Advice on buying while renting.

Pete Moss

Hi all,

I'm just looking for some advice on my current situation. I recently had an offer accepted on a house, however, the deal is not yet finalised and there is still a chance that it may not go through. I am renting a place for nearly a year now. My lease ends at the start of July and so far I have not yet indicated that any intent to move and the letting agent has not contacted me about a change in terms or signing a new lease.

I had been informed that if neither party signals that they wish to change the terms of the lease, then it will continue as is. Is this correct?

I ask because, if I my offer on the house goes through and is finalised, then I will need to leave my current accomodation and I just need to know how much notice I would need to give my letting agent.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated on how I should proceed from here. If the house deal falls through, then I will need to continue renting, however, if it is accepted, then I'm going to need to move in the near future.

Archaeoliz

We're in a similar situation. We went sale agreed at the end of February and still have no date for completion as contracts haven't been issued yet by the vendor (long and painful story) but the sale is slowly going ahead and we have a communicative vendor which helps enormously. Our fixed term year lease ends at the end of July.

As far as I understand the legislation, you can move onto a Part/Section 4 Tenancy as you have been in the property for more than 6 months. You need to give notice of this. Officially I believe this needs to happen between three and one month before the end of your tenancy but you can't be denied it on the grounds of not giving the notice. (Try the Citizen's Advice website - http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/renting_a_home/types_of_tenancy.html). You will need to let the letting agent or your landlord know soonest of your intentions.

Once you have been in the house for more than a year you will need to give 42 days (6 weeks) notice to your landlord and over 2 years that rises to 56 days.

We're in close contact with our landlord and have told him exactly what the situation is. He in turn wants to make sure he can get his house let before the winter so it doesn't sit empty (i.e. unheated with the risk of burst pipes etc) over the winter months.

Because you normally pay rent in advance and a mortgage in arrears we are hoping to use that to our advantage (i.e. we'll pay our last rent a month before our first mortgage payment will be due but will have two properties so we can move over the space of a couple of weeks and make sure the rental property is properly cleaned etc before we hand over)

Pete Moss

Archaeoliz wrote: »

Because you normally pay rent in advance and a mortgage in arrears we are hoping to use that to our advantage (i.e. we'll pay our last rent a month before our first mortgage payment will be due but will have two properties so we can move over the space of a couple of weeks and make sure the rental property is properly cleaned etc before we hand over)

Thanks very much for getting back to me! That's a great help and brilliant to get some insight from someone in the same boat.

The last paragraph of your reply is a great idea and something we were hoping to do too.

Our process is somewhat up in the air as we're dealing with a lot of siblings selling a family home, so there has to be a lot of comms between them and I suppose we can't really inform the landlord of our intentions to move, until we know we've somewhere to move to!