Published 9th Dec 2015
There is so much emotion tied up with moving home. Whether you are buying your first property, moving your family into your “forever” home or moving on after a separation, it is a rare person who manages to go through the process of packing all their worldly goods into a packing crate marked “kitchen – this way up” without some degree of emotional turmoil. You can see why. For an indeterminate period of time, your life is in someone else’s hands. If you add to that the excitement of the festive season, (when, as we all know, absolutely everything has to be as perfect as it can be) you have the recipe for some considerable stress. When you are moving toward the back end of the year it is only human nature to imagine yourself eating turkey and wearing a fetching paper hat in your beautifully decorated new home.
As a conveyancer, I am frequently asked how long a transaction will take and I am, invariably unable to answer the question. The quickest transaction I undertook completed after 24 hours, the longest took 13 months. You get the idea: It’s difficult to give an answer that would satisfy anyone but the most inveterate gambler. If you are buying a house and begin the process at any time after 24th September and before 14th December, you will be tempted to utter the following words to your conveyancing solicitor “we would like to complete before Christmas”. Don’t worry if you say it, it is completely understandable. Be warned however, If you ask on the 14th December though, the answer will, in all but the rarest of cases, be a resounding no!
What is important though is that you are not rushing yourself and your conveyancer into completing your transaction before its ready just because you can hear the jangle of festive bells. Buying a house is probably the biggest financial commitment you will enter into in your life and it is paramount that you and your conveyancer get it right this for you and your children. If you have chosen a conveyancer worth their salt then they will want to make sure that everything is perfect for you and that includes trying to accommodate your desire to be in your new home before Father Christmas sets off from the North Pole but that doesn’t mean that it’s always feasible or achievable. It’s also true to say that if matters are rushed, the tinsel tousled festive dream has the potential to turn into a Yuletide nightmare. Quite apart from the fact that the herculean endeavour of finding which box the Christmas Decorations were packed into can be something like the Krypton Factor, I warn all my clients that the boilers/ovens in their new homes will break down on either the coldest night of the year or Christmas Eve, whichever is the sooner. Have you ever tried to call out a plumber/engineer on the 24th December?
In essence, it really is worth listening to good advice from an experienced lawyer. If you want to be in your new home for Christmas, mention it by all means, but if your solicitor thinks that the deadline cannot be confidently met, it is important to listen to their advice. For most of us, there will be another Christmas. Better to complete in January and have the transaction run smoothly, than rush into an early completion and repent at leisure…
By guest blogger Anna Newport of our Residential Conveyancing Unit – Raworths LLP.
If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact us Anna.newport@raworths.co.uk
