My house move....

peterhjohnson

propertyrental said:

* Exchange of contracts. THIS is when the deal becomes legally binding. Your solicitor will ring you to check you still want to proceed, and what date for Completion. He will add these 2 dates to the contract you've already signed.

My solicitor rang me in the morning of every day when she thought exchange was possible to check that I still wanted to go ahead. She said that was standard practice. So what happened
* Rang me one morning to check it was Ok to try today
* Later that day, rang me to say that exchange had not happened 
* Rang on another morning to check I was still wanting to exchange
* Rang me later that day to announce that we were exchanged.

I think I got buildings and content insurance in place as soon as I knew she was making the first attempt to exchange. I think that was under £100 and could have been wasted had we never exchanged

RAS

At the very least you can get new barrel locks in advance and install those yourself. Just check youtube, get the appropriate screwdriver and a junior hacksaw.

FreeBear

RAS said:

At the very least you can get new barrel locks in advance and install those yourself. Just check youtube, get the appropriate screwdriver and a junior hacksaw.

Euro locks as used on uPVC & composite doors come in different lengths - You need access to the old one to make sure you get a match.

Mortice locks come in a variety of flavours & sizes, so again, you need the old one to ensure a proper match.

Yale type deadbolt/nightlatch is the easiest to deal with as the cylinders are (generally) all the same size. They come with a bar that can be trimmed to length to suit doors of different thicknesses.

Moving in to a new home - Always a good idea to change the locks. You have no idea how many keys are kicking around for the old locks or who has their grubby little mitts on them.

Albermarle

Romepen said:

Would you change all the locks, when moving into a house? 

Ideally yes, but I am pretty sure most people do not bother.

propertyrental

I always do (in fact I have a stack of them built up over the years as yes, they come in different sizes).

But I gather most people don't bother.....

propertyrental

AlexMac said:

.....

”The estate agent… has informed that completion and key hand over can be done on the same day…” 
propertyrental says this is normal, but I’ve  experienced a problem with timing; the local EA refusing to release the keys til very late afternoon on completion day despite me knowing my solicitor had sent the money to the Buyer’s that morning. 

No problem unless you’re sitting outside with your life in the Removals Van, like me !  (I just broke in as I knew I’d paid and I always change the keys that day! We’d settled in and were making tea by the time the EA rang. I was tempted to tell him where to put em, but didn’t)

Yes, delays can be fairly common especially with a long chain where payments are being passed up the chain.

fridays are bad too as many people want the weekend to settle in, so solicitors are very busy and might take time to spot a payment has been received and inform the key-holder. If you are not moving in same day, definitely avoid fridays.

NameUnavailable

For cheap furniture and white goods, check Facebook Marketplace (when I moved I gave a lot of stuff away on there). Also British Heart Foundation have shops for furniture. Also ebay. I've bought quite a lot of my things via ebay including the sofa i'm sitting on right now!

Maahes

Romepen said:

Would you change all the locks, when moving into a house? 

Absolutely. I picked up the keys the day after completion and a week before I moved in. I arranged for a locksmith to come and change the front and back door locks on the day I picked the keys up. I was given two keys to the front door and none for the back so there were certainly some keys to my new house floating around. Total cost was less than £200, which I though was worth it for peace of mind. After I moved in I changed both garage locks myself.

KittenChops

Don't think it's been mentioned previously (apologies if I've missed it) - if you have a vehicle, change the address on the log book (V5C) asap after moving in - this is completely separate to changing the address on your license.  If you get any kind of speeding fine, parking fine/invoice etc, they'll get the address from the V5C from the DVLA (regardless of the address on your license) & all correspondence will be sent there.  Plenty of people end up with CCJs because the V5C address is incorrect.

(edited for spelling mistakes)

propertyrental

there are plenty of lists online of who to tell. All a bit different so compare and make your own list. Some need telling asap, others can wait a week or longer.