Advice please selling house and moving into rented with baby on way

Cookie124

Hello, I'm hoping some of you can give me some advice. I'm currently in the process of selling my house. It sold the same week it went on the market so the HIP was completely up to date and the survey has been done. Is that everything that needs to be done before the contacts can be exchanged or have I missed something?

We've found a really nice house in our village to rent and it has a garage, which we need. There's very few houses with garages available and if we let this one go I think we'd struggle to find somewhere else. I'm due to have a baby in 9 weeks so ideally I'd like to be moved in before then. We're looking at renting long term and ideally we want to move somewhere we like and can stay a while rather than just moving anywhere just so we can be moved in before the babies born.

Sorry this is a bit rambling, but basically what I want to know is:

How long from deciding you want to rent a particular house does it take for everything to be sorted out, so that you can move in?
How soon do the letting agencies expect you to move in and can you delay it for a few weeks?
Do you think there's much chance of getting everything sorted and being able to move into a house we've seen now? Would it be reasonable to say to the other party we want to complete in say 3 weeks? (assuming that there's not much for their solicitors to sort out now, also the purchasers are currently renting)

I know the sensible thing would be to wait until we've exchanged until we find somewhere to rent, but with a baby on the way so soon I just want everything sorted and I dont want to just move anywhere. We wouldnt mind if the rent and mortage overlapped by a couple of months, but obviously dont want to be tied into a 6 month rental if the sale falls through.

Any advice on the best course of action would be appreciated!

BitterAndTwisted

If the home you're selling is so attractive that it sold in a week, even if this particular sale fell through I can't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to find another buyer just as quickly.

If this rental is absolutely ideal, I'd snap it up now before it's too late. As you said, similar properties don't come around often but obviously it all depends on how long you can afford to pay the rent without selling your home. It's all a bit of a gamble but I'd take it in your position

shirlgirl2004

The best advice is to ask your solicitor for a rough timescale. The thing that holds the process up is once the contract has been sent to the buyer's solicitor then the solicitor send yours a list of questions to be answered. Correspondence goes back and forth until the buyer's solicitor is happy with all the answers. Additionally there will probably be other searches to be done which can take time.

If your buyers see you have moved out they will think that you will probably be keen to sell and may gazunder at last minute. Just because you found one buyer quickly does not mean there is another around the corner.

What you are thinking of doing is a gamble and it sould be an expensive mistake if it goes wrong.