Sold our house! Tell me your top moving tips

[lachy]

The Lachy's are very excited. We've had a busy few days, put in an offer that was accepted and accepted an offer on our house.

DH and I are celebrating tonight with a curry and a beer, and wondering where to begin.

What are your top moving tips? What made your house move less stressful?

Pay for the full packing service. Best money I have ever spent

Not doing it myself, l have done many moves and my last one l got removal men so much less stress. I marked all the boxes with the rooms they were going to be put .

I also had an over night bag ready so l wouldn’t need to search for things that l needed that night.

I’m also going to say full packing service. But in many ways the actual moving is the easy part, getting to exchange of contracts is the real hurdle. Good luck!

Have a good clear out , no point In Moving stuff to your new home that You have not wore or used In The last few years.

Wait until nearer completion before celebrating

Got a packing service. Best money ever spent. Moving was pretty much stress free.

Don't celebrate until exchange.

Don’t move on a Friday. If anything goes wrong (paperwork, funds, power supply...) it’s a very long weekend before you can sort it out. (Last time we moved the funds didn’t transfer for the new house until 16.45 on a Friday afternoon.... that was a nerve wracking day).

Pack a kettle and tea/coffee things separately in somewhere easy to get to. No in a packing box in a van!

I've requested quotes for a full packing service. We've already started decluttering, I can't believe how much junk we've got

I'm definitely going to pack an overnight bag, and get a chilly box with plenty of milk, tea and coffee.

We're hoping to move before Christmas so that'll be fun!

@Shmithecat2

Don't celebrate until exchange.

Very true. To be honest, we're a bit shocked. H Our house hasn't been on the market for a week yet, we've had at least 2 viewings, every day and we didn't expect it to go quite so quickly.

But you and @00100001 are right. Until the keys are in my hand I'm not going to hold my breath

(but I will keep my fingers crossed!)

Declutter and then declutter some more! Get the packing service, our guys were £600 for boxes, paper and the actual wrapping, they took better care of stuff than we ever would have done.

Start decluttering on a room by room basis, then start packing non essentials, Get a local charity number that collects , ( the ones who take anything) , get quotes from at least 3 different movers , the difference can be hundreds of pounds !
Agree that an overnight bag with essentials for the first day is a must.
Label boxes with as much info as you can get on it , not just kids bedroom , be specific ie clothes , games etc it will save time rummaging around in boxes.
BE RUTHLESS. In clearing out.

But, yes, start the declutter now!

Be ruthless.

My friends have moved house numerous times , including from South Africa. The one thing they always do is out all the pictures up on the wall within a day or two if moving in.

Last time we moved, our removals people had a service where they put up the beds for you first.

@LittleMissEngineer I like your style.

DD is 4 so is keen on "helping". I'm not so keen... I'm definitely going to suggest your method to DH.

Make sure you will have internet. I arranged for BT to supply my phone line and internet from the date I moved in. It didn't happen, took a few days. I have a mobile phone, but not a smart phone, so was contactable by phone/text, but was pleased that I hadn't expected BT to actually deliver, so had bought a dongle so could have internet access.

Also, I made a massive list of people/businesses to notify with my change of address /phone number for when I moved. Oh, and BT gave me a new land line number for when I moved, then when I actually got the service it turned out to be a different number...

I also made floor plans with cutouts of my furniture before I moved, so I knew where to tell the removal people to place the furniture. Saved a lot of moving around afterwards. Also labelled all my packing boxes with the room they were to go in and a rough list of contents.

Oh, and plan to get a takeaway the first night you are there, you won't want to be cooking food!

@LittleMissEngineer

Depends on finances and circumstances...

ALWAYS exchange 2 weeks before completion: saves uncertainty, stress and people messing about.

The last three times we have moved:

• declutter madly
• pack away loose things into plastic storage boxes (medicine boxes, tool boxes, sewing boxes) where possible.
• make spreadsheet that “maps” source and destination locations with accompanying floor plans.
• pay for packing service
• pack suitcase for two nights and take valuables.
• get up, leave the packing to the removals people, go out for the day and to hotel.
• your belongings are stored in the van overnight.
• sleep at hotel first night. Go to house and direct moving things into house and where to put furniture.
• meanwhile professional clean on the old house and hand keys over for completion.
• go back to hotel for second night
• check out of hotel, Bach to house for unpacking. They unpack and put things onto “level surfaces”. So they need space and - especially in the kitchen - you put away as they unpack.
• removals take away packing materials from everything they have unpacked.
• I then prioritise setting up bedrooms and living space.

