Renting if you don't want to lose your buyer but can't find a house!

HarriettPotter

We've sold our house on the 3rd attempt in recent years. We are under offer and all their bits and bobs have been approved. So we've started our look around now but there is absolutely NOTHING where we want to live. Because it's going to be a big move for us, our family home where we expect to stay for a long time, we do have quite a tight area that we're interested in. We have considered broadening our search but having driven around several times, we just know it isn't right for us.

So... it's early days but if we can't find somewhere and things are progressing, and our buyer gets twitchy, we've discussed the possibility of moving out and renting. However, does this have any impact on our ability to buy? I think I read somewhere once that mortgage offers in principle are only valid for 3 months? I'm worried that if we rented for longer than that then we might not get a like for like mortgage? We would be able to save while we rented so there would be positives, but I'd hate to come off the ladder, so to speak, and scupper our chances of getting a mortgage later on?

Would an application from us be viewed differently if we were renting?

(PS. I have decided to leaflet drop in the area we want after trawling through this thread to see if anyone had asked a similar question to me!).

Grateful for any thoughts.

go_cat

Don't forget if you were in rented you would be chain free

Better_Days

We are seriously considering renting too, and for the same reason, it is expensive to move and we want to go to the right house, and not be rushed into something because we have a buyer who is getting restless.

The advantage of renting is that you are no longer in a chain so that you are a more attractive prospect to vendors. Not sure how long mortgage offers are valid for though - but I am sure someone will be along to advise you.

GL

Werdnal

When we bought our current home in 1993, there was no way we could tie up the completion on our sale with the purchase - our new house had numerous complications and legal problems which delayed the purchase. We rented a place, luckily only 200 yards away from the house we were selling!

Made things a lot less stressful, and even though our purchase was going through so we knew we had a house to go to eventually, it allowed us an overlap to get the new place sorted and move in over a couple of weeks whilst we still had the rented place too.

Just bear in mind that the minimum rental contract you are likely to be offered is 6 months, so you will be tied to that if you should find a place sooner.

DRP

we are in a similar situation - we have sold, yet can't find anywhere decent to live

i'm not sure if this applies to the OP but we cannot really rent anywhere because we will lose the ability to port our mortgage (at an extremely reasonable rate) if we don't directly transfer it to the new house... might be an extra thing to consider

Better_Days

Werdnal wrote: »

Made things a lot less stressful...

Yes, I have come to this conclusion too. Trying to marry up a potential chain either side with both a purchase and sale can be nail biting and frustrating.

Although you could potentially end up having to pay rent after unexpectedly finding a property quickly I think this is outweighed by the benefit of being chain free.

On the minus side, you do have to move twice and if I was still renting after a year I would start to become nervous, especially if the housing market started to pick up. There is an element of a gamble in it all.

Still it would be good to be able to overlap the rental and purchase so the move could be done at more leisure than a mad dash on a Friday afternoon.

HarriettPotter

go_cat wrote: »

Don't forget if you were in rented you would be chain free

This is what we thought - makes us more attractive buyers I'm sure.

Werdnal wrote: »

Made things a lot less stressful, and even though our purchase was going through so we knew we had a house to go to eventually, it allowed us an overlap to get the new place sorted and move in over a couple of weeks whilst we still had the rented place too.

This is reassuring as I thought it would be more stressful but I can totally see where you are coming from actually.

Better_Days wrote: »

On the minus side, you do have to move twice and if I was still renting after a year I would start to become nervous, especially if the housing market started to pick up. There is an element of a gamble in it all.

Still it would be good to be able to overlap the rental and purchase so the move could be done at more leisure than a mad dash on a Friday afternoon.

This is a good point about having time to move into rented if we have to do that! But moving twice isn't overly appealing I must say.

I think my main concern is around getting the mortgage. I wondered if we are considered more/less of a risk if we are in a mortgage or renting as I'd be scared we'd not get the same mortgage once we were renting? Does it affect your credit rating?

Thanks for all your replies so far by the way!

Werdnal

Moving twice is not such an issue if you can force yourself to live out of boxes for the time being. The place we rented was part-furnished and we bunged all our spare furniture and boxes in the spare room and lived a very minimalist lifestyle for the interim period.

We were faced with having to put our stuff in storage and move back home with parents anyway, so it was a no-brainer for us!

HarriettPotter

Hmm I think we could do that but I have 21 month old too! It's still good to hear people have done it and survived though!

Kynthia

There are many advantages as you will be more attractive to a seller, you shorten the chain on your own sale, you have time to find the right home for you and if you buy somewhere that needs work you don't have to live there while it's done. I think it's so much less stressful when you don't need to move out of your home into the one you've just bought, and you aren't waiting outside with your removals vans waiting for confirmation the money's been sent.

I can't see why renting would adversely affect your credit rating? Yes you probably cant' port your mortgage, although it's worth asking them. However is your rate much better than what you can find now through an independant broker?

HarriettPotter

No it probably isn't actually. We're seeing the financial guy this week so hopefully we can get some real number crunching going! Its been great to read all the pro's of renting if we have to - it makes it a much less scary prospect!