Moving to another part of country-where to start?!

[cheekymonk]

hi all. i am hoping for some advice! We have just had a mortgage transfer request accepted. We currently live in portsmouth and are moving to bebington area in Wirral all being well. We have a 7 year old and a 17 month old. DS the 7 year old starts junior school this sept. We aim to be moving roughly this time next year. My husband and I are both transferring our jobs. I am currently desperately researching schools, trying to factor in still needing an Infant school for dd, ds needing a current junior school and of course the secondaries. I am fairly confident ds will pass 11+ for grammar but need to consider where we are in case. this is likely to be our last move until old and needing to downsize! Its a minefield!!! the area is full of great and crap parts and it is not an area we know but husband's transfer dictates area. I estimate house once offer accepted takes 3 months to go through? I am sure this house will sell fairly quickly as in catchment for 3 good schools. We are only moving as need bigger house and can't afford Portsmouth. Plus DH and I have had enough. DS however, does have more to lose and i am worried about disrupting his education.
So I want to do a plan/timeline. When do we put house on market? When do we put offer on house up there etc? Plan is to have a weekend up there asap and get a valuation here as a 1st stop. Our mortgage transfer acceptance is only valid for 3 months and then we will need to reapply. We knew this but felt we needed to know quickly if it was going to be a no. Any ideas?

Hi - we are hopefully doing this the opposite way to you - from Cheshire to Hampshire. It has taken about 18 months to get to the state where we can now move, kids in school, job sorted etc, but that was because we had to wait for daughter to complete GCSES - house sale has been much lengthier than we thought and the logisitics of getting from A to B have been expensive. We began by doing a full reconnaisance of the area we thought we wanted to be in - even had a holiday there, and once there realised the schools were not as good as we hoped. Your children are young enough to be completely adaptable to the change, although settling into school for your Yr 3 may take a bit of time and encouragement. My advice to you is to look at Secondary schools first and work down, - this is something we wish we had done when we moved here. Although it is a long way off, getting into a good Sec school ultimately should be your aim and get your children into the areas where the feeder schools are..... although this may well be subject to change given the present Minister for Educations predilection for change!! In the end we could not tie up a sale and purchase and have opted for renting in the area where the children may go to school - this gives us a good breathing space to hopefully look round and discover where we may want to live ulimately - it is just too far to go every weekend with children in tow and very exhausting for all.

Don't know the wirral that well ( live on the other side of Cheshire) - but why not try Chester or Ellesmere Port for High Schools, I grew up in Chester and its lovely. Ideally you would want the kids in place for the beginning of the school year, but this may not be feasible. Our part of Cheshire is highly over subscribed for primaries, so you need to contact Cheshire West Council and talk to their admissions team etc.
Get back to me if you want any more help/advice. This is a lovely part of the world, and property is much much much cheaper than the south coast - sigh.
Good luck!!!

Wow guineapiglet, that is REALLY helpful thank you. Can I ask what was expensive about the logistics. Isn't it just 1 lorry with all your stuff packed into it- not that I know how much that in itself would cost. Where are you in hampshire if you don't mind me asking? Interesting that the schools weren't as good as you hoped. Did you look aroiund them them? I have been going on a mixture of Ofsted and results and noted the excellent and awful. I really take on board your point of starting with Secondary first. I have wondered how it was possible to tie up purchase and sale at the same time and the logistics of viewings/2nd viewings and doing everything from afar. I may well look into renting first and see if it is an option for us.
Ellesmere Port is a horrible area apparently. Have presumed anywhere half decent was out of our price range in Chester. Would ideally like ds in place for Sept 2013.
Thanks guineapiglet, you have been really helpful. Good luck too! x

I moved schools when I was 7 - remember the first day being a bit nervous. Then it was fine. It was fun. New people, new books/playground. My sister was 9 - she too remembers it the same way, exciting. I don't know anything about either area though so no good there.

Agree with get the secondary school sorted first though - pointless to get a great junior/infant to then feed into special measures/bully laden sink school.

Good luck.

We moved from Kent to Lincolnshire last year. We spent several weekends up there driving around the area and working out places we would consider buying in.

We also researched the schools and worked out the catchment areas for those as well as my commute to the station (still travel into London).

The first thing we did was put our house on the market. Although we had been up several times we didn't view any houses until we had a firm offer on our place. We then tried to view houses that didn't have a long chain or any chain to try and speed up the process.

We were also selling and buying up there and trying to link it into school terms. In the end due to circumstances we had to pull out of our purchase and go into rented whilst we looked again. In hindsight we are glad we did as the original house we were going to buy was a bit futher out than we really wanted and it would have made my day too long. By renting here first we got a far better idea of villages we wanted to live in. Also spoke to local people and got their impressions and advice on areas. We ended up buying in a totally different area to where we were going to buy.

