Is completion day meant to be the same day as moving?

Propertyfan

Pardon my naivety but if you have a completion date agreed to move into a new home and your buyers are going to move into the home you're leaving, are the removal men supposed to come on the same day?

Can the removal be done a day or so after completion? And if it's on the same day you get the key for the new home first, right? Before you actually get the men to start putting the furniture in the truck?

MrRee_2

Completion means you empty your house and hand the keys to your buyers.

Same with your purchase .... you can, of course, move into your new home whenever you feel like it.

G_M

Completion day is the day the property changes hands and the buyers become the owners.

Whether they choose to move in the same day is up to them! They can leave it empty for a year if they want.

sulphate

Yes.

The only exception to this is if you are the first time buyer at the bottom of the chain, you can move into your new home at any time because you don't have a buyer waiting to move into yours.

If you are selling your home and buying another at the same time, you must move out of the home you are selling by a reasonable time, this is generally accepted to be 2pm-ish. Because as soon as completion is done, the house belongs to the buyers and technically you should no longer be there, but in practical terms buyers may not get the keys for another couple of hours.

Edit: of course you can move into your next house whenever you like, but you can't leave your possessions in the house that now belongs to someone else, for any length of time post-completion.

Guest101

You must be ready to leave on completion day, ie furniture in the truck, keys at EAs

Propertyfan

So completion you get the keys, the funds are transferred, you legally own your new home but you don't want to leave your furniture in your previous home! That's my (slight) concern. Ideally I want to complete as the removal company is putting my furniture in the truck. Is that the standard way of doing it?

I thought completion meant funds transferred, keys obtained, furniture put in new home.

Edited update:

Thanks for the replies.

You must be ready to leave on completion day, ie furniture in the truck, keys at EAs

of course you can move into your next house whenever you like, but you can't leave your possessions in the house that now belongs to someone else, for any length of time post-completion.

Right! All clarified. Thanks.

scottishblondie

Once you've completed on your sale the house isn't yours anymore, so you need to leave. Getting the truck loaded up first thing is the way it's generally done as you probably won't get the keys for you new house until at least midday (probably early afternoon) - you don't want to have the irate new owners waiting on the street while your truck is still being loaded!

Propertyfan

Once you've completed on your sale the house isn't yours anymore, so you need to leave. Getting the truck loaded up first thing is the way it's generally done as you probably won't get the keys for you new house until at least midday (probably early afternoon) - you don't want to have the irate new owners waiting on the street while your truck is still being loaded!

Thanks. I am getting some quotes from removal companies and they've mentioned 8am as the arrival time. That makes sense because of the time it takes - up to 2pm a previous poster mentioned - to get the funds transferred.

All makes sense. Cheers.

sulphate

That would be the ideal scenario, however you have no real control when completion will take place on the day.

Our solicitors called us at 11.30am to tell us that we had completed, but we couldn't pick the keys up til 2pm because the sellers hadn't handed the keys in yet.

In a perfect world you would load up the removal lorry in the morning, vacate your old property by midday and pick up the keys for your new house in the afternoon, then move in.

ognum

Check how much stuff you have because it can take more than a few hours to pack up a whole house!

moneyistooshorttomention

To be absolutely precise in timing...it's my understanding that you have to have your stuff removed from house you are selling by 12 noon exactly on Completion Day and Completion itself should happen at 2pm (or possibly earlier).

In the "Completion happened at 11.30am" scenario mentioned above...that could be rather interesting if the vendors were still moving their stuff out between 11.30am and 11.59am....(guess it would be a question of the removal van waiting outside till 1 minute past noon before starting to shift stuff in and at that point the new owner would be entitled to start complaining if there was anything still there if they had Completed).