I'm buying my buyers home, i.e. 'swapping' and we live in close proximity. WWYD about practicalities of moving.

[Wishitwasstraightforward]

Bizarrely I am buying the house belonging to the person whom is buying my house. So al being well, hiccups aside I'm downsizing and she is upsizing.

The houses are also on the same street, less than 100m door to door.

I don't know her well, only to say hello to. We've both lived in current homes for over a decade. She seems a nice reasonable sensible person, I'd like to think that in the same....

I'm wondering how the practicalities of moving could work. I guess the "proper" way would be to use a removal firm or hire a v v big van and load up, wait until completion, drive 100 metres, unload. Using a removal firm each feels like overkill to me though, and I need to keep my costs down. The removal company fees won't be much cheaper than for a regular move as I'll still need them all day, so it's just a bit cheaper based on zero mileage.

I know that the arrangements will depend on how my buyer / seller wants to do things and our solicitors may need to offer advice etc.. However in the meantime I'm hoping Mumsnet's collective wisdom might be able to offer some advice or suggestions?

I'd just ask her if she'd thought how she'd like to move.
But moving day is usually pretty stressful so I'd not be keen to share removal companies...

Do either or both of the houses have garages?

could you propose that you both fully empty your garages and after exchange you both start moving your stuff into your soon to be new garage?
you’ll both have had to sort out house insurance for your new homes by that point.

that way you could hopefully manage with just loading up cars on the day and some help each to move sofas.
if you were my neighbour and I lived in between you both, I’d happily get involved in a neighbour chain of passing things up the street 😄 so you could ask people

I’m not sure that the insurance between exchange and completion covers contents, as opposed to just the fabric of the building. Otherwise the seller could claim for à burglary on the buyer insurance in that period.

You could do the garage thing anyway, but both at risk.

Not exactly the same but DS recently part exchanged to a new build and the builder gave him a formal licence to occupy his old house for a week so that he could move in over a few days. His insurer provided cover on both homes and contents for the handover period ( so similar to the option of moving contents between garages).

Oh crikey I agree! I can see now that my OP made it sound like that was a consideration but that's not what I meant.

I'm thinking I can manage without using professional movers by roping some friends of mine plus some of DS' friends too (they are 18 and hopefully will help in return for pizza and beers). So I don't think I need to use a removal firm, however if the house needs to be empty by midday I guess I might have no choice as otherwise i will have nowhere to put things during that limbo phase.

My parents did this. Both houses ordered a van and filled it the day before. Then on the day, what was left got moved by friends and neighbours. Then the vans were emptied after.

The house that I am leaving has a garage. However the house that I'm moving to, and which my buyer is moving from does not have a garage.

I have several friends on the street with covered driveways so maybe I could move everything out of my house for midday and leave it under their covered drives.

Definitely use professional movers with a packing service - there is far more work than you realise and things are less likely to get broken.

Have you thought about selling her some of your furniture if you are downsizing?

My last buyer bought most of my furniture and I basically moved just a few sentimental pieces of furniture and my personal possessions.