How long after completion do we get the keys?

onylon

I know most contacts give the seller untill 2pm to be out but if not in a chain then leaving it to the last min seems needlessly stressful. I broke the chain with an air BnB and both my sale and purchase were chain free. I chose to have the movers in on Thursday for a Monday completion. My sellers did a DIY move with 2 kids so they opted for a longer overlap and moved over a few weeks.

"Nowt as queer as folk", as they say. 

Surrey_EA

m0bov said:

You shouldn't have completed without vacant possession, might be worth speaking with your sol.

That's not how it works.

elsien

My neighbours didn’t leave till nearly midnight, having failed to do any packing till the day then ordering a removals van that was half the size of their belongings. 

Luckily their buyers weren’t sat there waiting, as it could have proved expensive for the neighbours otherwise. 

lookstraightahead

Isn't it amazing the difference in people, from those being so flexible to those who really think they are the only people in the world. The thing is, they get away with it.

I moved round the corner once. Our removal lorry turned into our new homes at two and we were told they were nowhere near ready and to come back. 

So instead, we sat in 'our' back garden watching them move out. They left at 5 muttering that they still had things they wanted to take.

The thing is, I honestly don't think it had crossed their mind that we were moving too, under just as much stress, and that they were now in our house. Not a clue.

lookstraightahead

Op please do let us know how it's going! 

74jax

I'm in new build now but when I was an estate agent, we sold one house and the new owners went to the property, walked in whilst the (old) owners were packing up and ask them to leave whilst they then passed everything out of the house to the driveway to be collected......  The seller also tried to walk through to the garden (only accessed via the house) and the new owner stopped them and asked them to remove their shoes as it was their carpet now.

The seller was livid and complained to us for weeks afterwards......

Bonniepurple

When we completed on our current house DH went to get the keys.  He ended up chatting to someone for what seemed like ages before actually getting to the estate agents.  I was not best pleased!

Spacie22

My very elderly seller carefully labelled all the secondary keys and left them on a tray in the kitchen, then locked the front door behind himself and took the front door key with him to his new place 60 miles away.  His very apologetic daughter got it to us at around 5pm (this was in the days before mobile phones) The house was empty and spotlessly clean though.

esubbs

We were first time buyers when we bought our current house and very luckily had an overlap of a few days with our previous rental. We completed fairly early on, about 10:30, but I vaguely remembered something about vacant possession from midday so left off until lunch time to ring the estate agent and ask for the keys. They said "the vendors weren't ready to release them" and I naively agreed to ring back later. By 2:30 I was getting annoyed so the estate agent agreed to let me collect them. I then went straight to the property, rubber gloves and mop in hand, to find they hadn't even half packed yet! It was about 2am before they were finally out and left so much junk and mess behind.
I've always vowed to never treat our buyers that way.
Hope you're in now OP? 

Flugelhorn

If the house is occupied and the people are moving that day it always takes a lot longer for them to clear everyting out than they expect or  the time taken for the transfer of funds allows for.

usually no big deal but the last time it happened, I had arranged some deliveries (crucially a fridge), completion had happened 2 hours previously , vendor (moving themselves) was still faffing around and declined the delivery as they claimed not to know who it was for!