Owning your own home

Another recent discovery was being notified by my bank that my credit score was reducing - because of being at an address for less than 18 months (I bought a new house 10 months ago). So if you move house with all else being equal, (same income/outgoings etc) it damages your credit score!

Worth bearing in mind for people thinking about applying for loans/car finance etc soon after moving.

Sounds like you need to move between @Fox and myself (Coppermill way).

I think you will struggle to find something 17’ or wider for under 750/800 unless it’s a quirky one off house or 60s.

Most of the ‘standard’ Victorian 3 beds round ours are 14’ with the slightly wider ones (separate hall bypassing dining room) still being under 17’

As mentioned, without budgets etc it’s hard to make suggestions.

Yeah after I wrote that 17' point I did a bit more googling. I think 16'- 16'6"ish is maybe more realistic / achievable.

Budget I have in mind currently is circa £650-£700 for somewhere which needs work, £750-£850 for somewhere which doesn't need too much doing to it.

Not ruling it out although it's a little too far "in" for my ideal scenario.

Nah they have fucked yous all.

Yeah that was my impression. Bit of a red herring as the real point is expect the unexpected when it comes to conveyancing (and try and set something aside for these sort of unanticipated costs)!

Unless you're a cash buyer the small matter of taking on a new mortgage is gonna hit your score too pretty big time...

I mean everyone should really, but don't tell everyone!

Moving costs - should be £3-5k for pack/unpack service depending on how much stuff you have

Is this really normal for a pack/unpack service by the way?!

We did our own packing and had a one bed flat, but we also had a cellar full of shit making it equivalent to at least a normal two bed, and our moving costs were £300 plus a bit extra when they had to hang around when we failed to exchange until 5pm (I think £500 ish total).

We paid proper money to the same people and they were bad. I’d totally pay Grays or another established name a decent chunk in future. £500 is not a benchmark for a London move!

Defo not a five bed house 🤪

Three years ago I paid £1,500 for pack/unpack for a 3 bed.

If I moved again I would definitely pay for pack/unpack. It made the whole move way less stressful (admittedly we were moving with a 6 week old).

Hah yeah do not underestimate the pain of packing.

Ours was £300 for a Luton van/two guys for a two bed house, but we packed and unpacked everything. It was totally fine, if you set aside a week or so of evenings beforehand for packing. We also kept all the boxes from the previous move, so no cost there either.

£3k for something you can do relatively easily seems a bit money gun to me!

Not everyone has a week of evenings to pack. We paid 2k for a packer + 4 guys with one big and small removal van.
Best 2k we ever spent as the amount of stress they removed from the whole process was priceless.
This was just from my partners place, I have a lot less and can carry a lot of it 250yds down the road so that will be a man with a van for an hour for a few bits of furniture and boxes of books.

Ours was about £1200 for a three bed a few years back - I'd definitely pay that and more to do it if we move again.
I remember by the time you actually get to moving day, you're flinging money around left right and centre, and the movers doing all that work was well worth it.

Not everyone has a week of evenings to pack.

Yeah, that's obviously the kicker. If you and your partner work odd shifts it's not exactly easy.

Still, 3-5k isn't money most people have just lying around, and going through old stuff can actually be quite a nice experience if you've got the inclination.

On the subject of movers, we paid just north of a grand for a mover who was registered with all the trade bodies. We encountered the following issues (not all their fault):

1. we didn't move in / out same day as planned, it ended up being split over two days. they charged us another full day's work for the second day - so a grand became two grand
   
2. they couldn't get our sofa out so they sawed it up - with our consent, because they said the other option was to saw up our doorway - but still. they also sawed up our doorway without our consent, though they glued it back
   
3. they lost all our fixings and fittings for the shelving units, which means we can't put it back together again without ordering more
   
4. the guy who took the wardrobe apart wasn't working next day so they put it together as best as they could but it's still very wonky
   
5. less important but kind of what's pissing me off most - my wife could only transfer a max of £1k a day so when she sent the extra £1k - on move out day - it was £40 under. they would not stop calling her on the day of the move in and were pretty rude to her when demanding the extra
   
6. they destroyed our neighbours wall and when he called to complain, they said they'd give him a few hundred quid for the wall but would resist any attempt to go via the insurance - again, incredibly rude to him
   
   

Tbh I thought that the whole point of proper registered movers was that we wouldn't have to deal with this stuff. Do I have too high standards?

That.... that does not sound great :(

Do I have too high standards?

No - they were shit

I would email this to their boss.

You should get some money back. If you don't, you should email it to the trade bodies.

I mean that sounds pretty bad.

I used these guys https://www.storkremovals.co.uk/ and had absolutely no issues. Nothing broken or lost, very careful of walls and stuff and everything they disassembled was put back together properly.

Thank you. My wife is quite conflict averse and doesn't want to pursue but I'm pretty miffed about it. The reason we went for a registered trade body mover is precisely so we had some comeback in case it went wrong.

I'd message the BAR - we work with them and they are a good trade body and should offer some help/advice

a hard disagree on this one - cannot think of a better ££ spend in the entire moving process.