Moving long distance

saajan_12

hayabslee0 wrote: »

Hi all - first timer here...be gentle :-)

In the New Year, we're putting our house up for sale and are planning on moving from Essex to Yorkshire. We know where we want to live, have found a village and school for the kids, etc.

However, we have two concerns:

1) On a good day, it can take 4 hours to get to York from here. Therefore when the time comes for us to complete, what happens with the Estate Agent at the other end staying open for us to collect the keys?- unlikely they'll stay open much longer, if it's a small indep company an agent might be willing to arrange something. Alternatively, you can
- pack and drive up the night before/very early
- drive up and keep things in storage / stay in hotel, collecting keys the next morning
- have one of you go to Yorkshire early with essential belongings to collect keys, check house, start cleaning, coordinate unloading of removals van when it arrives. The other stays in Essex to pack, load van, clean house (atleast clear the rubbish from packing), and give keys to EA and then drive up later.

2) Planning in advance, we're thinking of either my wife of myself driving to York early on the day of exchange -
completion is when you actually get the house so we're ready to get the keys, taking a kettle, etc ready for the other one to meet there once ready. However, we read horror stories online about how sales can fall through at the last moment. Therefore, we worried that one of us might drive to York, only for the sale to fall through. - as long as you have a gap between exchange (sale agreed) and completion (move date), then it's very unlikely to fall through in between and if it does then you can claim costs e.g. the unnecessary journey, removals etc from the party that breached the contract to sell.

Just split between Essex and Yorkshire jobs. This is the reason for a gap between exchange and completion, so you know it's going to happen ahead of time and can avoid (or be compensated for) wasted removals / journeys etc.

hayabslee0

Cheers for the advice here everyone.

It's given us plenty to think about.

ProDave

When we did this, our solicitor arranged for the keys to be held behind the reception desk of a local hotel for us to collect in the evening when we arrived.

hayabslee0

That's a good idea!