Moving from England to Scotland- Any tips?

baj25

We are looking to move up to Scotland this year, Inverness in particular. House sale in England is progressing, current thinking is to rent somewhere in Scotland big enough for all our stuff (quite a lot) so we don't have to pay storage, until we find the right place. I'm not sure at what point in the English system we could make an offer in Scotland (I understand offers are more binding there). Any experience of long distance removals would help, as would experience of renting until you found a good place. And anything else you think worth sharing. TIA, Brian

theoretica

I don't know the rental market around Inverness, but you might find it works out cheaper to pay for storage and rent a place that won't take all your stuff! 

Right at the start of house buying you need to identify a solicitor to put the formal bids in for you - they should also be able to advise on your question about what point your English sale needs to be.

user1977

baj25 said:

(I understand offers are more binding there)

Often misunderstood (even by Scots) - offers aren't themselves "binding", think of them more as being a draft contract. In general it's (on average) a faster-moving process then in England (surveys are done before marketing, searches don't take weeks, etc) so I think you'd want to be pretty close to the end of the transaction in England before you put in offers in Scotland. But it depends what the competition is like and whether sellers can cope with a bit of uncertainty. Probably simpler though to complete your sale first.

[Deleted User]

baj25 said:

We are looking to move up to Scotland this year, Inverness in particular. House sale in England is progressing, current thinking is to rent somewhere in Scotland big enough for all our stuff (quite a lot) so we don't have to pay storage, until we find the right place. I'm not sure at what point in the English system we could make an offer in Scotland (I understand offers are more binding there). Any experience of long distance removals would help, as would experience of renting until you found a good place. And anything else you think worth sharing. TIA, Brian

It’s not that offers are binding but what you can’t do after making an offer (which is done via your solicitor) is start fannying around and trying to negotiate the price down after the vendor has accepted your offer and likewise the vendor can’t start to negotiate the price up either. Either party is free to withdraw from the transaction though until the missives are concluded. 

If you are reliant on the money from the sale of the property in England to buy something in Scotland then I wouldn’t put in any offers until you have at least exchanged on the English property. 

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/cost-timeline-for-buying-a-property-in-scotland

As for renting the good thing is the you’ll have a Private Rental Tenancy which has no fixed term and requires 28 days notice to end. That should make things easier if the goal is to eventually buy somewhere. 

https://scotland.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/guides/renting_privately/looking_for_a_home

pinkteapot

Can’t help with the Scottish purchase system, but we did a 300 mile move from the south-east to Cumbria in 2018. Long-distance removals aren’t actually particularly different to short distance... Get multiple quotes and ask them to explain their logistics - number of trucks, how many days the job will take. They are all limited of course by the laws on driving hours allowed per day but ours still varied in how their plan worked.

We used a remover local to where we were coming from. I did read you should get quotes from removers in the area you’re going to, in case they’re cheaper, but I do like to have removals round to quote so I can have a proper chat with them.

Make sure you investigate the rental market early. We blithely thought “we’ll sell and rent - that’s easy!” Then found there’s few rental properties up here and of course we were limited further as we have a cat. Check there’s suitable properties. 

When we were near exchange, MrTeapot came up here for a fortnight and stayed in an AirBnB. Viewed the possible rentals, picked one, told the agent we wanted it, then filled in the application the minute we’d exchanged. Application took a week to go through, so he hung around up here then got the keys, then came home. That meant that when he arrived on moving day he didn’t have to mess about picking up keys and doing check-in as the rental was already ours. 

Yep, “he”. I was finishing up a notice period and couldn’t come on the rental finding trip, and had to stay with family to finish work while he moved up. (Our buyers needed quick completion and we didn’t want to lose them). Ten days after he moved, I drove to a city I’d never been to, to a house I’d never seen in person, and all my stuff was there and unpacked. That was a weird day. 

onylon

I moved from my London flat to an Airbnb in Edinburgh to break the chain. It worked really well for us because Airbnbs were really cheap at that point and it gave us maximum flexibility for minimum stress. Putting stuff in storage was a pain but overall our monthly bills were still a fair bit lower than a normal month in London. I had assumed we would be in Airbnbs for a few months but took us about 7 weeks (including the Christmas period) to find our new house and buy it and move in. The Scottish system is much faster and more user friendly than the English one. I would recommend spending some time researching your solicitor as they will be much more involved than an English conveyor. You want someone with a reputation for being responsive and who knows the local area.