Moving to new house in same road - help

[klmr14]

Hi all. We are hoping to buy the house directly opposite ours. We were wondering about moving logistics. Has anyone ever moved in the same road before? Is there an easy way to do it?

We won't get three lorries in our country lane (one for us moving out, one for neighbours moving out and one for our buyers moving in) . We were thinking about asking our buyers to let us use the garage to store our stuff for a few hours after completion and then carry it over the road to save on the big vehicles.

Anyone done something like this before? The simplest thing is to carry sofas straight out of ours and into the new house, but with a chain on the purchase, I'm not sure how this would work. Thanks

I've done it, moved less than 200 yards away so we carried everything over

We moved over the road too and just carried everything over, the way the road is we'd have carried stuff almost as far to load it into a van so no point!

I've seen it down, the key was tone super organised and packed up with lots of trolleys and friends/paid people to shift it. They moved it all in an hour 100m with over 20 people helping

We did it, carried and wheeled things up the road. Trailer for heavier things! Hard going but free!!

Yes we did it, about 100m away and it was a right pain, it was just far enough to seem ridiculous to put things in the car and double handle everything, but just far enough that you felt it was a waste of time wandering down the street. So you never felt like things were efficient!
We also had issues with one or two places with change of address, i think the system was set up to assume if you moved house your post code would change, so it didn't actually go through properly.
When we moved out of the second place (rented) it was a pain because we moved about 500m up the hill, and the owners (who were moving in) seemed to think they could move in the weekend before our contact ended as their contract was ending the same day as ours. We weren't getting the new place until the Monday. Then they started asking if they could move stuff into the dining room that weekend but we had so much of our item stuff to do.
In the end we let them put whatever they liked in the garden and the shed as that wouldn't affect us. But my point is be careful how you ask, make sure you make it clear you're asking as a favour rather then that they should accept because it's a reasonable request.
The current place we actually bought, the previous owners wanted to leave the stuff in the garage as they were going to be away during completion week (it we full of building materials and junk as the house was rented out) anyway about 6 weeks later we started complaining and it must have been 3 months in all before they managed to clear it out. Then they handed over a couple of bunches of house keys along with the garage key!

I’ve moved next door, was farking brilliant. I’ve vowed never to move house again it was so easy. Took a panel out of the garden fence so could be moving via both the front and back doors at same time.

Get friends and family in to help, don’t pay movers! Why on earth would you have a lorry to move across the road?!

Although yes, I do agree the lasting effects of changing address got irritating as just the number changed. Lots of companies didn’t notice, and mortgage provider when we remortgaged couldn’t cope that last time we lived at 23 but were applying for mortgage at 25, and this time we live at 25 and are remortgaging 25. So 23 no longer in the equation at all.

My cousin once did this by hiring a big van. I think they had vacant possession though, knew the sellers well and had agreement from them that they could start moving things in early though.

Stacking things up in the garage is a good idea but buyers will probably have their own bikes, tools etc that they need to put somewhere.

If you know your sellers you will probably have more luck asking for concessions from them than from your buyers.

Several years ago we moved to the adjacent road - fractionally too far to carry things - so we used a smallish van rather than a giant removals lorry and did it in lots of short stages throughout the day, with the van going back and forth. If you really are bang opposite though then there can’t really be any need for a removals lorry? That’s unless you live very rurally and opposite is actually half a mile away at the other end of a large field?

We've done it, but it was rented so it didn't all have to be done on the same day. We did it in car loads, literally filling the car and driving the few yards to the new house.

Did the same moving a few streets away too.

I built a house in my garden. It was easier because obviously the new house was vacant possession so I started moving boxes down the week before. Friends (4 guys 2 women) moved everything I couldn't do on my own one Saturday in about 2 hours - I cooked supper for them a couple of days later and provided all the wine.

Even though it was in the garden, for most of the boxes, bags and stuff, I loaded my car at one door and unloaded at the other. It saved a huge amount of time as I cold move 10 or so boxes at once rather than one at a time.

catkin I think even over the road might be worth getting a van at least. It's like using a wheelbarrow in the garden or a shopping basket in a supermarket - using one quickly becomes much more efficient than taking individual items/ boxes.

We moved to a house that was at the end of the garden of our rented house. We used sack carts to move all the boxes to the end of the garden, staged everything there, and then shuttled to the front garden of new house.
With a few friends helping out, it all went very smoothly. If I did it again, I think I'd hire a self storage unit for a couple of months so we could move the maximum amount to there ahead of time, and have less to do on the day - and to free up space in the garage etc to give us more room to sort things from

I see your problem, it’s not the physical moving of your stuff it’s where to put your stuff before the people you are buying from move out.
Normally everyone has their things in a van and everyone moves everything all at once.
But in your case you don’t have the van to put it all in.
It seems silly to hire a van or to take it all off to a storage unit and back.

Could you talk to the people you are buying from? Might they have a garage you could put stuff in?

Great to hear so many of you have done the same.

I think it's a good idea to talk to the neighbours - we totally understand that most solicitors will probably advise clients to not allow us in early or to leave our stuff in garage. But if we have a van outside, it would be no more than 4 metres to the next house.

we were going to use movers but I think you all might have persuaded me to just beg friends and maybe get a local manwithvan to come help, without van.

But it's just this issue of how we move out and then in - where do we go in the interim as we've never sold and bought on the same day before.

Oh and thank you all for your thoughts so far

The people we bought from did this. We agreed to them taking the stuff over before we moved in, ie we delayed moving in for a few hours.

Hi OP - how did it go in the end?

Jumping in on this - I came to this page as we are facing a similar move. We will be moving a distance of 150 metres or so on our road of terraced houses and are just contemplating what we would do.

Whilst we would mostly be ok with boxes for smaller items we have one or two really heavy things like a piano and wardrobes to go. We dont have garages so no temporary area of storage and it would take as long to load onto a van as taking it to the new house. I can foresee two vans in the road and us caught in the middle!

Thats not to mention worries about the trasfer of funds down the chain!