Bernie

I am currently in the process of selling my house and looking for somewhere to rent. Because of the christmas period it looks as though the gap between exchange and completion is going to be quite tight. It looks like I am going to have to start putting down cash for a place for somewhere to rent before the exchange goes through. I don't think it's likely that the sale will fall through (!?) but I don't really want to hand over £1000 plus until the exchange date. The £100 odd administration and credit check fee I can live with. The question is when is it usual to pay the bond and first months rent? Is it on the day you collect the keys or is it done in advance?

The buyers hopefully should be quite flexible about the completion date as they are currently renting themselves. Can you really find and move into a rented place in a couple of days? From what I remember about renting it seemed to take at least a week for the letting agent to follow up references, credit checks etc. Is there anyway of speeding this bit up e.g. taking along bank statements? If we were to try and get somewhere before exchange is there any way you can guarantee that the landlord/agent won't rent the house out to someone else. From my understanding 'holding' deposits guarantee you nothing!

We have just sold our house and are planning to rent. If all goes OK we should be exchanging sometime in January. The question I have is when is the best time to start looking for and paying the deposit on a rented house? We are planning to leave a couple of weeks after exchanging before completing to allow time to find somewhere to rent and move. The problem is that the town we ideally want to rent in doesn't have a huge amount of suitable rented houses and there may not be anything To Let when we exchange. Would it be better to secure somewhere before contracts are exchanged? The problem being that presumably we would lose our deposit if the sale fell through?