selling my house and moving into rented. how do you do it?

[offerdilemma]

I have sold my house previously and the buyers pulled out on the day of exchange, so I suppose I am once bitten twice shy.
But now I have been told that exchange of contracts could take place in 4 weeks , so I guess I had better start looking for a place to live.
But I am aware that if I find my ideal rental now then:
I do not know the date of my moving in yet
the buyers could pull out anyway

I dont want to lose the deposit etc by getting in early and paying up for a house to be kept for me, but equally I dont want to be left without anywhere to live. Especially as I am slowly realising the rental market is not quite as simple as I had thought (I have a dog!).

Anyone done this before? How did you do it? How stressful was it?

tia

We had 3 buyers pull out so we had to wait until exchange with the 4th buyer before we could be confident enough to put a deposit down for a rental.

I would start looking now, if you see something you like you could fill the forms in very slowly, try and procrastinate as much as possible before handing any money over. Keep in regular contact with the agent to keep him sweet, tell him what you're doing and that you are 99% confident you can have the money to him by a certain date.

If you meet the owners of the property or the agent takes you round, swoon and gush, only just before you sign the contract you mention the very small quiet dog.

We only had 5 days in between exchange and completion to find somewhere, sign and pay before completion, very stressful, but not necessary! If you feel confident enough with your buyer you could ask for say a 4-6 week delay in completion so you can find somewhere decent to rent.

Best of luck x

blimey that DOES sound stressful! 5 days

I have asked for a 2 week delay, but that doesnt seem long enough.
after exchange they cant pull out can they?

I understand it is very very hard to pull out after exchange or if they did which is very rare the contract is binding and will carry a penalty of 10% or more payable to you.

Barkingx

We had the same problem of not having a completion date agreed far enough in advance to be able to find somewhere - and lots of rental places seem only shown when empty and available then or very soon. We ended up with a 5 day gap between exchange and completion.

What we did eventually is to have a 10 day gap in between selling our house/moving out, and then taking possession of the new rental house. The removal company stored our stuff for us and then brought it to the new house - it cost only £94 for storage of 3000sqft of possessions for 10 days as well, so not as expensive as you'd think.

One of the things that tripped us up was the length of time it seems to take the rental company to sort out references, ID checks, contracts etc, plus our landlord was abroad and difficult to get hold of to sign stuff. Allvery frustrating, but it worked out in the end

We had two large dogs as well, and two cats. Most landlords are OK with pets if you offer to pay an additional deposit and to have the rental house professionally cleaned when you leave.

Onlyaphase, that's a good idea. Our rental is up in September as the owners are moving back from abroad. When we signed up for a years contract thinking it was going to be long enough to find a house to buy, what we didn't expect was all the financial turmoil and drops in house prices.

We are still dithering what to do, but if we end up renting again I would take the option of a long term rental so as not to unsettle the children again.

We only had two weeks to complete. A nightmare but my partner came up to Rugby from London and found a house in one day. We only had the one day and if there was any obstacle, he was prepared to offer a few months rent in advance to secure it. In some towns there are heaps of properties for renting, especially new builds that are not selling.