Moving house without going into rented between

[DaffodilValley]

Does anyone here have any advice about how to sell and move without ending up homeless half way through the process?

We are looking for a very specific sort of house and have actually found what we are looking for after 18 months of finding nothing.

Obviously we can’t offer until we have sold, and I’m concerned that the house we want will be gone by then.

I’m a wheelchair user and I have two dogs so renting isn’t an option, plus I’m on a low income so probably wouldn’t be able to afford rent at modern prices even if I found something accessible to rent.

If we didn’t get the house we are interested in it might be another 18 months or more before anything similar comes onto the market again.

How do people get round this catch 22 in the system?

We and everyone we know have always just got into a chain so everyone had to wait to exchange/ complete until everyone else is ready . Renting was never an option

That’s helpful, thanks. I’ve only ever bought three houses and I was renting when I bought two of them so I’ve never had a chain.
The estate agent who did a valuation for us a couple of weeks ago said we could accept an offer and then pull out if we haven’t found anywhere suitable, but that seem unethical at best if we haven’t found anywhere and have committed to sell.

So you've found the house you want to buy? Put an offer in then? If accepted, you sell yours.

As long as you tell them the situation that's completely fine. It happens all the time. And really you have no choice.Juat accept offers from people willing to wait for you to sell.

They won’t accept an offer from anyone who hasn’t already sold, I think that’s pretty standard (or I understand it is). Also we need to sell ours to know how much we would be able to offer because the house we like is right at the top of what we might be able to afford.

Most people will now accept an Offer subject to sale,it’s a pity your seller won’t
Put your home on the market and once you get an offer you can put in an Offer
Aim to conclude both missives at the same time which is standard nowadays

That's a shame they won't accept unless sold, it's not standard and not what we've done in the past.

My thoughts are that they're saying that to you but in reality, they're wanting more.

You go by what yours is valued it re being able to afford it - guessing you have a mortgage in principle?

I've bought and sold twice in 6 years and both times my house wasn't even on the market and they've accepted my offer, never been an issue. Is your house in an area thats hard to sell?

I don’t know anyone who has sold before having an offer accepted elsewhere recently (in the central belt). If you are in a popular area then you could be on the market and sold in less than 2 weeks. It seems short sighted of the sellers to not consider offers from people who haven’t sold, I think that’s a minority unless a Ftb.

We moved in April and had our offer accepted subject to sale. It's not unusual in Edinburgh. Not sure where you are. We were given a four week review clause to accept an offer on our flat but we met that no problem.

Was your house up for sale? We have had multiple offers rejected in north berwick and edinburgh because we are not on the market. We dont want to go in. The market until we find something though because we know our house would sell quickly.

No it wasn't on the market when we made the offer. We had already had photos done and a previous home report (which needed an update but was quite quick to arrange) so I did make a point of emphasising how quickly we could get to market. It probably also helped that the selling agent for the house we bought knew the development quite well in which our flat we needed to sell was, and they were confident it would sell quickly and we assume advised our sellers as such.

We hadn't wanted to take the risk of going on to the market as had quite specific criteria - particularly location - and it paid off for us but I guess we were lucky. We did also price our flat realistically for a quick sale.

This confuses me so much!

15 years ago we did this - had an offer accepted then put ours in the market. Ours didn’t sell and we had to pay nearly £20k to the sellers to let us out of the purchase.

I don’t understand how that happened to us when it seems to be pretty much the standard approach, and I have never heard of other people having to pay.

I think you must have been really lucky. We are the same, dont want to go on the market until we have had an offer accepted on somewhere we really want. Its tough!

Presumably missives were already concluded for you to have been liable for costs in pulling out? I think that's the difference. Missives are being concluded much later now. Our offer was made "subject to sale" and accepted on those terms. We only concluded missives a few months later, a week before moving day. Either party could have pulled out without penalty until missives concluded.

I suppose it depends on how big the onward chain is and how much of a rush the sellers are in. I don't think it's super unusual though, our friends did the same last year. Our solicitors certainly didn't advise us against doing it when we spoke to them about our situation and asked advice about whether we needed to go onto the market first. They did say it's fairly common now to offer subject to sale, but of course it's still up to the seller as to whether to accept that or not. I'm not sure whether it helped or not that we were selling a flat we thought would be attract to first time buyers and thus were expecting to be able to close the chain (we did).

Are you on the market now ?

I mean I can understand their point. Your offer effectively means nothing if your house isn't on the market. It's just pie in the sky as you can't know exactly what your house will go for and therefore if you can actually follow through on what you've offered.
If you make it clear to the seller what your offer would be and say you are, putting your house on the market ASAP, hopefully they will wait for you as long as someone better doesn't come along.

Have a chat with your solicitor. They should know the local market and common approach.

Round us there’s been a big shift towards offer subject to sale which would have been unheard of ten years ago

We offered subject to sale and our house wasn’t on the market. They gave us 6 weeks to sell and we got it listed a couple days later and took the best offer we received after a few weeks on the market. We did everything on one very long day on moving day

(In edinburgh)

Process is completely different now
Is now very similar to the English system

Thank you again everyone, this has been a real eye opener and it’s helped me hugely.

Our house isn’t on the market yet because in the past 18 months I haven’t seen anything even remotely suitable and we had a lot of work we needed to do to get it ready for sale.

Houses sell quickly here, in the past six months two close neighbours have sold, one on the second day they were on the market, the other on the fourth day. Of course that is no guarantee we would be the same, but it’s a guide.

We have been here 30 years and when we bought this place offering “subject to sale” wasn’t a thing, so I was being very cautious. The estate agent we have had to look at the place said we would need to be on the market to offer, but the seller of the house we like hasn’t said anything because her agent hasn’t communicated much and although I said we wanted to register official interest they haven’t replied yet.

Houses in this area generally sell for less than they do in the area where we want to move to (we are hoping to go from Fife to Perthshire) so although the two houses are valued around the same it’s difficult to be sure we will get a high enough offer to cover the cost of the move.

Anyway, we have another couple of agents coming to look at our place next week and that will give us an idea of whether it’s going to be reasonable to make an offer. After being here so long it’s a huge decision to make.

Thanks from me too. Very helpful to know that the system has changed.

Remember the offer isn't legally binding until months down the line- many things can change. Buyers have pulled out due to interest rate changes, people passing away, lots of things can happen between an offer and concluding missives ( which you need to go in to sign).

Always worth speaking to the seller to ask what they're after to take it off the market, if possible.