Looming lockdown limbo support thread

[PointyMcguire]

Thought we could do with a thread to rant, laugh, drink copious amounts of gin and whatever else it takes to get us through the madness of whatever new curveballs covid throws into the mix as we try to move house.

We’ve exchanged on our old house and are due to complete on Friday 13th (I was just asking for bad luck right?!) but we’re actually moving out next Friday and into a family owned holiday home for a month. We were hoping to exchange on the new house in mid November and complete before Christmas but god only knows how likely that is now. I’m relatively hopeful we’ll still be able to move during lockdown, but am pretty stressed about the potential impact another lockdown might have on the chain and how much time everything takes.

Anyone else in the same boat?

Keeping fingers firmly crossed for all those who are meant to be exchanging/completing next week, really hoping everything goes to plan for everyone.

I’ve just realised our packers are meant to be coming in on Thursday to start boxing everything up ahead of us moving on Friday, I do hope they’re still going to be able to come

Looks like house moves are still a go! 🥳

Oh, that is good news hopefully 🙏🏼

Can I join.

Everything has gone too well so far with our
Sale and purchase... hoping our buyers survey still goes ahead, next Thursday. And hoping our mortgage survey is all okay for Tuesday, gutting we paid a 5k deposit for our new build two days ago. Non refundable if we don't go ahead so hope that means any delays and the developer therefore pulls out we are covered!! Our buyers have taken 3 years to sell there property and could avoid a mortgage due to down sizing so hoping they pull out all the stops to keep there sale.

Although once we have our mortgage offer we are hoping to complete and move in with family for Christmas. Being homeless for Christmas has never felt so good!!

Am I too optimistic??

Depends on the chain below really. When did you sell? Has your buyer got their mortgage offer & has their buyer got theirs? We’ve found the mortgage process the slowest bit all the way along the chain. Ours took 7 weeks. The top of the chain 8 weeks. We found searches came back really quickly but that’s not the cases for everyone. Some areas of the country are taking over a month..

We sold in late August & are hoping to be in mid November. And it’s not been particularly complicated.. I think solicitors are saying 12 weeks is average at the mo for straightforward chains.

We're very early on in process just sold our house and memo of sale done, solicitors appointed, our house we've moved out of into another we bought so very little left and just bits and pieces to do. Buyer needs to do survey, searches etc and have sold to one other. Hoping things will carry on moving.

We were supposed to exchange last Friday. It's now due to be tomorrow.
I'm quite positive it will still go ahead as it should...

It might be worth asking to exchange and complete on the same day? We just exchanged one day and completed the next, and it took a lot of the anxiety out of things

We looked into exchange and completion on the same day but decided against it for various reasons. We have a Covid clause written into our contracts, which I think is more of a 'gentleman's agreement' (I hate that term) than legally binding but should protect the whole chain from financial penalties if anyone has to isolate. I know our seller is planning to move out the week before we move in so there shouldn't be any real impact there but we have two in the chain below us too. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly for all of us!

Yeah I think I’d find the stress of exchanging and completing on the same day too much to bear. Also both us and our sellers are relocating quite a distance so not sure it’d even be possible to aim for doing both on the same day. I can totally understand the rationale for doing it in the current climate but I just worry so much could go wrong.

From Robert Jenrick, this sounds encouraging!

Sorry, I haven’t rtft.. I’m a bit stressed about it all.

Do searches come back during lockdown? Did they last time? We have one search left to come back and then we can complete - everything is in place and the house is already empty - the sellers have already relocated for work.

Yes, searches will come back, people were still working in local authorities during the last lockdown. Lots of them are coming back much more slowly though.

It was the searches that held up our contracts- everything else moved fairly quickly

We have sold (well, found a buyer and things seem to be progressing) but we have been unable to find anywhere to buy.
No one will put their house on the market now, will they? Combination of time of year and lockdown will put the brakes on completely.

Our buyers are developers and they are going to develop the site as they also own a neighbouring property; they have said they will rent the house back to us for six months whilst they sort out planning permission. I hope now that this will be long enough for us to find somewhere else.

I hate all of this uncertainty.

@hairycabbage Keeping all fingers crossed that your packers can continue! I know what you mean. Two DC here too, and it's just the amount of time it'll take to get everything packed up if we have to do it ourselves that worries me, and how we'll cram it all in!

