When to start looking to rent?

[HouseHunting]

We are finalising exchanging with our buyers on our house - we have not found anywhere to buy & wondered if the usual protocol is to wait until exchange before looking to rent? There is a house that has come onto the rental market that would suit us perfectly but as we have not yet agreed an exchange date with the buyers is there any point securing the rental or waiting until we have exchangd? Thanks

Presumably you'd need to have somewhere lined up to be able to give a completion date at exchange . If that is close then worth starting to look.

Oh that is good as DH was saying we should wait until we exchange but I am concerned the house could go before then. Thanks!

We put in an 'offer' on a rented house two months before we wanted to move in and that was fine. The lady moved out on 28th and we moved in on 1st.

Not sure if that helps but IME, as long as they think you'll be a good person to let to, they tend to be flexible.

Good luck!

Hate to be a harbinger of doom but don't sign any contracts until you exchange in case something goes wrong. The arsehole chap who bought our house messed us around a lot during the purchase so we didn't feel confident enough to commit to the expense of a rental so it turned out he only gave us 4 days between exchange and completion and said if we didn't comply the deal was off. We managed to get somewhere to rent in that time (aided by our keen estate agent) so don't worry about ending up on the street.

Thanks all. The house has gone oh well!

look before exchange,hope to find something suitable, maybe start the process with references and credit check before exchange, sign the tenancy agreement AFTER exchange.

It can take a while to negotiate a start date with a landlord, not all houses are marketed "empty".