How do you move to another area (far away)?

[lobsteroll]

We're planning to move to an area about 5 hours away from where we currently live.

I know the property market is so hot right now, with houses being sold within a matter of days.

Are Virtual viewings ever a good substitute for the real thing? If you have someone local to the area that you trust, did you let them view on your behalf?

I'm happy to spend our weekends travelling up to do viewings but appreciate that some houses will come up in between weekends. Is it just a case of luck?

Luckily we know the area itself very well and what certain roads are like etc. so that does help.

Would love to hear about other people's experiences and if you have any tips on making the process more manageable.

Rent - I can't imagine doing frequent 10 hour round trips to view houses and no amount of virtual viewings or a trusted friend can give you the confidence of the whole plot / garden / position / neighbours etc.

Should have added that we rented - also knew the area and had in my mind which roads I would consider but nothing was coming up so we decided to rent. During the time we rented, we realised the roads we'd originally wanted weren't actually that desirable for us. It would have been an expensive mistake to have jumped in with a purchase without living in the area for a while and getting a feeling for it.

Depends on how difficult it will be to get what you need and how flexible you are

You can just take a couple of days leave , view all possibilities and take the best at the end

Agree, rent or short-stay apartment while you find the right place. We spent over a year renting to get a good feel for the area, making sure we narrowed our search to areas that best suited. It's not something to rush!

Another one saying rent. We moved 2.5 hours away and spent so many weekends viewing too many houses in a day. Just felt so pressured to find something. Made the decision to sell and rent for a year and I'd really recommend doing that

When we did this last year, we essentially viewed every house in budget in the area we wanted that met our criteria in one day, and made an offer on our favourite - I think we viewed 7 or 8 properties. We were in the lucky position that we probably would have been quite happy making offers on at least 3 of the properties after viewing.

That was at a time last summer when lots of properties were coming on the market on an almost daily basis though - I don't know how realistic that would be as a plan in the current market as haven't been following as closely.

We travelled down from Scotland for two days. We viewed loads of houses and really liked one. Our offer was accepted and we could move when we had planned to.

We have really relocated 3.5hr from where we used to live, our weekends were spent viewing suitable properties, it worked out well for us, we have been in our new home 3mths, best move ever, really pleased we did it.

When my parents did this, twice, one parent went down for a few days at a time and did the viewings. The other parent stayed home with us and never saw the houses until we moved.

We’re currently weighing up a similar move, vs a closer (more expensive) one. We’re considering the closer one where we’ll get less house for our money; the ease of choosing the house isn’t the reason but it certainly swayed our thinking!

I judtctook the day off work and travelled up to view as many as possible and made a decision that night. I'd never normally advise buying after just one viewing but that's the market at the moment.

Thanks everyone, you're right, renting would be very sensible. The area we are moving to doesn't really have much at all in the rental market, plus we have dogs so I don't think we'd be the most desirable tenants 🤣 even though they are well behaved.

We will definitely consider it and to be honest; timing of the move may be more dependent on schools place becoming available. At the moment we're on the waiting lists but want to take up the places as soon as they are there. So if we have to rent for a while it would be no bad thing. And like someone mentioned, it might help us to decide where we actually want to be.

We rented when we did this. We had 3 dogs, one of which was a giant breed. I found ringing letting agents was the way forward, one worked hard to find us somewhere.

Everyone suggesting rent which is exactly what we're trying to do right now but no letting agents are willing to offer tenancy without viewing. We're trecking it down to visit. Only the once so far but we'll need to do it again to get anywhere.

We want to move 4 hours away.. I've been keeping an eye on the market for some properties we like enough to visit and found one so we jumped in the car at 5am one weekend to view it at 9am and then back again at 10am as DH had to be at work the same afternoon. Crazy. Absolutely but it had to be done. Although we had also had a virtual viewing the day before, it's simply not enough. You can't get a feel for the place, see around nooks and crannies, hear squeaks or check for broken tiles etc. You need to view in person to put your mind at ease.

Anyway, we came home.. put an offer in today. Someone else offered £11k more.

We can't keep going up and down the motorway so yes, either go up for a week and view a handful of properties and hope something comes up that you like enough to make an offer on, or go up and rent. At least you'll be on the doorstep because currently, once a house gets put online it's sold, in my experience over the last 2 days!

@GoinSouth that's my concern too. Properties are coming on and off the market in a day and people offering above asking - it's crazy.

I'm hoping that after the stamp duty holiday ends things may settle down a bit (please!!)