Should we go into rental?

[Squalie]

We’ve got an offer on our house at asking price from a chain-free cash buyer. I get the feeling from the EA that even though they are in a rental with a rolling contract, it would be sensible to exchange ASAP. There is just NOTHING on the market that excites me and I’m so conscious of the outlook, rising mortgage rates, falling house prices etc. Should we go into rental to safeguard the sale? We don’t have kids but we do have two cats and a dog, which complicates things. Perhaps it will be really difficult um find somewhere to rent. We’re in London.

Was the notice valid? The tenancy cannot be ended by the landlord in any case and any notice is ineffectual during the fixed term.

Suggest taking it with both hands.

take it from someone that recently 8 months to close on our property. One of the many issues includes the bank giving a lower valuation on the property so lower lending so we needed to reduce the price after sale agreed.

we had lower cash offers and regret it so much now .

Yes of course it was valid and I’m not a Cunt so I wasn’t going to make somebody’s life difficult if they want their property back.

However, the property I wanted to buy wasn’t ready so I ended up moving into another flat where the Landlord was a complete Cunt and has refused to release the deposit and he’s taking me to court over cleaning. So perhaps I should’ve been a Cunt. One lives and learns

Exercising your legal rights is not 'being a cunt' as you put it. It's exercising the legal rights Parliament have deemed appropriate.

If they’ve served you perfectly legal invalid notice and you don’t leave youre being a cunt.

And valid notice that should say

Well no, otherwise Parliament would have drafted the legislation so that your notice ended the tenancy. Instead they have deemed it appropriate to ensure only a tenant or a court can end it.

Exercise of your legal rights as a tenant is just that.

As they always say a good man, doesn’t need a Bible. Normal people don’t need to telling that when somebody gives you notice to get their property back. They would like their property back promptly and without damage. Those that do need to telling are the reason why they’re such a rental crisis right now.

Well no, there's a housing crisis because of the failure of the last 4 administrations to have a coherent housing policy. Nothing to do with landlord's behaviour or tenant's behaviour. Don't fall into the trap of believing the current Tory misinformation, and pitting landlord vs tenant. In a decent society with coherent policies we would be providing decent housing to people who need it.

If you say so

@cafecreme thank you for sharing! I hope your search goes well. :-)

@jackstini we are upsizing so it does make sense to go into rented and wait for prices to come down so that we can have sold high and bought low. I just don’t know how difficult finding a rental house will be, with our menagerie. We didn’t get any other offers and I really think we should do everything to get this sale over the line. We don’t actually have a perfect area - we’re looking all over south London in loads of different areas. I think it’s our combination of house requirements that is making it difficult….

I would. I did it recently, stayed in my rental a bit longer than planned but it meant that when it came to finding a great house I was in a really good position to spring on it. People will love that you're chain free.

Good to know. We’re really moving towards renting now. Yesterday we ruled out another property after a disappointing viewing. Time is ticking!

We did this. It was stressful but the only way we'd have managed to buy. And there were advantages!

We were a 200 mile work relocation. No pets but child needing school place. We put house on market and moved into rental in time for new job starting. Left house under management contract with agent so we didn't have to keep going back. It sold and got to completion within two months of moving.

We then started looking for house to buy. This took about 4 months, then 4 months to get to completion. Then 9 months waiting for builders and doing renovation work so we had 18 months in rental in total.

It has been really expensive, but it gave us an opportunity to get to know the area - we bought in a different area to what we'd have probably done arriving without that knowledge. Long term that's loads better for us. It meant we could do work to the house to make it right for us without having to live there. And obviously meant we were chain free!

Depends. There are a couple of considerations:

• the market is dipping - if you go into rental you could benefit from both securing the current price offered on your place and also buying somewhere cheaper
• how much cash savings do you have? Can you make a landlord an offer in cash to reduce the rent? Some like a year upfront?
• how would you feel if you were still renting in a year? Would that be a problem?
• the lack of a chain makes you a more attractive buyer when you come to make your offers

rentals are also difficult to find also atm OP, have you explored rental options and spoken to some letting agents? I would do this before I decided either way. I hope you find a house you love quickly.

Having spent last year going through this process I am now brilliant at finding south London properties. What's your budget and requirements (eg number of bedrooms)

@YukoandHiro we are looking for a three-bedroom terraced period property with a decent sized garden close to (ie no more than 10-12 minutes) to at least one but preferably two parks/options for dog-walking. Terraced house because we have two cats and don’t want them near a road if at all possible but we’d consider semi-detached if the road was very quiet.

We cycle to work (Victoria and Kings Cross) and would want to continue doing that if possible but would also like to be no more than 15 minutes’ walk to a station for transport. Anything further south than South Wimbledon in SW or Crystal Palace in SE feels too far because then cycling to work isn’t really feasible.

We’re also looking outside of the red zone on the climate change.org flooding map, which rules out anywhere close to the Thames apart from Putney (which is by the by as we could never afford there anyway!). And each interesting property that comes up I also check for surface water flooding risk because it needs to be low risk. It’s absolutely amazing the proportion of London properties that are at risk of surface water flooding. We’ve had to rule out several properties for this reason.

Budget is 1.1m but that is absolute max and we’re hoping to pay 1,050.

It’s funny - many people are constrained by factors like school catchment which always sounds so limiting to me but I’m starting to feel like our requirements are much more limiting!

@Roselilly36 good idea, I should definitely do that! We’re super flexible on location (ie wouldn’t need to rent where we would be looking to buy) so I’m hoping that will be in our favour in the sense that it will widen the pool of options.

@YukoandHiro upfront payment of rental is definitely something we would look to do to secure the deal.

There’d be no issue if we’re still renting a year later, apart from getting down about it, feeling life was on hold etc.

The prospect of being a chain-free buyer is very compelling.

@YorkHouse it sounds like renting was definitely the right thing to do in your case. Well done for pulling it off! I hope you will be very happy in your new home. :-)