To think previous owners of our new house were being unreasonable?

They do exist. The process is just different.

Have you ever been in a chain? The procedure is to complete from top down. The solicitors communicate to do this. This is their fault, not the vendor.

When we moved we completed but our sellers weren't able to get in their house so even though legally it was our house i did the decent thing and gave them an extra 2 hours till 4 so they could clear the rest of their belongings.

Surely if a number of people in related transactions are all moving on the same day, it's a 'chain'? If there was no chain, there wouldn't have been anyone still in the house to get in the way!

"Taken the shine off of moving day" 🤣🤣 really?

The OP is in Scotland where chains don’t exist.

I had a car accident in the morning of our moving day, on my way back from picking up the friends who were helping us with the heavy lifting. Police there, ambulance for me (athsma attack from the stress) and for the idiot who had swerved across the road and hit the cat in front of us, which I then hit (whiplash, one of his illegally bald tyres had blown)

Luckily the house we had sold had a massive front garden laid to lawn, so we just shifted everything onto the lawn room by room & the buyers followed us moving in room by room after it had been swept/vacuumed.

My cousin's move was delayed by 6 hours due to one set of the solicitors having gone out for a team lunch & not returning until just after the banks closed. This was a farm, so we had her elderly disabled mother, 3 cats, 4 dogs, 3 parrots and a small flock of chickens camping out in a knackered caravan on the grounds while she and I moved what we could into one of the outbuildings. The estate agents managed to get hold of the vendors, who had moved to France a couple of weeks before, and they gave them permission to let her have the keys early thank goodness.

People can tend to be a tiny bit more relaxed moving a farm, as you can't always (in fact very rarely!) move a load of livestock in one day so all the horses & cattle had been moved into the fields the day before, and we picked up the rest of the birds and the cat who had gone missing from the old place the next day.

Chains are messy things

OP is in Scotland, no chains.

Having bought and sold lots of houses, and worked as a mortgage broker for 20 years, it's far more common than you think for transactions not to happen simultaneously – especially when there's a long chain.

Solicitors will always issue stern warnings to sit put until funds have cleared but when everyone is ready to go with movers booked they often just do it. I never heard of a case where it went wrong (not saying it doesn't but it's rare).

Because you can be "right" or you can be happy sometimes.

Chains are messy things and I don't want my kids to be standing on the street whilst I argue the toss on move day, that's not a nice first experience of their new house for them!

First house we bought money went though late morning - no keys by 5 pm we were panicking - we were in rented due to move next day lorry booked - DH was stood in estate agent refusing to leave - estate agents were fed up but her daughter insisted she was on the way 6 pm she finally turned up with the keys.

We rushed up there with our then two kids - filthy and full of rubbish in drive.

IL had an estate agent neigbour she had some real horror stories.

Why would you plan a buffer? You get the keys, the house is yours. It was the seller who had failed to plan properly, otherwise they would have had somewhere to go while waiting for their purchase to complete. The OP’s had completed.

Although I have always successfully aimed to be out and cleaned in the agreed time, I have never, ever, fully expected to definitely be in on time, and have planned accordingly.

There are too many moving parts on all ends. I think whilst technically legally "reasonable" to be in at the agreed time, realistically it was a bit silly of you, and frankly with kids that young it was irresponsible to not have planned a buffer, when completion is well known to be a bit messy

We had not dissimilar when we moved too.

We arrived with keys and she hadn’t even finished packing and her movers weren’t there.

I told the absolutely gormless owner that if she didn’t get her movers there in the next half hour mine would empty the house and charge her for it.

She was a twit of the highest order and the house was so dirty I cried when we got in.

That is cheeky, I think a lot of people don’t understand how it works tbh based on the comments here. You owned the house they were in, their onward purchase hadn’t completed yet as funds were moving up the chain.

We had this when we moved, we were out of our house 3pm and didn’t get keys to new house until 4:45pm (was stamp duty deadline day!) but we had an hour 45 where we effectively didn’t own a house! We had to wait for funds to clear etc. And just had to hang around a bit (only moved 5 minutes away).

FWIW, I wouldn’t leave my house until I got the completion call from my solicitor either.

It wouldn't be your house at that point though.

A lot of people fail to understand that moving is actually two separate transactions, even though they may have arranged the sale and buy for the same date.
Of course they had to move out; they have sold the house and the funds have been transferred. (Contracts will have been exchanged, deposits paid, and money transferred by bank transfer - usually done by the solicitor)
If the people have not moved out of the house they are buying, that is a separate issue, and nothing to do with the sale of their own house.
I was always told that the actual sale, etc should happen around 12.00 midday, but often it does not happen until much later. (ie when you can legally get the keys, etc). I would assume that if you are part of a chain, and reliant on the sale of your house, for some/all of the purchase of new house, then I imagine that the money being transferred can happen later as it progresses up the chain..
However, in this case, OP was told that the sale of house to OP had all been completed, keys handed over, so yes, she could move in.

@Didimum In scotland we do not have chains!! our system of house purchase is much simpler than in england

There is no chain in Scotland . Yes there might be several people buying and selling on the same day but the transactions are not linked legally .

The sellers should have been out long before 1.15pm when their solicitors released the keys to the buyers. Whether or not their own purchase had settled was irrelevant.

The Op is quite right to be annoyed.

Is "vacant possession" part of the moving process in Scotland... I.e. the house should be completely empty?

They were cheeky. Usually practice is to go for lunch or coffee etc.

I remember that one! She was livid that the new owner was taking the kitchen out. It was his house!

There was a thread on here the other year where the OP and her family sat around in the kitchen of their house, after it was no longer theirs, having a packed lunch while the new owner came in and dismantled the kitchen around them! 😬🤣 She had her arse handed to her!

Oh FFS "Be kind". They were squatting in OP's property.

Not unreasonable at all, the cheeky squatting fuckers.

Start afresh tomorrow and enjoy your ‘moving day’ then without the stress of actually moving 👍

Not ideal, but it’s fine. I’ve had much worse - ie, two whole days later. And they left their stuff in the house!