Possible to move without selling home?

patchyX2

I'm pretty sure the answer to this is no, but I just wanted some feedback in case there's another option I've not thought of.

We're looking to move house, but houses in the area we're looking at don't come on the market very often. Therefore, finding a buyer for our home who's willing to wait until we find our next home is going to be tricky. I'm wondering if it's possible to buy our new house without having already sold our current one. As soon as we completed on our new house, we'd put our original home up for sale with the view to selling it quickly.

Our situation:
- Home is worth ~400k
- ~75k outstanding on the mortgage
- ~200k in savings, plus another ~25k if we're really desperate (but that would completely wipe us out).
- Joint income ~80k

New home would cost 600-650k.

So I was thinking something along the lines of:
- Get a large mortgage on our current place (~80% LTV)
- Turn ourselves effectively into a no-chain buyer
- Buy new house (will require another mortgage)
- Sell old house
- Use proceeds of house sale to pay off mortgage on a new house, bringing it to a more affordable level

This approach would mean we have very high mortgage payments while we wait for both houses to complete, so I don't think the banks would be willing to lend to us on that basis, even though it's only a temporary situation (I appreciate they can't assume it will be temporary). I think we'd also have to pay the additional stamp duty rate too with this approach. 

Like I said, just wondered if there's any alternatives than the 'traditional' house buying approach. 

kingstreet

Mortgage lenders don't do short-term lending. That's for the bridging community.

If you wish to retain your existing property and let it, a let to buy mortgage would be the right option giving you the opportunity to borrow some of the value of your existing home, but this isn't designed for those who simply want/need to bridge.

dimbo61

If you can get a mortgage to buy  a second property then consider an Offset mortgage. 
Buy the new home, sell your old home.
Pay the extra 3% stamp duty
Use money from sale of old home plus refund of stamp duty to offset mortgage.
This depends on finding a lender so maybe a mortgage broker can help 

jrawle

I did pretty much that when I moved. I used my savings and the largest mortgage I could take out with my salary (larger than I would have taken out otherwise) to buy my new house, spent a few months doing some work on it, then sold my previous flat. I claimed back the extra 3% stamp duty I'd paid. The key was taking out a tracker mortgage with Nationwide. I was able to use the proceeds from the flat sale to make a large overpayment, as there are no limits or charges with a tracker mortgage. Nationwide immediately recalculated my mortgage payments, and from then on I just paid off the small mortgage each month as normal.

It saves a lot of stress if you can decouple the buying and selling. Do take into consideration that you have to pay two sets of bills, council tax (you only get one month free for an empty property, then have to pay 100%, although I was able to claim one month on each property before and after I moved). You also need to insure both properties and inform your insurer when they are unoccupied (with increased premiums).