yes true, we already asked our lender and they said No for an extension after January

So we will have to deal with high interest rates while being on rent

We have been looking at rental properties and there is nothing available with 6 month break close and we don’t want to commit for a year, so I guess we have to stay put and try again next year