Renting a house that's for sale!! Advice please...

chocolate4

Hi
this is the first time i have been on this site - but hopefully I can get some advice. I have just paid £250 application fee for a house that I am hopefully going to rent in August. they have since told me that the application is successful and I have given notice to my current landlord. However, I have just come across a recent advert on the internet, advertising the house I am moving into - for sale!!. when I went to view the house there was no 'for sale' sign otherwise I wouldn't have applied for it. The house belongs to the letting agency and I feel that if they were going to put it up for sale, then they should have informed me of this before I paid £250. I am a single parent with two small children and certainly do not want to keep moving or have viewings when I move into the property. Is there anything I can do?

pinkshoes

You can either find somewhere else to rent, and insist they give you the £250 back, or if they refuse, then rent it, and refuse ALL viewings. Legally, you don't have to allow any viewings, regardless of what it says in the contract.

Gwhiz

Are you sure it's still for sale? Could it have been advertised as for rent and sale whichever happened sooner and you are, in effect, seeing an old ad?

Best call them for full facts first.

cjmumto2

I agree with Gwhiz it may have been up for rent or sale but the sales team may be slow in taking it down.

chocolate4

Thanks for the replies and advice. The cached copy of the internet page was 3rd July 2011 - that was the weekend that I paid my £250! What I might do, is contact the estate agents that they are using and see if the property is for sale still. I will also contact the letting agent - but am a bit worried as on top of the application form it states that the fee is unrefundable - but surely they were in the wrong for not telling me that the house was for sale! Plus now I have given in my notice for my current house! Fingers crossed that the house has been taken off the market although I cant see it! :mad:

andrew09

We had a similar situation - the landlady had the house for sale and to rent at the same time. We did successfully rent it from her - at our request the contract was for an 18 month period (to save us being moved on after 6 months).

After 9 months she tried to get us to leave quoting a fictional break clause in the contract, which we refuted and we stayed the full 18 months.

We got her/her agent to sign the contract as quickly as we could - which fully committed her to renting the property and stopped her from selling it in the meantime if she got a good offer (lots of agents try to actually sign contracts the day you move in then they have no liability to you if the previous tenants don't move on).

The other problem we did face was that when work needed doing, she was very reluctant to get more than the bare minimum done as she was planning on selling (and so didn't really care about our comfort!)

franklee

If it were me I'd find somewhere else. This one has being moved on soon written all over it. Also you want a LL who will be willing to do repairs and knows what his/her legal obligations are for which this doesn't look promising.

Cubbington

I think the best thing to do would be to wait till you can check with the estate agents. The house we rent was up for sale and rent when we moved in and that was nearly 3 years ago! It may not be worse case scenario.

dcems

check with the agents in the morning. I'm with you-I wouldnt have paid either if I was in your position.

You can always retract your current notice if it doesnt work out

G_M

Very few potential buyers will be interested in buying a house with tenants in occupation. This issue is raised by buyers on the forum regularly.

Even fewer buyers will be interested in buying without viewing the property. So if you deny access for viewings (which you can do whatever the tenancy contract says), no one will buy.

FATBALLZ

When we moved into our last rental it was on the market for sale and rent at the same time. To be honest if we'd realised before we'd paid the application fee I wouldn't have bothered. It was just a case of him realising it had been a terrible BTL investment and either wanting rid or some money to cover the mortgage ASAP, so he was willing to take either. Once we'd moved in he took it off the market - we've just moved out after 3.5 years and he's put it up on the market again. To be honest we were lucky, he was a really good landlord and a great guy*, fixed any issues really quickly and never once tried to put the rent up - in fact he offered us a rent reduction if we sacked off the lettings agency. But it could have been different, I wouldn't take the same chance again.

Incidentally the worst landlord I ever had had been advertising the place with two EAs, but as a rental with both.

*I might change my mind on this if I don't get my deposit back!