What time do you get keys on completion day?

[NotAnotherUserName5]

Completion day is coming up, and I'm wondering what time you usually hear from the solicitors or estate agents about collecting keys?

We are chain free.

About 1pm ish in my experience. That was one house with no chain and one house with a chain 4 long with a few hiccups on the day. Both released keys about 1pm

We got ours about 2pm. I'm sure they will keep you updated.

We had a nerve-racking wait and didn't get our keys until just before the estate agent closed!! Delay with our payment going through. We were officially homeless for a couple of hours! I think it is quite unusual to get them this late though.

We got one key at 10am, but the previous owners didn’t actually vacate the house until gone 7pm, which I was really angry with.

It has always been around 12.30pm for us, but the last purchase it was almost 4pm. The seller was running out with arms full of clothes and throwing them in her car whilst we sat in the car!

You may have to chase the solicitor/estate agent as you will just be one of many completing on that day - esecially if it is a Friday. Good Luck.

Lunchtime unless your idiot estate agent goes to lunch

4pm or so for our first purchase, which was a new build. 7:30pm for our second, the estate agent was the vendor's brother and delayed for as long as possible doing terrible, terrible things to my blood pressure because they hadn't actually started to pack anything till that morning, and hadn't hired a van because they were only moving 300m down the road and thought they could just do lots of runs in the car. They left the place absolutely filthy as well, they honestly mustn't ever have cleaned anything. I think they just waited till the house got too filthy to live in, then sold it and bought a cleaner one. Bitter? Me? Nowhere near as bitter as DH, he was the one who had to clean their oven... Oh, and we're still getting their payslips, 18 months later.

depends where you are in the chain. If you are at the top, have a plan B in case something goes wrong or an urgent golf game calls at the solicitors...

We were moving in from about 11am, sellers left the house open for us (only moving up the road) and the cleaners were there. Got the call to say we'd completed about 4pm!

Thanks for the replies.

How annoying for those who had vendors keeping you waiting on the day!
I will call the estate agents and solicitors first thing on the day, and let them know we are waiting to hear from them.

Oh, this thread has made me nervous! We’re in a small chain of three with us in the middle - but our buyers solicitor has been slow as fuck throughout and I can’t imagine them sending funds first thing.

UtterlyUnimaginativeUsername-I had similar when we moved out of one rental into another. I cleaned the oven and left it spotless. Moved into new rental and it was filthy. I'd just had a new baby too, so wasn't impressed with having to clean another house.
Hopefully no repeats!

We pre-arranged ours to be for 5.30pm due to work.. which worked well for us - but previous owners were still dragging boxes out at 7.30pm while we stood there a little awkward with both sets of parents eagar to see our new home

The house was absolutely filthy too! Was a little anti-climax to getting our keys i have to say

We got ours at just gone 9am as the house was already empty with the estate agent holding the keys so as soon as they had notification of completion we were good to go.

They did say they'd never handed over keys that early before (and also handed over keys without any knowledge/proof that i was the person who had bought the house)

About 1130 for us, was pleasantly surprised!

I can't believe how cheeky/disorganised some of the vendors have been in this thread on completion day

I ended up marching into the house and flipping it, far as I was concerned they had the money, in cash, so they could get the fuck out of my house at 7pm on completion day. Arseholes.

We didn't get ours until 4 on the last move . Lunchtime is more usual though.

We were in a chain of 2. We completed at 11am but they were still pissing round at 430pm! Eventually cleared out by 6. Luckily we weren’t moving in till the next day. Was left filthy too. We had to pull up all the carpets as had fleas in them!

We sent our money to our solicitor a few days in advance and she requested our mortgage money to be with her from Nationwide the day before completion. Once she received it she sent it to the Vendor’s solicitor to be held until her say so. She then called them the next day on the morning of completion and was on the phone to me by ten past nine saying we had completed.

My sellers were to be out by 2 pm, this came and went....Eventually after much chasing by solicitors they turned up with the keys at 4.30 pm. We drove to the house and they were still in the drive packing.Clearly they had not even started until they got the keys for their property and had hired a small van to move the contents of a house. I was incensed, but backed down as they were aggressive and I was outnumbered by 5 people. I gave them until 7 pm to be out, they text at 8 pm to say they had left. Luckily I had not booked removals for that day, but it left a sour taste in my mouth, as they say you cannot argue with stupid. Good luck with your move.

the idea of going back and forth in a van hasnt worked for years, because you have to vacate your house to release the money.

we moved a long way, our movers arrived at 7am and we were gone by 10. we had pre packed - but there is no excuse not to be out early.

We got keys about 2pm. Luckily we had 2 weeks in our rental as the first couple of days was spent de-griming the place before we could actually move in. Little old lady previous owner, LOADS of bits/clutter and furniture when we went to view so didn't notice it. Fuck me it needed SO much cleaning, I was horrified.