should I buy or rent? Any advice?

poorlittlesnail

Hello all, I'm new to this board. I posted this question on the mortgage board yesterday but spotted this board later and thought it might be more appropriate on here.
I’m after some advice about mortgages and moving to a different area. I’m currently living in the south with my husband and my baby but we would love to move to the north. We have a £75,000 mortgage and think, at a fairly conservative guess, our home is probably worth around £140,000. Our mortgage is with Northern Rock and was for around 70% of the property’s value when we took it out. We got the letter about them not offering the same rates once our current fixed term ends in November this year, so don’t suppose it would make sense to stay with them – if they’ll even have us! We feel we have 2 options at the moment (probably have far more but our poor, confused little brains are having trouble with it all!)
1. Sell our place, put the profit into a high interest account (unless anyone has any better ideas- we're not used to having actual money so don't know what's best to do with it!) and rent up North while we look around, get jobs, get settled and sort out a new mortgage.
2. Sell our place, buy a cheap place outright with the equity (would be very cheap and rundown but my husband has done up the place we are in now so we’re hopeful we could at least put on enough value to cover fees...) Then we could use the time to do a new place up, find jobs etc until we find the place we want to stay in.
Are we being really naïve or do either of these ideas seem feasible. If so, any advice, or any alternatives if not? We are assuming that we won’t get mortgages based on our current earnings when we obviously wont be doing these jobs when we move, hence both plans requiring the move up before the mortgage is sorted?
Any advice for this pair of grown adults who really should know about stuff like this would be gratefully appreciated!
Thanks.

Commonsensesearcher

Option 1 is entirely sensible - particularly if you are moving north without jobs to go to as it gives you time and breathing space to find your feet up there. Additionally, whether one believes that properety prices will crash or not, I think it is extremely unlikely that prices will go up over the next 12months. Thus the equity that you will take (assuming you can sell your current property) will be rising faster than the property value potentially giving you far better buying power in a year or so. By then you'll have researched the area you've moved to and decided where you want to go - just one set of purchase costs will save you £££'s. And when you do find the ideal property you'll be chain free buyers and put you in an excellent buying position. All my humble opinion of course but I think you'd be crazy to go for option 2 over this.

Good luck with whatever it is you decide to do!!!

poorlittlesnail

Thanks for the reply. Everyone seems to be advising renting, which I'm quite surprised by to be honest. Knowing little about it I'd assumed that everyone would tell us to buy another property, so we wouldn't have to pay rent, but it does make sense to be chain free when we go to buy.
We still need to get ours sold first- who knows how long that could take, could be here for some time...!

pickledtink

Commonsensesearcher wrote: »

Option 1 is entirely sensible - particularly if you are moving north without jobs to go to as it gives you time and breathing space to find your feet up there. Additionally, whether one believes that properety prices will crash or not, I think it is extremely unlikely that prices will go up over the next 12months. Thus the equity that you will take (assuming you can sell your current property) will be rising faster than the property value potentially giving you far better buying power in a year or so. By then you'll have researched the area you've moved to and decided where you want to go - just one set of purchase costs will save you £££'s. And when you do find the ideal property you'll be chain free buyers and put you in an excellent buying position. All my humble opinion of course but I think you'd be crazy to go for option 2 over this.

Good luck with whatever it is you decide to do!!!

Agree 100%. Not only will you have better purchasing power later but will also have discovered the right spot and right house for you at your leisure instead of trying to rush it all at once.