Completion date stress

[hlr1987]

Very close to exchange of contracts on our house sale, purchase is ready to exchange. I've been pushing to complete before we go on holiday (26th) as it will be difficult to communicate with solicitors while abroad. Husband is being difficult about packing up the house, until he has a particular date he thinks I'm overreacting to be stressing about packing. As a result, I'm the only one packing! Am I stressed about nothing? I think it will take days to sort the house, but without a date there's still so much the can go wrong in the chain.

took me two weeks to pack an (allegedly) not too full three-bedder. After a lot of decluttering, acquiring packing materials etc etc.

just saying...

Get the removal company to do the packing. Worth every penny and so stress free!

God yes - pay the movers to pack. They are faster than you will ever be and it takes a load of stress out of things.

Sounds just like me last week.
Stressful as fuck! Wouldn't do it again ended up exchanging and completeing on the same day with my buyer stood in my house just waiting for the phone call to hand her over my keys. My DH wouldn't pack till we had a date and that defining date came the same day! Pay packers.

@mammatotwo - your buyer really did that? And you let them? Talk about adding to the stress!

Yes, it really happened couldn't believe it myself, she'd given her keys to her buyer before completion and her packers were waiting outside my house for about 2 hours then she turned up as well and just trotted in!
The house we bought was empty and we didn't get the keys for a further 3 hours!! a neighbour also still has a spare set of our keys and she won't answer the door for us to get them back 🙄 They aren't joking when they say it's the worst stress you'll ever go through.

I'd have politely sent her away. You don't need someone breathing down your neck like that. Our buyers' removal men turned up outside before our sale completed and were really pushy. They insisted the sale had completed. We said we needed fifteen minutes as we were finishing the cleaning. When the buyers arrived it really had completed so we handed them the keys and walked them round as we'd left instruction manuals and a couple of things which we thought would be useful.

We then had a couple of hours waiting for the keys for our new place and went and had lunch in a cafe.

Thanks everyone- these are entirely the sorts of situations I'm paranoid about! What sort of time of day did were the buyers/ removal people on the doorstep?
I'd not considered packers but I'm not sure how much time it takes to load furniture and for the movers to be done? It's a three bed house.

The movers turned up at 11 o'clock, by this time we hadn't even exchanged contracts let alone complete, so I started panicking and cleaning like my life depended on it 😂 My DH starting putting throwing boxes into his truck and walking over my freshly cleaned door 😩

I had never heard of same day exchange and completion before mn. Why not exchange before holiday and complete afterwards? Once you have exchange you don't need solicitor comms. You can book removals, arrange broadband and post redirect and then move after you return.

I moved out and into storage this week (new house being renovated) and had removals to pack. It was worth double!! I was still exhausted and stressed but not half as much as I would've been!!

Same day exchange and completion for us on the 31st August. We did a house swap and knew our buyer/seller. We both started moving at 8, solicitors rang at 10 to check if we still wanted to exchange and then at 3, when all furniture had been moved to its new home, they rang to say all funds have been transferred.
I'd been packing for 2 weeks, but didn't believe it would ever happen!

It looks like we will be exchanging after hols too now- first buyer in the chain has (last minute) run into a problem with the mortgage. I'm fuming that they didn't sort it earlier. Dh can't have any annual leave after this holiday which was the main reason I wanted to be done weeks ago. Spending today doing a deep clean anyway, can't hurt and I feel like I'm being proactive then!