Timings of selling and buying?

[24GinDrinkingOnceTheKidsInBed]

The market is good at the moment and we’re considering selling our property and buying DP’s dads house. However the house is very dates and would need a new kitchen and bathroom, and central heating out in (and carpet and decorating but they are minor inconveniences)

For what we would sell our house for we would pay DP’s father a sum and then have some left over to do these things, but we wouldn’t want to move in until FIL(to be) would also need to find a property before we could move in.

Before this we were first time buyers with no chain so I’m not really sure how it works this next time around. How long do chains last on average (meaning how much time can we buy ourselves to get some stuff sorted before we should move out for the new owners)?

We can’t really do anything like the heating, kitchen or bathroom before we’ve sold as we need the money to do it.

I suppose I’m just confused on how it will work out and looking for advice on how to get the ball rolling.. and to the finish line I guess!

You'd have to move out of your house on completion which would be the same day you complete on FIL's house. You can't hang around while you do work on the new place as the old house won't be yours.

Either rent somewhere short term or move in and do the work while you're there. We are doing just that right now. it's disruptive but liveable.

From offer accepted to completion is around three months on average. You don't get any money until you complete and that's the day you move out.
If you want to do work before then consider a short term personal loan perhaps, or if your partner's dad can possibly lend you the money? Or as pp says rent or just live with the chaos!

Hi op, length of sale depends on a lot of things. If you have a FTB who needs a mortgage, apparently this is taking longer at the moment, solicitors are v busy with people wanting to complete before end of June for the stamp duty savings and other things like searches in some areas are taking longer. So a usual 8-12 week process could be much longer but as a seller, you can control the completion date. A longer sale time would only benefit you though if you have the money to do the improvements before you move.

What I would do if I was you, is get some quotes, find out how long it would take to do the work and how soon they could start and work from there. As a pp said, you could get a home improvement loan maybe and make a start on some things now.

Would there be space to set up a makeshift kitchen elsewhere? I think that the kitchen refurb would be the most disruptive part. We lived in our house while our bathroom was completely redone and it wasn’t too disruptive although we did have a separate downstairs loo-would’ve been tricky without that.