Buy or Rent now

[TikkuDavid]

Hi everyone, my first post here and wonder you could give us some advise on our current situation.
So, we are currently living in a rented accommodation paying £650 rent/month and saving up for a deposit. We (me and my wife) are planning to move south of England next year around March 2024 due to job commitments and buy our first house there around £300k to £350k

Now, our current landlord wants to sell the house and we need to vacate by end of March. since then we have found another rental property but the rent is £995 per month and we can move in by end of March.

However, now the landlord have also given us a decent offer £180k that we can buy the house from them.

We are in a dilemma whether to buy the current property we are renting or go ahead with the new rental property. On one hand, if we buy we can get onto the property ladder and start paying towards the mortgage and if the price of the property goes up (unlikely) we are in a better place in terms of equity which would help us buy the property in Sep-Oct for our move in March next year. On the other hand, if we buy the property and if the house prices fall then we go into a negative equity which would badly affect our ability to buy our house later in March.

Also, if we buy now, it would be end of June for all the processes to be complete. We then have to house search for our property in Sep - Nov so that we can move in by March next year.

Any advise will be much appreciated and thanks for your time!

House purchase is expensive with solicitor fee, sdlt etc so if th ehous makes any profit in 6 months which is unlikely will be negated by purchase costs, if not able to sell then you are left with having to let it whuch comes with its own problems of maintenance and also reduce ability to afford another mortgage for new purchase
The general rule is only purchase a property if holding on to it for at least five years at least, I would continue to rent until you are ready to make purchase of your definite home in the south as plnaned

Keep renting. Buying and selling comes with costs, which will wipe out any equity you would build in such a short time. In addition you will make your life hard by creating a chain, something you really don't want to do!

Don't buy a house that you don't want to own for the long term, regardless of the price.

It's that simple.

Thank you @Malbab @Callisto1 @Mark19735 for your valuable advise. This was extremely useful and makes sense. We have now decided to rent and have let the landlords know that we wont be buying. Very thankful for this forum. Thanks for all your time!

Good advice.