Selling in England and buying in Scotland

[soundsys]

Has anyone done it without going into rented in between? Just about to make the move back home (Glasgow) from down South and keen to hear from anyone who has done it!

Our (Scottish) conveyancer seems to thinks it's doable but I'm nervous!

The risk is that an English house sale contract might fall through whereas you’ll be tied in to a Scottish house purchase. The only advice is stating the obvious - to get a strong buyer who has finances sorted and isn’t in a long chain. Your EA should be ultra-aware and double-check buyers for you.

From my own experience and having friends who’ve made the transaction, it does usually work out but it’s advisable to have a plan B just in case.

The stress of it all is more than balanced by the wonderful feeling of being back in Scotland again!

You might find buying a new build and part exing your current one solves the problem?

Thank you, that's sort of what I'm worried about! I guess will wait until we get offers and see what the prospective buyers are like and make a call. Nerve wracking but as you say will be worth it!

I don’t think this is still the case. Apart from my last house move in Scotland where we specifically stated that our buyer had to sign the missives by a particular date, they have all been signed either the morning of the move or the day before. Prior to that you are not tied in. I understand this is common now in Scotland so I don’t think there is as much difference anymore?

This is no longer the case
Missives in Scotland will not be concluded until you exchange in England
The days when purchase Missives are concluded before sale Missives are long gone

This

This is no longer the case
Missives in Scotland will not be concluded until you exchange in England
The days when purchase Missives are concluded before sale Missives are long gone

Oh amazing, thank you for clarifying! I think this is what I was struggling to get my head round!

Missives are now concluded the day before or sometimes the day of the key handover. Nothing to worry about!

While that can be the case ,it is not the norm,and is very short of ideal
and

We won’t accept an offer from someone who hasn’t sold in England due to the time it can take. Yes, missives can and now often are signed late but the English system still does take months. It may work if it’s just one buyer and one seller but if you’ve got multiples, the English system will hold things up.

Legally it's basically the same, the differences are mostly cultural, but it's exactly the same in sense that until exchange it's all up in the air.

Agree
The differences just aren’t there anymore
It can take months here too if there is a chain
The only way to avoid this is to take an offer from someone who doesn’t need to sell , even if the offer is lower
But IME most people don’t do that

I did it last year. It was stressful but all worked out in the end.

I probably offered a little more than I needed to on the house in Scotland to encourage the buyer to take the risk with us. They had also done the move home a few years earlier so we're fairly understanding.

The biggest issues were the Scottish solicitors pushing for a confirmed date of entry early in the process but in England, the completion date is set late on. I put both my solicitors in touch with each other but at one stage, I was getting almost daily requests for updates.

And the solicitors said we couldn't complete on both in the one day due to the risk of a delay in the funds being transferred from my English solicitor to the Scottish solicitors and then onwards to our vendor. This meant we were homeless for a night but it was ok. The removal van had to break the journey anyway so we packed up down south then headed north. Spent the night with family then the van arrived just around the same time as we got the keys the following morning.