Sold my home and planning to rent. What are my next steps?

Marydmjones

I have accepted an offer on my flat and am planning on renting for a while as my buyers intend to move quickly and I want time to find my perfect property to buy.

I’m not sure what to do now in terms of timing. I can’t afford to pay my mortgage and rent on a new place at the same time so I’m not sure how long to leave it before I commit to renting somewhere.  Has anyone done this before who might have some advice for me?

Thanks in advance!

youth_leader

Do you know if they are proceedable?

SonnyLumiere

We sold our house at the end of last year and have moved into a rental property. To do this, we agreed with the purchasers a long gap (6 weeks) between exchange and completion. Once we exchanged, we started viewing rentals. We found a rental after a couple of weeks and signed up for it, so we ended up with a 4 week overlap where the rental period had started, but we hadn't completed.

The risk of committing to a rental before exchange is obviously that the house sale might fall through. Similarly, the risk of not having a gap between exchange and completion is that you might not find any where that you want to rent. You may also find it difficult to book removals if you need a large removals company as they are booked up because of the rush to meet the stamp duty deadline (which might be extended).

I realise that you don't want to pay both rent and mortgage, but not building in time buffers to the process increases your financial risk in other ways.

Good luck!

yksi

^This, and personally I would wait at least until exchange. Estate agents can sign a contract even on the day you are hoping to move in, so assuming you're not too choosy, I wouldn't think you'll struggle to find a place to rent with a 14 day lead time.

I am assuming that you will pass a credit and income check with the new place. You might have to consider moving items into storage if it's a long distance move or if you're going into a much smaller home.

tacpot12

Could you get a loan, even from a family member, to allow you to put down your deposit and first month's rent on a property? You will be able to repay them when the house sale goes through, so it is only a short term loan. 

NQManchester

We did the same thing, I communicated from the start that we might need a month between exchange and completion so there were no surprises for the buyer.
Once it looked like we were nearing exchange point I started looking at rentals, you can normally pay a holding fee (ours was about £150) that gets you the rental whilst they do their referencing and before you have to sign an actual contract. So if it gives you some comfort you could reserve somewhere before exchange and sign after and you’re only risking the £150 if anything happens with the sale. The referencing period was near enough a week.
we managed to time it quite well and only had a week of paying rent and mortgage but it was stressful hoping a suitable rental would come up (we have a dog and a kid who needed to be in catchment for a school which didn’t help).  

Good luck! 

It was a faff moving twice in a year but I definitely don’t regret doing it that way and taking our time to find the perfect house, and we got this place 10k under the best offer because we were chain free so it covered the rental costs. Also a lot less stressful than being in a big chain and buying and selling at the same time. 

gwbuk

We've just done this. The challenge is the different speed of the house buying/selling and house renting processes. As previous replies have suggested, a decent interval between exchange and completion can help mitigate this. It gives you time to find a place and sign a tenancy agreement. If your finances/references are straightforward, and everyone does their bit, you can complete a tenancy agreement and have the keys easily in under a week, so you can have 2 or 3 weeks looking for a place.  Unfortunately, we only had 10 days between exchange and completion, so it was a bit fraught. We were reasonably confident about the exchange date (wrongly as it turned out) so we did find a place before exchange and paid the refundable reservation fee. Standard terms are that this is one week's rent and it gives you one month to complete the tenancy agreement after paying the fee. If you sign within the month, the fee comes off the first month's rent, if you don't, you lose it. But be aware this is more for the landlord's protection against time-wasters than security for you. If you're taking the full month and the landlord gets another prospect who can sign in a few days, they can just return your reservation fee and rent it to them instead - nasty, but what could you do? Fortunately, despite our exchange slipping by two weeks, it was over the Christmas period, so the landlord didn't really have a chance to look for another tenant. We signed the tenancy agreement in the first week of January, just a few days before the one month timed out. 

Angela_D_3

I found a flat to rent and moved into it within 14 days,  not shabby at all,  i would have chosen it even without the time pressure