Buy & Sell Simultaneously or Sell First?

gazfocus

Having made a decision to sell our house and buy our 'forever home', I am wondering whether it's better to buy and sell at the same time or sell our existing house first and then start looking.

Only issue I can think of with selling our existing house first is the likelihood that we may have to rent somewhere for 6 months+ which is obviously not going to be cheap, so will add a further £3000+ to the cost of moving.

My main concern with buying and selling at the same time is that if our sale falls through we may lose a house we fall in love with (although we are looking at selling as cheaply as possible just to get the house sold).

Dan-Dan

well , really your better off being in a chain as you will save cash on rental (substantial amount) and that way , you wont get left behind if prices start soaring (assuming you dont get stung by greedy vendors)

Kynthia

You won't be paying mortgage interest while renting which does reduce the overall expense. Plus you may be able to negotiate a slightly lower purchase price if you're chain free, which could more than recoup the costs. You'll also be an attractive buyer to someone in a long chain, let down by chains collapsing previously or looking to move quick. Plus you won't have the hassle of having to move on completion day with all the others in the chain.

If you're in a rapidly rising market you don't want to be off the ladder for long. It's also a hassle moving into rented.

gazfocus

Kynthia wrote: »

You won't be paying mortgage interest while renting which does reduce the overall expense. Plus you may be able to negotiate a slightly lower purchase price if you're chain free, which could more than recoup the costs. You'll also be an attractive buyer to someone in a long chain, let down by chains collapsing previously or looking to move quick. Plus you won't have the hassle of having to move on completion day with all the others in the chain.

If you're in a rapidly rising market you don't want to be off the ladder for long. It's also a hassle moving into rented.

Thanks for your post.

I see what you're saying, but I do feel like going from owning a house to renting a house is taking a step backwards. It took me a long time to get from renting to owning a house and I really don't want to get stuck renting again.

There are other things we need to perhaps think about. We have 4 dogs which will prove very difficult when renting and we would have to pay for storage because no way would I be unpacking all our stuff for a 6 month rental

Decisions, decisions...

jules888

Kynthia wrote: »

You won't be paying mortgage interest while renting which does reduce the overall expense. Plus you may be able to negotiate a slightly lower purchase price if you're chain free, which could more than recoup the costs. You'll also be an attractive buyer to someone in a long chain, let down by chains collapsing previously or looking to move quick. Plus you won't have the hassle of having to move on completion day with all the others in the chain.

If you're in a rapidly rising market you don't want to be off the ladder for long. It's also a hassle moving into rented.

We thought of renting when selling our house,but as we didnt have a mortgage didnt like the idea of paying rent.

makeyourdaddyproud

Selling first and rent / buying if you are selling a house stagnating in value or an area that is becoming a ghetto.

QTPie

There are pros and cons to both.

We have just sold and are in rented whilst in the process of buying. Our main problem was lack of availability of the type of houses that we want to buy (good sized detached family home in good sized, level garden... like hen's teeth in a city full of townhouses and built on hills....). So we need to be able to move quickly when something right comes up, but couldn't hold our sale up waiting for the right house to come on (because it could be many months). Our house did take 17 months (between going on the market and completing) to sell and during that time we had one sale fall through. We completed on the sale a month ago, have been in rented for a little over a month and are very close to exchanging contracts on a purchase. It is working out very well for us, but it not without headaches and cost...

Things to consider:
- hopefully you wont panic buy the wrong thing.
- that you will be ready to proceed very quickly n a purchase (in my area some really good properties don't even make the open market let alone stay on it for long...0
- that you will have to move twice and that is very costly (rent, agencies fees, removals x 2, possibly some storage costs) and a pain in the backside (moving, setting up utilities, time without broadband possibly, redirecting post twice, being in a home that isn't "yours").
- if you have school age kids, then finding properties to rent in the right area might be an issue.
- we found finding ANY suitable/nice rental property was really really tough - we live in an area with not many "family homes with parking" for rent (most are flats with no parking and/or student houses...).
- you are very unlikely to be able to "port" your mortgage: you may loose a good deal and/or face early redemption charges.
- if you don't find somewhere to buy relatively quickly, then you may get penalised if you are in an area of significant price rises...
- a good thing is that I am really not stressed... our vendors' solicitor is rubbish (and very slow - we were originally hoping to exchange a month ago... now it wont happen until some time after Christmas), but I am honestly not worried or stressed. Nothing is dependent on us anymore: we are comfortable and safe in our rented property (and will be until at least May), have the cash in the bank and a mortgage offer. We are at the bottom of the (very small) chain and our Vendor is downsizing. If things go wrong (incredibly unlikely), then we are in a fantastic position as the property market warms up in the Spring.

I am sure that there are lots of things that I am forgetting...

If we could have gotten house purchase and sale to align, then we would have tried to gone for it (and it probably would have been insanely stressful, but for a shorter amount of time...). We didn't/couldn't, so selling and renting is working out well for us.

It very much depends on your circumstances and your area really.

Kazza_Monkey

Hi from personal experience you are better off in a chain. We are selling without a chain and because of the low risk of our buyers backing out of the sale our EA hasn't really bothered with progressing things at all despite my emails and voicemails they never respond to either and then wonder why I started making demands after 14 weeks of waiting to exchange not to mention that my buyers also have tried to gazunder us as well. Just my own bitter thoughts:) seriously though I think if there is a chain they progress things quicker because there is much more at stake. Good luck with your sale x

bylromarha

It's a decision only you can make - what are you comfortable with? From your 2nd post, it sounds to me like you don't want to rent?

If so, buy and sell on the same day. Loads of people do that daily. It goes belly up for some, but the majority cope ok.

We had to move into rented as job start date in a new area meant we couldn't wait for a house sale. Now that we have a buyer, and the onward purchase is not dependant on our sale, we firmly believe we were in a much stronger position to offer lower - which then got accepted. So whilst the outgoings were more initially, the long term savings have been made IMO.

If I wasn't moving cross country though, we'd never have gone into rented.

notanewuser

We bought before selling. Could that be an option?

makeyourdaddyproud

notanewuser wrote: »

We bought before selling. Could that be an option?

If you have deep pockets, yes, it's certainly a good option.

Excluding me, there aren't many on here who can buy houses like cream cakes ... :-)