As we all know, moving home is a long-winded process that takes months to plan and organise. Even if everything goes right with your house sale and the process is smooth, it will still take a good three months for the purchase to go through. Three months might sound like a long time, but when you have to organise a house purchase, as well as move everything from your old home and buy new items for your new property, three months can start to feel like quite a tight deadline. However, it is doable. After all, if you can plan an entire wedding in just three months, you can move home.
To help you, here is a breakdown of what you need to do and when to make sure you can move house in three months:
Three months before you move:
The first things you need to do are:
- Determine your budget for moving home and use this budget to determine how much you can spend on your new home. Take into account all the expenses associated with moving home, including:
- Legal fees
- Estate agent fees
- Stamp duty
- Conveyancing
- Removal of company fees
- Unexpected fees (it is a good idea to have £5,000 in a backup fund)
- Costs to decorate and furnish your new house
- Choose an estate agent to sell your existing home through and help to find you a new home.
- Source a mortgage provider and find out the highest mortgage you can get.
- Start fixing up your old house (if you have one) so that you can sell it easier and potentially for a higher value.
- De-clutter your existing home and make an inventory list of all the things that are going to be going with you to your new home. This will help you determine how much you are moving and therefore how much removal costs will be.
- Purchase moving insurance to protect your belongings when they are in transport from your old house to your new home.
- If you are currently renting your property, you need to speak to your landlord and find out the notice period you need to give. If the notice period is three months, then you will need to give notice as soon as possible.
Two months before you move
By this point, you will hopefully have found a new home and have put in an offer. Two months before you move, you need to think about:
- Booking a removal company. Last month you started looking at removal companies to understand how much it was going to cost, now you need to book the removal company to help you with your house move.
- If you are relocating to another area, or country, you need to consider logistics now. Start thinking about travel arrangements and hotels.
- Purchase packing supplies and start the laborious task of having to pack up everything you own. By this point you will have decided what is going on with you, anything you have chosen not to move to your new home can be sold, recycled, stored, or thrown away.
- If you are going to need time off work to move home, now is the time to request it, don’t leave it until the last minute.
- Contact your insurance providers and make sure it is all moved to your new home. Be sure to insure your new home with property insurance so that it is covered from the second you assume ownership of the house.
- Start moving your mailing list and changing your address with things like schools and doctors, etc. Set up a forwarding service to make sure you receive any mail that accidentally gets delivered to your old home.
One month before you move
By this time, you should have pretty much everything sorted, there are just a couple of last things to do:
- Finish packing and make sure all the boxes are labelled, to make it easier to unpack.
- Make sure your new home has utilities (including electricity, gas and water) up and running. Also arrange to have things like internet and television services installed, so they are working when you come to move in.
- Go through your food, plan a meal schedule, and throw away any old food (or food you’ve had for a while but isn’t being used). Try to take as little food as possible with you, after all, it’s just more to pack.
- Arrange to hand in the keys to your existing property and collect the keys for your new home.
Moving home in three months might seem almost impossible, but as you can see, when you break down all the jobs you can see that (as long as nothing delays your house move), it is feasible.
Cover photo by Trend on Unsplash
