Buyer wants us in rented - seems a colossal waste of money

[ChainStress]

Our buyer is eager to move into our house but our vendor isn’t ready and doesn’t seem to be in a rush. Buyer has asked us to go into rented while we wait for our vendor. But the maths on this isn’t great.

Current outgoings - £1700/month on a low interest mortgage comprised approximately £1350 mortgage, approx £350 interest.

Potential rental - at least £2250 (we have three kids and both work from home - we need at least 4 beds). So each month we’d lose £1350 on rent that could have paid off our mortgage loan plus an additional £800 in rent (£2500 rent - £1700 current monthly outgoing).

Over 6 months that would cost us £12,900, plus another £3000 in additional removal costs. About £16k all together! And if it falls through with our vendor we’re stuck for even longer in an expensive rental paying off someone else’s mortgage until we find a house.

What am I missing? Why are people willing to break the chain if it’s so expensive?

Why would anyone spend the best part of 10k on legal fees if you have not even the first idea where you might move to? You would have at the very least ear marked a few properties?

We live in an extremely competitive area property wise, and it’s the chicken snd egg situation, I wouldn’t expect someone to accept an offer unless they had a very good idea of their onward purchase options and a plan B should it not happen. It is madness, but that is the system not the people.

"Ear marked a few properties"?
What properties? What if nothing suitable on the market and the only property we wanted, we didn't get because they went with someone who had nothing to sell? (This happened)

So many first time buyers have totally unrealistic expectations of the house buying process, they just need to be told "no". If they want a property to be available entirely at their convenience, they should restrict their search to "no onward chain" properties.
You absolutely should NOT feel pressured to do this - in fact your solicitor will advise you very strongly not to do it. There is a huge amount of risk as well as cost in "going into rented" and it is not your responsibility to take that on just because your buyer is in a hurry.

Also, legal fees are not £10k 🙄

Our conveyancing fees for our purchase (including searches) are £3350, not all the costs are incurred immediately, so if it all fell through we'd lose some/most/all of it depending which stage we'd got to.

We've spent £650 on a level 2 survey which we will obviously lose if it falls through.

It's the risk you take if you want to buy a house. It all depends how much you want the house and how long you are willing to wait. For the right house we would suck it up.

Well we buy period houses, and the advanced surveys and fees are very high.

I would give up moving if I were you.

The chances of you being able to compete with a cash buyer is very small. The sellers will always go for the safe option of a cash buyer with no chain if it’s a desirable house. Or you move into a rental house, and then you can have the pick of the houses when they come up.

You are wasting everyone’s time currently.

You clearly can't read because I already said we have moved into rented.

How ridiculous to say that I shouldn't be allowed to move house just because it takes time to find a house to buy!

Calling me "difficult" and a "nightmare" reflects more on you and your poor understanding of the house buying/selling process than it does on me.

Op, I think you have your answer in the shape of pp on here. They see your offer as an option. A free option by the sounds of it. Nothing concrete is happening.

Give them a deadline.
In the meantime, you have to calculate whether the prospect of losing this buyer is going to cost you many tens of thousands in a falling market - then a rental is worth the effort. Or if you can be reasonably sure of a new buyer being prepared to pay the same relatively quickly.

It is a decision based on your unique circumstances, and no one else can really advise. Good luck!

So many first time buyers have totally unrealistic expectations of the house buying process

I will be honest, but it might just be might spoiled by other systems immigrant part talking, but it should not be considered unrealistic to want a complete chain after 4.5 months....

Your buyer wants you to rent to convenience them? And hasn't offered to pay for it? Let them rent somewhere then.

I can't work out from this thread whether your vendors have found anywhere yet. If they haven't, surely they are the people who could be moving into rental in your chain? Apart from anything else it would make them more attractive buyers. You understandably don't want to be in rented waiting around for someone else to do things you have no control over whatsoever. Has it been put to your vendors at all?

When we put an offer in on our house we knew the vendors hadn't found anywhere - the house had been on the market a few months and they wanted to wait till they were proceedable. We were already living in a rented house. But after a few week we did tell the estate agents we were going to have start looking again as we couldn't wait forever and then they did fairly quickly find somewhere. Unless there's any pressure from you, why would they get moving?

We actually did this. With 3 DC too. We didn’t have an onward purchase yet at the time and wanted to stay in our area where they didn’t come up very often. We had asking price buyers who needed to move before a birth.

We agreed we would find a rental if we hadn’t found a onward purchase within a month of the buyer’s offer. There was the silver lining of no chain if and when something came up.
We eventually found something after 6 months of renting then moved at about 10 months. Wasn’t that bad. Lots of stuff didn’t really get unpacked! I do recall the interest on the several 100k in the bank more than paid for the additional costs of the rental.

Not quite your scenario but worked for us. The market was different though. Fierce competition for the sorts of houses we were looking for.

Find somewhere else quickly!

I'd want you out - me i'd be - you've a choice: complete and move or we pull out - your purchase is not my problem.

I'd also be threatening your purchase with pulling out