Tiggs

ok- move out in a few days to new house. this was my first house so i have never left one before, what state should it be in?

for example- what do you do with nails in walls where you had pictures?

whats moving etiquet (sp)?

Tiggs

Scooby Snax

leave it in a right mess! well you may as well for a laugh

FLAT ERIC

iTrader: (1)

Leave it as you would like to find it is always a good guide.

Nails could be of use to next occupier,if not they can soon have them out & wack in some filler.

Don't take every last light bulb,as someone did to me once.We rolled up after dark & did not know where our packed ones were.

Scooby Snax

LMAO haha

MarkO

There's no legal obligation to leave it in any particular state, as long as you don't take anything that you've agreed in the contract will be left behind.

However, we've always tried the "do as you would be done by" routine, on the basis that if I was moving into a house it would really spoil the effect if the previous owners left it looking like a sh1thole.

Not an issue for us when we move, though, as it's extremely likely that we'll be buying a new build. Talking of which, does anyone want to buy a 4-bed detached house in Kent?

Timbo33

Tiggs,

Leave it clean and tidy. Taking lightbulbs is a bit mean as the new occupiers have to go out and buy loads......you usualy have enought ot do when you're moving in to a new house without having to go out to the shops!!

Stuff like nails and holes where things were screwed on go with the territory - leave them 'cos the new people might want to put stuff up there anyway - most of the pictures in my house are covering over rawlplugs left by the previous owner!!

Timbo

Scoobychick

iTrader: (1)

As above but leave your hoover out till last and give it a quick going over once everything is out, the last thing you need when arriving at your new home is to find the floor is filthy and your hoover is in the back of the lorry

Give the inside of the kitchen cupboards a clean too - ours were filthy when we moved into our new house and it took me an hour of cleaning before I could unpack anything

We moved once and the previous owner had taken all the lightbulbs, what the **** is going on with these type of people???

Sal

MarkO

One thing I never understand about women is that they always clean the kitchen cupboards the day they move out of the house, and they always clean them when they move in.

As far as I can see, this means that the cupboards get cleaned twice on the day! Why???

Tiggs

cause they are chicks and thats what they do!

Scoobychick

iTrader: (1)

chiark

"it's a woman thing".

We cleaned, hoovered our house that we left and turned up to a sh1thole with no light bulbs. Plus they'd left the cooker that they said they were taking, which was a gas cooker and it didn't work. Grr...

We exchanged and completed on the same day. Never, ever, EVER again!

carl

MarkO -- 'new build' aaaarrrrgh! I will never do that again, as the builders leave it in a worse state than a previous owner would. For example, no lightbulbs at all, no carpets (can easily sort that), no TV aerial, no grass, enough paving slabs to get you from the back door to the gate but no more, crap paint on the walls that means you have to redecorate. Then there's the 'living on a building site' that you have to do for a while (there was a container in our parking bays, the road was unmade with raised ironworks, etc.). Fortunately, ours was the last street to be built.

MarkO

Yeah, we know all that. But several points here:

1. We'll be landscaping the garden ourselves and relaying a decent patio (instead of those ****e council-paving style slabs that builders use.

2. We'd want to choose the flooring ourselves anyway (it'll be hardwood flooring - we don't want carpets again).

3. We'll redecorate anyway, so don't care if they use magnolia paint that's been thinned down to the consistency of milk.

As for living on a building site, we did that once before when we owned a 200-year-old cottage which needed lots of renovating. Expensive and a PITA. At least with the new build the snags get fixed for free, so whilst it's a PITA it doesn't cost anything. Okay, so the roads might not be complete, but it's only for a maximum of 6 months or less (we want a house in a small development - 25 houses or ideally quite a few less than that - so it won't be a huge estate which will take years to complete).

We were planning to do a self-build, but it's proving too hard to find plots in the areas we like, and we're not sure that we're brave enough to move from the SE to Scotland and embark on a self-build at the same time. So we'll get a new house, and then look for plots in the next 5 years or so.

We also don't want to get involved in a chain - the differences in the legals systems make it complicated enough to move from England to Scotland as it is...

carl

I agree, but the difference is that you have to do all those jobs straight away. If you move into a pre-owned property, there's lots of stuff you will probably change but at least you could live with it in the interim.

Still, if that's what you want then good luck to you.

MarkO

Not too bothered about doing it immediately. Since we're moving to a cheaper area we'll be releasing a lot of equity in our current property, meaning we will have money available for all that kind of stuff.

It'll also be a good incentive to avoid the apathy that's led to us not decorating, etc, in our current house as soon as we should have. We can just do it all in the first 2-3 months, and get on with enjoying it, rather than having loads of nagging jobs kicking around which I always find excuses to postpone.

dsmith

Tiggs

Check all the rooms very carefully before too many people tramp around. I've heard some real horror stories of how some people let their Cats Sh*t all over the carpets

When I moved last month, had to wait for the removal men to have their nose around before we could get on with anything

Keep them fed and watered with tea and biscuits and the removal men will not quite destroy everything you've ever owned.

Deano