This works really well if you have DC (DS was 9 months, 3 and 4 when we moved): they don’t get caught up in all the chaos: say goodbye to the old house “as is”, go to a hotel for a couple of nights, school/outing with DH whilst I sorted out the move.

We are lucky being able to do this, but I like moving to be as easy as possible.

Wow. This is just amazing advice. Thank you 🙏. I shall be using all of this when we move. Xx

Pay for packing, if you can. Best £200 pounds I have ever spent.

Pack all books and DVDS/CDs first.
All bedding, pillows, cushions etc rolled and packed into those huge tartan laundry bags. All other clothes can be packed this way too.
Pack nice dresses and outfits into your holiday cases.
No need for packing boxes, order wine online from Aldi’s on lockdown and they’ll be packed into cracking strong boxes for moving 😉
Save newspapers from friends and family to cover crockery and glassware.
Can’t think of anything else at the minute. I’ve moved a few times, one time was to move to Oz and then back, that was fun 😬

Congrats OP! I’m moving in a couple of weeks. I’ve ended up with three weeks between exchange and completion because the person I’m buying from couldn’t get movers. I think movers are very busy at the moment because of the stamp duty cut, so my advice is to check movers availability when agreeing a completion date. I’m going with the only firm that responded to my request for a quote.

I have paid for packing, moving, a deep clean of the old house and taking some things to the tip (my car is too small and the extra for this was reasonable and cheaper than if I tried to get the council to do it).

I wanted to move on a Thursday to give me a working day to sort out anything that goes wrong but due to mover availability I’m moving on a Friday.

Aside from that my plan is:

• Get my bed ready to sleep in first so that when I’m exhausted at the end of the I don’t need to hunt for bedding and make the bed.
• Take my kettle, coffee etc and an unopened pint of milk on the passenger seat of my car so that I can find them straightaway.
• I’m attempting to declutter but haven’t done much TBH
• Everything in my loft is going in the garage at the new house so I can sort through it properly. I expect to get rid of most of it.
• I’m getting takeaway on the first night. Probably pizza so I don’t need to locate and wash up plates.
• Virgin say that I can do a quick start self-installation to transfer my internet to the new house on the day I move. I hope so because I’m working from home at the moment and I’ll be stuffed if it doesn’t work as my office isn’t even open so I can’t go in.
• Because of the above I’m going to get the router and TV etc to be one of the first things to bring in so that I can set up the internet while the movers bring boxes in and do lower priority things like reassemble the spare beds.

The most trying thing so far has been getting to exchange with the bottom of the chain falling over (make sure your estate agent is all over the whole chain and ask specific questions about how far the rest of the chain have got with legals, surveys, searches etc. and if they haven’t spoken to someone in a while can they do so to make sure they don’t have cold feet).

Chains are unstable at the moment (more so than usual) so the quicker you can get things moving and respond to the lawyers’ myriad questions the better.

Is the chain closed or is someone still finding a buyer/somewhere to move? This is my second attempt at moving and the first time I tried about a year ago I was advised not to spend any money until the chain closed. This turned out to be sound advice as the chain fell over after dragging on for six months but didn’t cost me anything (I can’t stress enough how exhausted I am with this move attempt!).

I got an independent mortgage broker to research mortgages and do the application for me. This meant that the broker could chase more effectively than me (brokers have account managers at the bank, members of the public endure a call centre staffed by people who don’t know anything). This also meant that when the bank sat on my application for 3 weeks and then came back asking for my most recent bank statement my broker contacted me immediately, I sent it to him and he sent it straight to the bank, and insisted that my application be dealt with same day rather than sending me back to the beginning of the three week long queue.

I’m in England by the way. Rules re how committed you are to the purchase due to making an offer will vary if you are based elsewhere (e.g. Scotland).