How will completion day work?

[Confused506]

I’ll try and keep it brief.

We have a first time buyer, the person we are buying from is moving into a rental retirement property so it’s a very small chain.

The house we are buying is literally five mins drive away.

We can’t afford removals so are hiring a van and will have also have one car and a friends van to move our stuff. We anticipate there will be a few van loads needed. So some backwards and forwards, loading and unloading.

Will this be ok? I’m worried about timings of completion and that our buyer will be trying to move in whilst we are still moving our stuff. Or is that completely not how it is done and everything should be out in one go?

I hope this make sense.

Thank you

No sorry, you can’t do this because there is no moment when you own both properties simultaneously.

You have to complete with vacant possession, so you have to have absolutely everything out and ready to hand over they keys once you get the call that the money has transferred.

Which is also the moment you can get keys to your new place as it just became yours!

You have to get everything packed into the van/s by the agreed completion time. Normally Noon.

People fuck about and cause all sorts of shenanigans but once that money transfers, it’s their house!

Everything should be out in one go. Usually everyone loads their things into their removal vans in the morning and then once completion happens everyone gets their new keys and moves in.

You could discuss with your buyers how quickly they are intending to move in. If they are first time buyers they may not be planning to move everything in the day they buy it. If so they might give you some time to do multiple trips. But it’s not the norm because once you have the keys to your new house you don’t own your current one.

The buyer’s solicitor will strongly advise them against allowing this.

Our neighbours tried this. The buyers arrived and were very unhappy that emptying the house was still in progress. At that point it’s their house.

You absolutely cannot do this. All of your stuff needs to be out of the house by completion.

No you need to be out just after completion happens, no time to do multiple trips.

You need to be ready to leave the house by the point of completion as the property ceases to be yours at that time and your ftb expects vacant possession. You need to hire a van large enough for your house contents in one trip or find short term storage.

Our neighbours tried to do this when they moved. Tried taking stuff and unloading at the new place and coming back for more. It caused carnage. The new buyers turned up to get into the house and the old owners were still loading their stuff into a van and had completely underestimated how long it would take for the two of them to do it all themselves with a van. Honestly, it looked like they hadn't packed a single thing and were trying to both pack, load a van, unload it in their new house 10 minutes away and come back.

We felt so sorry for the new people who had arrived with their removals van and couldn't get in, and it was very clear to the whole street, that they had heaps still left to move out.

Arguments started and the old owners ended up having to unload their belongings onto the driveway so the new owners could get inside their house to unload their stuff.

As others have said, once completion has happened you need to be fully out as the house is not yours anymore. So you need to clear the house fully on the morning of completion, lock up and take your keys to the estate agent to hold until completion has occurred. You yourself, won't be able to move anything in to the new place until completion has taken place either, but its unfair of you to do this in stages and make your buyers wait to move their things into THEIR house, which it will be at that point.

That’s me told lol.

Thank you all.

We bought from people who tried this. Thought they could move a crammed 5 bed house into a Luton van and do loads from SE to West of England throughout the day. We had a 4 year old at the time who was highly cranky about the move and just needed to get in out of the rain, so our delivery guys had a word with them (and told them they would be billed for overtime fees).

They ended up unloading into the neighbour's garden and garage, and then taking it to their new place overnight/the next few days.

An efficient removals service is something you can't afford not to have unless you are an FTB or have practically nothing to move.

Once you’ve exchanged you really need to be getting your stuff out from that point onwards, into short term storage if necessary, it’s really not expensive or difficult. That ship has already sailed it sounds like

On day of completion keys should be at the agent and you’re already out of there.

My sister couldn't afford a removals company, so she rented a storage unit the month around moving in. It gave her 2 weeks to empty her stuff into the unit and leave just one small van's worth of stuff for the move on the completion day. Then 2 weeks of moving stuff back out into her new house.

We did a bit of what you want to do, but were so organised and managed to fill our cars with clothes and soft things like duvets and pillows, and our valuables and have all our boxes in the kitchen so we could load out of the back door. We did hire a man or three with the van, and they got all the furniture in the van in the morning. We completed and went to our new house and they hadn’t packed a thing.
We had to move their front room furniture into the garden and all our stuff went in the front room. The van and men went back to get our white goods and last boxes which we had put on the back patio, so the old house was pretty much clear an hour after we completed.
The new house was still full as it was just family moving them out and they honestly had not packed a thing. We had to empty a couple of boxes to give them for kitchen stuff.
it really was an horrendous experience and now I would have been on to our solicitors as it was not vacant possession or anything close. We were too young and stressed to know we could have had compensation.

So plan carefully, consider a storage unit and make sure you start packing tomorrow. It can be done if you are super organised.

Sellers trying to remove their possessions on day of completion is just really shoddy, lackadaisical and a complete nightmare for those on the receiving end of it.

Sort your shit out and make sure the place is empty on time. It’s not rocket surgery.

We moved about a month ago. Short chain, we sold to FTB and our onward purchase was a probate sale.

We’d hired packers to move us. We were completing on a Wednesday. The Sunday before they came and packed up the majority of the house. The night before we completed they came and packed all clothes. They did this as they were squeezing our move around other jobs they had on. On the morning we completed they were at ours by 8am to pack the last few little bits and load the van.

We completed by 11am on our sale and it was at absolute mad scramble to get out of the house and clean before we completed on our purchase just after 12. This was despite having pretty much been packed already. The only saving grace was that our buyers weren‘t able to get the keys to ours until after work as they were both working. We’d have been stuffed otherwise as we definitely weren’t ready to leave at the point we no longer owned our home!

I had packers in the day before and the house was cleared by 1pm the next day. Don't underestimate how long it will take you pack up a house. My house sale was the last in the chain and the money came through around 1pm and my buyers were demanding keys from the agent.

We weren’t intending not to have everything packed by the day of the move! Half of our belongings are already in boxes.and I have weeks to go.
I was only wondering how it worked.
My friend is now going to store a lot of our boxes in her garage a few days before. Problem solved.

The issue is that the property has to be physically empty at time of completion. If your boxes are still on the property then you are in breach of that. If you have all your boxes stacked up on the pavement ready to load then that would be ok.

@Confused506 Aw love you, I think you can tell from the responses, people have had some very stressful moves. It will be equally stressful for yourselves, the very act of having all your worldly possessions in a van and then waiting outside your new home for the money to exchange. Things do go awry, dont under estimate the time needed for getting everything out and the house needs to be respectfully clean on leaving. Usually aim the house to be empy and clean by noon. Its bloody hard work and you will feel stressed. Dont forget even a small chain, money doesnt start to transfer until usually 1pm so depending where you are on the chain you might not get in ur home til 4pm, thats if it goes smooth. Ive known people where the time ran out for money to be exchanged and they had to get a travel lodge for the night whilst all their stuff was in the van overnight. The stress is off the scale, this is why you dont want added agro from from your buyers. Plus they can seek compensation from you if you have no left within enough time or left loads of rubbish in the property. All the best.

Worth checking with the solicitor if your buyers are actually moving in that day as if not, it would remove that pressure to be out on the dot (which is the accepted norm).

The last two times we moved, we moved into properties we already owned and as we still owned the existing properties (for a couple of days), there was no-one chomping at the bit to move straight in.
More importantly, on the day of completion we hung around doing a final clean but in both cases the buyers were not actually moving in that day and the keys were handed over to the EA.
We later found out from our old neighbours that in one house, the new owner did not move in for over a week and in the other, they had a delivery of a new kitchen the next day but again, did not move in straight away.
In neither case did the new owner show up on completion day.