We didn't manage to link into the school term either (moved just after half-term) as our sale was delayed by some one lower down the chain. This meant that DD had a couple of weeks off school whilst her school place was sorted out. She had an official start date at the new school but went to look round it about 10 days beforehand. The school then agreed with DH that she could start earlier than that. We were worried as she moved at the start of year 5 but she soon settled in and loves her new school.

As an indication of time scale, we put our house on the market in March, we had an offer in May, we then found a house within a week (allegedly with no chain - which then turned into an additional 4 houses in the chain). We finally sold ours at the end of Oct due to delays lower down the chain.

So glad we did it though.

Hi again - will try and answer your qu's - logistics, obviously the cost of removal/storage ONCE you have decided what you are doing. In our case approx 2.5k to move......... we had numerous scoping trips up and down the country, staying in hotels/cottages etc trying to get a feel for the place - it is so difficult to imagine living anywhere starting from scratch although I have done it many times, in fact just counted that in total went to 5 different primaries due to parents' work etc.... so it is possible. It is the secondary level where they need to be settled for the duration. RENTAL costs in our area are ridiculous, we could rent two houses for the price we are paying there so that has been a massive headache and it looks like we will be living on baked beans for the next few years. However, I am glad to be renting as the pressure is off temporarily and it means you can have a good look round and meet other parents etc to see how the land lies.

We had a look round several schools - check what the primary schools do in terms of intake to high school - visits/liaison etc and yes, sadly OFSTED reports are a key bit of information when you have no local knowledge - most High schools will show you round tho' and you will get a feel for what they are like. You might be surprised by Chester property prices, have a good look, there are some lovely places around. Haven't been to EP for a long time, others might advise you there' Delamere area is lovely and you will have the added benefit of a short distance into North Wales which I shall miss so much.

We are due to move in August - so living a bit of a half life up and down the country at the moment. Your kids are young enough to be settled quickly and get to grips with the school and change before high school.

We finally decided on Winchester as found some lovely long lost family there - and the schools are fabulous........ its just the price of property is a bit eye watering!!!!

Thanks guineapiglet and sushiqueen too. Very helpful. Look you guinea, Winchester IS lovely! Need to start saving i think!

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We relocated 8 years ago and I wished we hadn't bought straight away but rented. Local knowledge of an area and the things you learn from Mums in the playground about problem areas are all very helpful.

We moved into catchment for an outstanding primary, Ds1 was only 16 months at the time. Although a lovely estate there were problems with kids just sitting around on pavements drinking, being loud etc We would have known about this if we had rented.

Plus even though we went for lots of weekends to view houses we didn't realise how bad the parking was and you literally had to slalom around the parked cars.

So 2 years ago once both my children were in the outstanding primary and the housing market calmed down we moved

Kids are very understanding about circumstances. Our original house from 8 years ago took slightly longer to complete on so Dh was already working in the new area whilst I was single parenting in our original house.

For the recent house move, we sold, moved into a hotel room for 3 weeks with me, Dh, two boys aged 7 and 4 all because we couldn't get our completion dates to match My Mum also died just before we moved, her funeral was 3 days before we moved into the hotel.

But, it was worth it to get a house in an area we had researched, knew people who lived nearby and had local knowledge of the best streets to live on.

Good luck with your move.

We relocated from London to Cheshire several years ago. It was much simpler for us as it was pre-DC. However the one thing I really wished we had done was rented in Cheshire first rather than buying straight away. We accepted an offer on our London property the day it was put on the market and I feel that we rushed into our new purchase. Although it is a hassle to move twice I think the benefits of renting first and becoming familiar with a new area out weigh the costs/hassle factor. Good luck with your move!

So everyone agrees that renting first is better? i do agree but we are transferring mortgage and not sure if NRAm will let us rent and then buy. Mortgage will be £608 but I bet rent would be more too but I guess this is short term and i agree its better than being stuck in bad area. We could come out of property ladder and buy in a few years again but that is quite a gamble too when our finances are rocky. Hopefully they will be better then!
Blimey fizzylemonade, how stressful for you to cope with moving at such a sad time. Thank you all for the advice. very helpful!!! x

Hi, we are moving from Devon to Lymington/ Hampshire at the end of the month for work. I have two teenage boys going to Brockenhurst college but struggling to find a school for my 5 year old who will go into year 1. All the schools with the good Ofsted seem to have waiting lists. Does anyone know about Pennington school? Thanks.