Guides
The four things nobody explains
Written for people moving house rarely enough that all of this is happening to them for the first time.
01 What actually happens on completion day Almost nobody explains this properly before it happens to you. It is not complicated — it is just a sequence of events that nobody controls, arranged in a fixed order. You are moving house in a chain and completion day is coming. 02 When the chain slips Dates in a chain are agreed right up until they are not. Planning for that beforehand costs nothing and turns a crisis into an inconvenience. Your completion date has moved, or you suspect it might. 03 London terraces and the half-landing Every London house move meets the same obstacle, and it is almost never the front door. You are moving out of a Victorian or Edwardian London terrace. 04 Clearing a family house after a death There is no chain and no completion date, which removes the time pressure and replaces it with something harder. You are clearing a parent's or relative's house.
Tell us where you are in the chain
Where you are moving from and to, how many bedrooms, and whether you have a date yet. Even an uncertain date is worth telling us about.