Has anyone ever rented a property before selling their own

jackieblack

Snow_Angel said:

Just wondering if anyone has ever rented a property before putting their own property on the market to sell. I know some people move into rented after getting offers before buying their next property in order to 'break a chain'.

Bearing in mind chain-free properties are likely to be more popular, has anyone ever done, or considered, doing this to make their property more attractive to buyers. I need to sell my house and basically just trying to decide how to make my property the most attractive to buyers in the current market. 

Trying to think of potential negatives or if this is just a plain crazy idea!  Obviously this is assuming you had the funds to do it. You may end up not being able to sell but if you'd only signed say a 6 month rental contract, you could just move back into your own house. And hoping the landlord/lady don't evict you at the end of the 6 month tenancy if you have sold your own house before buying another one (but I guess that risk is the same for people moving into rented to break a chain).

Has anyone done this or how have people who moved into rented to break a chain got on?

Yes, we did this (about 24 years ago), like most things in life there are advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages for us were that we were able to move into the new area where we wanted to buy and where houses rarely came up for sale and sold by word of mouth without a ‘for sale’ board ever going up. We were able to do a couple of small jobs in the empty house before putting it on the market that would have been much more difficult to do while living there with a young child. It also meant we could move ourselves gradually over several days. A further advantage was that when a house came up for sale we were chain free buyers as the sale of our previous house was already completed.

The disadvantage was that we paid both rent and mortgage for a few months but fortunately we found a chain free buyer quite quickly.