Buying house from landlord

[Hazelfernmoon]

After 15 years of renting the same property, we now have a decent deposit to buy a house.
We would like to buy the house we are living in as it is perfect for us and we don’t really want to move.
The landlord has mentioned in conversation before that they would sell the house if we moved out, which puts us in a good position to approach them.
However, as we’ve not been in this position before, we don’t know how to go about it.
Do we contact a mortgage advisor first to see how much we can borrow/afford? Or do we approach the landlord first and if they agree to sell, await a valuation before speaking with a mortgage advisor?

Any advice appreciated.

We have sold a couple of properties to our tenants.
I like to think we were fair. We got a valuation and then offered it with £10k off.
First port of call would be asking the landlord if they are interested in selling it to you

I think that before you approach the landlord you should get an idea of the likely valuation of the house and if you would get a mortgage in that rough range.

I’m a landlord, planning to sell this year, and offered first to my tenant but she’s planning on moving elsewhere so that didn’t work out. But if she had been willing to buy that would have been ideal.

I hope it goes well for you. Good luck!

You first need to see what sort of mortgage you can get, this applies regardless of which house you end up going for.
Knowing your buying power, you can then test the water and/or see what else is on the market as well as checking in with your LL.

Don't do what our tennant did.

We knew they were interested and it was going to make everything easier all around if they bought so we let them know the price but they countered with a lower figure (which was a discount equal to the rent they had paid over the previous 3yrs).
A compromise did not look forthcoming so it went onto the open market and attracted huge interest. The tenants eventually offered the original asking price but by then we had received multiple offers well in excess so they missed out.
If they had agreed to the original asking price (or there abouts) it would have been theirs (and saved everybody time) but the desirability of the property and the willingness of multiple buyers to offer more meant they missed out

This is what we’d want to avoid in all honesty. Houses on our street don’t come up often and when they do they sell quick as it’s quite a desirable area.
We wouldn’t expect a discount (especially not of the last 15 years worth of rent either) although it would be nice of course.
The landlord has been great the whole time we’ve lived here with any work needing doing etc and had the windows replaced as they were single glazed when we moved in. They didn’t increase the rent for the first 5 years we lived here and it’s only been £20/£30 a month since and we still currently pay around £300 less per month than the average rental price for a similar property, so we can’t complain really and it’d be cheeky of us to expect a huge discount.

Great advice, thank you

Worth checking if they’d do a concessionary
sale.

https://www.landlordzone.co.uk/news/reforms-prompt-landlords-to-seek-out-concessionary-sales

I’d check with a mortgage advisor first as you need to know what you can realistically borrow
then once you know you could approach the landlords and hopefully things will go in your favour.

Thanks for sharing. I wasn’t aware of this

It’s a niche product but it doesn’t need to be. I’d like to see the govt mandate acceptance by lenders.