What happens if I can't empty house by completion day?

[competion]

What happens if there are still things in the house when the new owner arrives? Going as fast as I can but unlikely to be done by tomorrow...

If every property is sold empty, where do people live during the sale
process?

the whole process takes about 2 weeks from offer accepted to completion.
you just move to your new home and have 2 mortgages or a bridging loan to cover any overlap.

Can I ask where this speedy land is?

Is it the US or Canada? I have seen a few a Property Brothers episodes and they always seem to be legally committed to the new house before they sell their old one. They use bridging finance..

All quiet for now...

I will update later as the chaos ensues

Although I'm sure it'll be fine in the end, often is for CFers!

@competion is she even out of her pit yet????

No, the house is half packed in boxes as of this morning and I'm not sure if they have any vans as it stands to even start packing in to.

For those asking where my goodwill is, I'm not cancelling my plans with my children today to step into that chaos (and take them into a stupidly unnecessarily chaotic situation!)

For those asking, there are no 'extenuating circumstances' eg. No one has just died and no one is ill, just bad habits and personalities.

The new house is only a 5 minute drive so perhaps they're planning multiple back and fourths, but as others have said that surely won't work unless they empty their place onto the street first...?

Yes OP. Her lack of planning and current crisis are not your lack of planning or current crisis. My sister gets bailed out time and time again and never learns. I used to think we should always help others when they need it but I realised I would do that to the point I am exhausted with nothing left for me or what matters to me. Recent events showed me that when I do need others there are few that are willing or able to support me like I have them. So now I am much more circumspect about what I do for others. Good on you for not charging in on your white horse. You did your move without her help. So now she can do the same.

The text from her last night was a manipulative attempt to get your help is my guess.

The last time I moved, I started packing the day my house went up for sale. I packed non essential stuff like ornaments, pictures, crockery, bedding, soft furnishings etc. I just left minimal stuff to last until moving day.

By the time the removals came in, everything was marked in boxes, they just left me a box of cleaning stuff for the bathroom and the vacuum cleaner, oh, and the cat and his carrier, rest of the house was totally empty and clean.

My DB and SIL however, still packing when their buyers turned up and had to borrow boxes from them to finish packing up the kitchen stuff. Absolute idiots!

Yeah that won’t work, as they will have sold their house before they get the keys to their new house. Now usually it wouldn’t matter if you’re still in the house cleaning in that period, but multiple trips back and forth in a small van, emptying a house won’t work really because the new people will be turning up and wanting to move their stuff in. In both of our moved our removals have been at the new house before we’ve even got the keys, and often began unloading to the new garden to get rolling. So this system of your sisters will probably not work 😬

And I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t be helping either. Whenever I’ve moved house rented or bought I have organised help before hand if I need it. It’s really poor form to do nothing and then expect people to drop everything to help you. I absolutely wouldn’t do it. She deserves this mess quite frankly, she’s been incredibly naive. And there’s two of them in this mess!! I can’t believe neither one of them thought this was a bad idea 🙈

There are some people as thick as mince who are really clueless as to what they need to do and when. Staggering that after completion some twit calls to ask when the new owners want them out...

Of course there are also people who think the world revolves around them and they own 'needs'. People who are so entitled they dont see anything from anyone elses viewpoint.

Last month we went to the US. I got on the plane to discover that someone was in my seat because they wanted to sit near their family and 'I wouldnt mind would I'!!

She just wouldnt move and then started crying - wtf! The cabin crew fell for her tears and offered me a mini bottle of champagne if I moved. I said no. The CF was clearly too mean and stingy to reserve a seat and perhaps she uses this sort of behaviour to get her own way.

We saw a house many many years ago which was ideal bar the fact that there were two elderly people who were clueless as to what they needed to do. The women kept quoting her daughter as the font of all knowledge. It needed compeletely redecoration, carpets etc and although we loved the house I just KNEW they would be trouble and potentially would leave their manky stuff. I spoke to the EA and he said he had spelt out to them what they needed to do and by when once the house was sold but I had a creeping dread as to what they would do so we didnt offer.

You don't have to, ive sold a property and had to wait due to my purchase not being available until 2 weeks later...you have to have a lot of trust in your onward move owners!!!!

Yes I can’t see how it would work. Completion works up the chain so technically you lose access to your old house before you gain access to the new house.

The only way it could work is if (at least) one of her buyers and sellers are moving long distance. Our last move was a many hour drive so we dropped our keys off with the estate agent at just after 10am and didn’t pick the new keys up until after mid afternoon. I think that completions went through at about 10:30am and 11am. So our buyers could have (and probably were - they only lived round the corner and we saw them dropping plants off as we drove off) been in for 10:35am and our sellers didn’t need to be out until about 3pm.

On the other hand - what happens if your sister turns out to be effectively buying from herself? She turns up at 12 with load no 1 ready to drop off and discovers that her sellers have just started to think about packing……

No, it won’t work doing little trips 5 mins up the road.

You think it will be simple and quick but it never i.s. We’ve done it multiple times moving between rentals when we didn’t have the money for removals (where we had a few days overlap to move so we weren’t putting anyone out).

It takes fucking forever doing it that way, even if you are extremely organised.

I feel really sorry for the people buying her house. They are in for a stressful day.

Yup 5mins trips won’t work as they won’t own 2 houses at the same time 😂 I knew someone that the estate agent wrote into the contract he had to be out before 9am and cleaned, so had to move into a hotel the night before as I think they thought he would be ready in time!

13 years to the week we moved in, it snowed (a lot) our removal man turned up our sellers did not (and they had booked!). They managed to get a van amd were also only moving a 5 minute walk away (to a thankfully empty bungalow as they had moved into retirement flat before) Our van took beyond completion time to load (and arrived on time it was just icy/cold/slippy) and finished at 4 rather than 2. I told our solicitors and our buyer was fine (she was renting moved in later). Our sellers finally got out at 9pm. They left wine and chocolates and split the cost of storing our stuff overnight (they offered). It was incredibly stressful but the weather was to blame.

thanks for clarifying. How unfair on the new owner then. I have a 2-bed flat, with no garage and hardly any storage. If the old owner had left his rubbish behind, there would have been no place to put my stuff in.

To everyone assuming I am a man, I do wonder what brough that up. I am a woman and have been since birth, well over 5 decades ago. Very funny comments on this thread

This was ten years ago in Australia when rentals were cheap and plentiful. This woman had no excuse to be occupying a house she didn’t own and wasn’t paying rent for. She was just trying it on to save rent money.

The people I bought from were like this, the reason they gave was because they were only moving round the corner, so it wouldn't take as long! They had packed nothing and I was fuming.

I wonder if a venn diagram would show people who leave packing to past the last minute also have nice furniture? I suspect not.

So unless it's some very very expensive piece of art or antique that I could sell to offset my costs and anger then I'd rather an empty house when I move in.

Sounds very similar to the Swedish system. From deciding to move to everything being done and dusted took around 6 weeks, including 2 weeks emptying and cleaning the old house.

My last move was a mile away, so I did just use cars and little trips back and forth. It took 2 days. And I had decluttered first.

Difference was I did own both houses, I wasnt moving every last item and I wasn't selling the other house.
No one but me was affected by my tardiness. I did get super frustrated with my partner who took a load of stuff up, then unloaded but instead of coming back for more, cleaned the windows. Ffs we have never since we moved in cleaned the windows. He also got into long conversations with the neighbours inbetween trips.

But for proper buying and selling in the usual way, I've been ready and packed into moving vans by 10/10.30.
Your sisters buyers are gonna be mad.

Shamelessly place marking