@PointyMcguire Hope you get good news about your packers too.

We also thought about same day exchange and completion, but decided it was too risky - and especially with a move to another UK nation involved. Luckily it's only a small chain (our buyers, us, our vendors, then the house they're moving into, whose owners are moving into rented), but it's still a worry.

Is anyone else a bit jittery about lockdown and food stocks? I'm not a stockpiler by any means, but when we went into the first lockdown we had a freezer that was mostly full, quite a bit in the cupboards etc (as per usual), so if I hadn't managed to go to the shops/get a delivery for a week or so we probably could have survived fine. As we were hoping to move this coming week, our freezer is empty, and the cupboards are deliberately really low. I have a lot of bread flour (I tend to bulk buy it, and misjudged it so haven't got through it all yet handily), but everything else is really low and I'm a bit wibbly...

We always managed to get some food without stockpiling last time though it was supermarket surprise meal, basically what you could find. What we had run out in our local was soap, handgel and toilet roll though had shower gel which we could use for soap and a supermarket further away normally had toilet roll but had to be careful to always have one lot in. Takeaways are also staying open if all else fails.

[quote musicalmrs]@hairycabbage Keeping all fingers crossed that your packers can continue! I know what you mean. Two DC here too, and it's just the amount of time it'll take to get everything packed up if we have to do it ourselves that worries me, and how we'll cram it all in!

@PointyMcguire Hope you get good news about your packers too.

We also thought about same day exchange and completion, but decided it was too risky - and especially with a move to another UK nation involved. Luckily it's only a small chain (our buyers, us, our vendors, then the house they're moving into, whose owners are moving into rented), but it's still a worry.

Is anyone else a bit jittery about lockdown and food stocks? I'm not a stockpiler by any means, but when we went into the first lockdown we had a freezer that was mostly full, quite a bit in the cupboards etc (as per usual), so if I hadn't managed to go to the shops/get a delivery for a week or so we probably could have survived fine. As we were hoping to move this coming week, our freezer is empty, and the cupboards are deliberately really low. I have a lot of bread flour (I tend to bulk buy it, and misjudged it so haven't got through it all yet handily), but everything else is really low and I'm a bit wibbly...[/quote]
I know what you mean about food. I always have a good stock of tins, packets and freezer stuff. I don’t like the fact we’ve run our stocks down so low.

We’ve got packers booked too and hoping they’ll still do it. The guy seems pretty relaxed at our removals place so I’m hoping he’ll do it.

Sorry just catching up on the thread after a day of many trip runs.

@Werk we put our house on the market during the last lockdown and did video viewings until restrictions were lifted. It was a bit of a headache when it came to viewings as we had to leave the house each time, but other than that it wasn’t too much bother.

@ThunderSkies yeah you should still get the searches back. From what we can gather most local authorities have been WFH for a while which means it’s taking a while longer but shouldn’t stop completely.

@musicalmrs yep also a little bit nervous re: food, but I was able to book a food shop for where we’re staying so hoping it won’t be too bad.

I've just accepted an offer on my house. Now the pressure is on to find something and quick.

Ah congrats @lboogy! Are you able to view anything before the lockdown kicks in?

@PointyMcguire I did view 4 houses. But I don't feel I've had the time to properly look. I hoping I can view a few things between Monday and Wednesday

Yay today seems to be throwing up spanners all over the place. Our mortgage valuation that was due to take place today has been converted from desktop to physical viewing with the earliest date December 2nd. Everyone including the company booking it is in agreement this feels too late given where we are in the process so they’re trying to move us up the queue.

The company that manages the lettings for the family owned holiday cottage we were due to be moving into on Friday have sent a blanket email cancelling our booking. DH is confident it’ll be fine but we can’t get hold of the office to explain it’s literally the only place we can stay and by cancelling we’re literally homeless. Worst case we already have the keys, but feel sick with worry right now

On the plus side our boiler has been serviced for our buyers and our packers are still booked for Thursday.

We are just waiting.. the only thing left in our chain is people we are buying offs mortgage offer. Valuation was on Friday. So I’m just nervously waiting 😬 Started packing today & selling a few bits not going with us but I bloody hate knowing it could all still fall through if we were really unlucky.. it’s exhausting. I cannot wait to not think about it anymore 😫