Disconcerting gap between renting and buying - help needed

roisinford

Hi all,
I am currently in the process of buying a house and it's taking a little longer than anticipated (as these things usually do). I am a first time buyer so I was taking advice from the estate agent and the mortgage advisor. They told me that the purchase would be very quick because there were people waiting in the upward chain when my offer was accepted on the house. So things were moving very swiftly until I applied for a mortgage and the lender is taking a very long time to approve the application. They requested separate surveys on cavity walls, which have flagged up a few issues. So as of today I still don't have a mortgage offer approved... I am still waiting to see what they say.

My problem is that my lease runs out on 18 June and it can't be extended (the landlord is actually moving back into the property). When I put the offer in on the house I didn't see a problem with this timeframe... but it's slowly creeping up on me. I'm now anticipating that I will therefore have a gap between renting and buying. This gap could be 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, 6 months... I literally have no idea!

Obviously I could move into another rented property but this seems like a lot of hassle to then have to give notice potentially very quickly afterwards. I'm not sure what to do! Any suggestions?

Celesse

Put everything in storage and stay with family or friends for a short time?

silvercar

If you weren't out by 18 June the landlord would have to go through the legal process to gain possession of the property. This will take a few months.

ST1991

silvercar wrote: »

If you weren't out by 18 June the landlord would have to go through the legal process to gain possession of the property. This will take a few months.

Although not the best advice if you are reliant on a mortgage for a property, as legal proceedings could mean CCJ's etc...!
Would not recommend doing this. What about staying in a short term rental until you have a more solid timeframe.
If you are used to spending rent anyway, you could go for a holiday let, or air bnb, rent a spare room, stay with friends?

roisinford

Thanks everyone. I hate the idea of staying with friends (family all live far away) without an end-date to give them, but hopefully it would only be for short term. I have looked at short term lets, but these tend to be hideously expensive... although might just have to bite the bullet

Pixie5740

ST1991 wrote: »

Although not the best advice if you are reliant on a mortgage for a property, as legal proceedings could mean CCJ's etc...!
Would not recommend doing this. What about staying in a short term rental until you have a more solid timeframe.
If you are used to spending rent anyway, you could go for a holiday let, or air bnb, rent a spare room, stay with friends?

Taking an eviction all the way to court for a possession order does not lead to a CCJ. It's not paying the court costs that leads to a CCJ not the hearing itself.

Pixie5740

OP read G_M's guide to Ending/Renewing an AST for further information. Just because your fixed term ends 18th June this does not mean you have to leave the property by 18th June.

Talk to your landlord and explain the situation. Regardless of what your landlord might say there's nothing (s)he can do to make you leave 18th June without breaking the law.

Petite_Anglaise

Hi OP

Have you given notice to vacate the property or has the landlord done this?
Is 18th June the date that you must move out or is it the date that your AST runs out?

You have more time than you think.

PasturesNew

The short answer is: they can't MAKE you move out on the date, you could just stay .... but that's not nice and I'm sure you just want to be nice and leave on the right date.

Don't rent something else on an AST, you can't just "give notice" and leave, you'd be liable for the full 6 months' rent or whatever you signed up for.

You need to put your stuff into self storage and live elsewhere short-term.

Your options are:
- airBNB
- phone local/small/private B&Bs/hotels to get a "long term" rate (say 3-4 weeks).
- spareroom for a short term
- find a local holiday let and contact the owners directly for a preferential rate. "Not a holidaymaker, looking for somewhere for 2-3 weeks from ..... between houses" - I've done this and got closer to £150/week rather than the "holidaymaker rate" of £600-700/week.

Don't be afraid of prices you see when making the enquiries.... there'll be somebody prepared to do a deal. Maybe take it for a whole month - it's often a dead spot for holiday rentals until the summer season kicks in mid July. Get something with a bedroom you can live without and you don't even need self storage, just use the bedroom for storage and doss on the sofa

And yes - I have done ALL of these solutions in recent years.

roisinford

Pixie5740 wrote: »

OP read G_M's guide for further information. Just because your fixed term ends 18th June this does not mean you have to leave the property by 18th June.

Talk to your landlord and explain the situation. Regardless of what your landlord might say there's nothing (s)he can do to make you leave 18th June without breaking the law.

Thanks for this information. I think I will chat with my landlord to see what they think. I have a very good relationship with them and don't want to effectively start squatting to prevent having to move - I would find this a million times more stressful than just moving out! I am currently on a month-to-month contract with the landlord, and after saying I was in the process of buying a house they said they had a new job coming up in the area so they would want to move back into the flat themselves. This all seemed fine and totally agreeable to me at the time, especially as it meant not having people doing flat viewings while we were here. But now it's feeling like my landlord is going to move back to the area and I'm going to have to move on, out of this flat, whether I have a house to purchase or not.

roisinford

PasturesNew wrote: »

The short answer is: they can't MAKE you move out on the date, you could just stay .... but that's not nice and I'm sure you just want to be nice and leave on the right date.

Don't rent something else on an AST, you can't just "give notice" and leave, you'd be liable for the full 6 months' rent or whatever you signed up for.

You need to put your stuff into self storage and live elsewhere short-term.

Your options are:
- airBNB
- phone local/small/private B&Bs/hotels to get a "long term" rate (say 3-4 weeks).
- spareroom for a short term
- find a local holiday let and contact the owners directly for a preferential rate. "Not a holidaymaker, looking for somewhere for 2-3 weeks from ..... between houses" - I've done this and got closer to £150/week rather than the "holidaymaker rate" of £600-700/week.

Don't be afraid of prices you see when making the enquiries.... there'll be somebody prepared to do a deal. Maybe take it for a whole month - it's often a dead spot for holiday rentals until the summer season kicks in mid July. Get something with a bedroom you can live without and you don't even need self storage, just use the bedroom for storage and doss on the sofa

And yes - I have done ALL of these solutions in recent years.

Thank you very much this is really helpful