Any advice on moving into a repossessed home please?

[lostindubai]

Hi. This property has been empty for at least two years. It's being sold by a company. They are unable to tell us if the utilities are working and, although we're able to access the property with estate agents present (to get brief visits by tradespeople for quotes etc) they have so far refused us permission to access the keys ourselves prior to completion. We're asking again as we really need to get the house cleaned before moving in, before the furniture's all in ideally.

Just wondered if anyone has been in a similar situation before and has any advice on a smooth transition. Completion is looking likely within a few weeks. We have a toddler, and I am six months pregnant so don't want to move into an unliveable home (but I can stay with parents briefly if I need to!)

I assume it was emply when your surveyor went in. Did he have anything to say about electrics or gas?

Was the condition sufficiently OK for you to store most of the furnituyure in one room. If not you could get a quote from the removal company for short term storage.

There should be someone locally offering short lets, of the sort used by contractors in town to do 2/3week jobs. Or any off peak holiday accomodation, perhaps holiday chalets on a local farm. You should be able to negotiate a good price on the latter. This might give you a bit of breathing space, and enable you to check everything out and have several trades in at the same time.

We didn't have a full survey done (although we did get a builder in to assess the structure) - we'd rather spend the money fixing up.

We're going to have another look this weekend to see which (if any!) of the rooms is best to store the furniture etc. Can't really afford storage and as for accommodation it will have to be the parents as we don't have the money for anything else really. Every spare penny has been put aside for house improvements. But thank you for the suggestion Need, we would have done that in an ideal world.

are your insurers happy with the state of the place? you need to insure it from exchange.

We've never bought a repo although we did collect an eBay purchase from one where the about-to-be-repossessed couple had removed & sold all the floorboards but have bought a few unmortgageable wrecks/uninhabited project houses over the years.

Current house had been uninhabited for two years as the vendor had bought elsewhere and left this place sitting empty. We didn't have a survey as a friend is a builder and he gave the place the once over plus we're seasoned DIYers so have a good idea what to look out for. Despite being empty all that time there were no issues with electrics etc (but the place was sooooo cold/damp when we moved in and needed a thorough airing) - although obviously a repo is a different kettle of fish.

Another house we bought had been tenanted and two tenants had to be evicted to get vacant possession - not only did this take forever (so after completing on our sale we had to put everything in storage to move in with parents for six weeks) but one tenant trashed the place before the bailiffs arrived - literally smeared shit everywhere......not nice.

Last house-but-one was also empty - vendors had moved in with her mum to look after her - and was being sold as a project. It was unmortgageable, had failed to sell at auction and part needed demolishing. We were moving 150 miles and had other family issues at time of purchase so the vendors offered to give us a set of keys to allow us to move our furniture & boxes in between exchange and completion as well as to do some minor prep as there was currently no kitchen.

We were rather wary - the house was thatched and I was paranoid about the place burning down - but we had no lender to keep happy and we ensured we were fully insured from exchange and went ahead. Probably not a wise decision and not possible/recommended with a repo IMHO - our solicitor was unaware, as I guess was theirs - but it worked out OK for us, although despite being a wealthy middle class couple they left the house full of fleas from their dog......

Thanks for sharing your experiences Raphaella. It's interesting to hear them all, good and bad. What a horrible experience with that tenant though

Special, not sure what the insurance company has to do with it? Like I said the house isn't falling down, it's structurally ok.

Hi,
I have in verse of getting the key to repossessed house.
Contracts exchanged but before completion i went to view the property again to plan in advance, and i have noticed a lot of things which i didnt see/noticed in my first viewings.
The property is already going to cost me higher as two of is were fighting for the property.
When I went to view again I could see alot of punch holes in walls, the electricity meter is showing debt of around £100. I also noticed a hole in ceiling where i can see the water drops, meaning the roof is leaking.
Some glasses of the patio doors and windows are broken too and i dont have any idea of the working of the gas , electricity and water.
I have bought the home insurance with emergency cover already though.
Now the question is how do i plan myself.
What needs doing first? Does my home insurance will bear the cost of roof repair if required. ?
How to get the electricity, gas and water working?
Thanks in advance.

Aaron you'll get a better response posting your own thread than commenting on a 5 year old zombie thread.

But in answer to your question, no the home insurance won't cover the cost of repairing the roof. Home insurance will only cover anything that happens as an accident, not anything that is through wear and tear or was present before you purchased the property. You should have had a survey done to check the state of the roof etc. You also should have checked the property before exchange, not after. You have now exchanged contracts and agreed to buy the property in the state that it was in at exchange so there is no come back on any issues you discover now.