If you are both chain free

[Parisah]

And you could stay in your house and redecorate the new place (carpets, paint through), would you? Condition of new house is pretty liveable already.

We have two DDs, 2.5 years and 4 months - so worth keeping older decor since they'll probably draw on walls/spill stuff on carpets...

Just asking since it's the only time probably for years/ever the house will be empty

Yes

Definitely. I couldn’t live in a tired place that isn’t to my taste. You could choose finishes that are more child-proof like wipeable paint or flooring that isn’t carpet + add washable rugs.

Yes that's how any other country I have lived in operates. I had a couple of months before moving last time to redecorate, way easier to do when the house is empty.

Depends on how much it would cost you. Are you currently renting? Can you afford a month where you pay rent on old place plus mortgage on the new house, as well as fund decoration etc?

We can stay in our current house as we are not selling. It will be about 7/8k in all I guess, just about affordable

We did this by doing all the work and decoration after exchange, but before completion: rewire, replaster, repaint.

Oh gosh yes, it's so much easier to decorate without all your stuff in it and you living around it. Only drawback is making bigger decisions eg kitchen, moving walls, etc, on how you'd live in it, as you won't know. If it's just decorating I'd definitely do it before moving in.

Yes but the first thing I'd do is insulate and board out the loft if it's not already done - messy job but definitely DIY, but the sort of job you don't want to do once you have carpets down

Oh I would definitely do this. Then you can do things properly and all at once rather than trying to work round it. (And completely agree about the loft boarding and insulation).

I think it depends on what you are planning.

We were in the same situation and were going to redecorate before we moved to the new house, but tbh (because I think we'd waited so long during lockdown) we just wanted to get in and enjoy the new house. And now we're in it, I realise the things I thought I wanted to change might not need changing and there are other ideas that might work better.

What we did do though is leave some furniture in the old house and some of the 'cupboard of doom' things also so we have less crap in the new house so less stuff to move around when we do decorate.

(That's a long-winded way of saying sometimes you have to live in a house for a bit to figure out what really works).

positivelynegative

We did this by doing all the work and decoration after exchange, but before completion: rewire, replaster, repaint

Did your solicitors know you were doing this? Because you were decorating someone else's property at the time.

Exchanging contracts makes the agreement legal, but doesn't change ownership. Either party could still pull out (but there would be penalties imposed).

Ownership only changes at the point of completion.

Did your solicitors know you were doing this? of course

We had it all written into the contract. 6 month exchange to completion window with our option to reduce the time, we took on certain bills and did the garden, they had a penalty of the value of the house as a break clause. Other clauses covered death of the vendor, and various other risks. We then did lots of work.

Their solicitor was having a nervous breakdown, but the vendor wanted us to have it, and we needed to do work and sell our house! (That was our risk as the bridging loan would have cost a small fortune)

You can have a contract written to cover anything you want, it’s a contract not the Ten Commandments.

Yes, we're doing that right now but beware of second property stamp duty. We have had to pay nearly £6k in SD but we'll get it back in a few weeks when our sale goes through. It's taken a big whack out of our renovation budget...