Moving house is a very active waiting game…

The most stressful thing about selling a house isn’t the packing. It isn’t the anguish of having to get used to a new place, or even a new country. It is the waiting. Especially when you are selling a house in the UK.

We accepted an offer on our home on Wednesday 16th of November. The next step was for the mortgage advisor of our prospective buyers to supply the estate agent with proof of funds. That’s 12 days of limbo. Because until that proof is supplied, the house won’t be taken off the market as ‘sold subject to contract’.

But… things are moving…!

So, on Tuesday the 29th they finally sorted proof of funds.
At the end of the working day, we received the memorandum of sales. With that, all parties had their conveyancers connected through this. So, even though we have been planning all sorts of things in between and setting up our admin already, it really starts now!

Having bought a house twice, and having sold one, we know that this is al part of the process. For those readers who are not familiar with the English house buying/selling process, we’ll give a short summary.

The biggest difference compared to many other countries is that you don’t sign contracts until the very last. This means that buyers are in a very strong position to pull out for whatever reason without incurring too many costs. With the last sale, our buyers pulled out 2 weeks before the end. This left us rather distraught and anxious, even though in the end all worked out. Even though the house we are selling now is much nicer, newer and is in a better area, we’ll not forget that previous experience.

Selling a house in the UK:

1. Put your house up for sale via an estate agent. Once you have accepted an offer, you;
2. Instruct solicitor: all communication goes through conveyancers, who are solicitors specialised in the purchase and selling of a house.
3. Make mortgage application; although, technically, many people do that before step 2 to get a conditional offer so you know how much you can spend. Because we aren’t buying a new home in the UK, we’re not doing this step (hence the italics).
4. Agree to arrange survey/valuation: the buyer arranges any surveys/valuations that need to be done. As a seller you need to accommodate that.
5. Respond to searches carried out and enquiries raised. Searches are checks on title deeds, land registry, any dangerous elements like risk of flooding, Japanese Knotweed, all sorts of things that are a red flag on a house.
6. Draft contract received and information regarding the property checked. Everything from searches and surveys is reviewed, and if all is deemed OK by both solicitors, the contract is drafted.
7. Contract signed by sellers and buyers. And, that’s the boring thing, that isn’t a thing YOU do in a room with a fancy pen. Your solicitor does this for you; you give them power of attorney over that when you hire them.
8. Contracts exchanged, deposit paid and completion date agreed. All the last bits, and the completion date is the moment you hand over the keys and have to be gone.
9. Move out and complete! Although, with us moving abroad, we will probably seek to move out a few weeks before, or at least as soon as we’re around step 6/7 and trust the buyers enough they will actually sign the contract… Completion also means that the remainder of the purchase price is paid. This has to be done before the keys can be handed over.

The eternal optimist

Somehow, you might say ‘Ooooh, you’re already in step 4! That’s basically half way there…!’. But if you’re saying that, you clearly never have sold a house in England.

Still, there’s not much we can do about that part of the ‘game’. We have to go with the flow, do what we can, and plan our own part as much as we can. And we will do that.

But… Moving house also means some very active and pro-active things for us to do. We need to obtain quotes from international movers, bring our favourite moving boxes in from the Netherlands, we need to get Portuguese tax numbers, make lots of lists, and mentally prepare ourselves for moving the cat. Yes, that will be an adventure!

Oh, and we have to learn a new language, somewhere in between, because it would be good if we could do more than order two beer by the time we get there. Although, our intensive language courses start when we get there. Another thing we need to find intel on!

Moving house, overall though, is fun, and exciting. Or, that’s what we keep telling ourselves, while we wait, very actively.

Header photo credit: Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash