I want them all to move with us! I’ve already spent hours finding and fixing up appointments with artisans for new house.
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I was pondering the other day whether I could get our plumber/electrician and mason to follow us to the UK. 
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Not with that shower in charge, seems everyone is trying to get out.
If you feel like it, please elaborate in your New Adventure thread. I am all agog!
Not all of us.
I’m out of the loop. Sue, are you moving back?
Eventually, but not now. We are very fortunate in that we sold a flat we owned in Wimbledon in January and so have money for a place in the UK that will eventually become the home of whichever one of us is left. In the meantime, France remains our home and the place in the UK will be our “maison secondaire”. We have spent the last 18 months talking about our future - a couple of major operations focuses the mind. We wanted to choose somewhere now, while we are both fit and well and compos mentis knowing that it will be a place that either of us would love to live in. As much as we can we are future proofing. It means the one of us left can go straight back and selling up here in France can take its time with no pressure. In the meantime, we will enjoy visiting our new house together, and getting to know the area.
OK. Best of luck with the house search.
We’re also hoping to buy a place which will be a holiday home until we sell up in Strasbourg (we’re in no rush). Am wondering whether it’s going to be difficult to get insurance for the UK property given that it’s going to be lying empty much of the time. We’ll have no family nearby to check up on it.
We’ve already found it and are buying it - completion likely to be before Christmas.
You get holiday home insurance. It assumes you will be away much of the year.
Right, thanks. I must look into that. I really like NFU so hopefully they offer holiday home insurance with no requirement for someone to pop in and check the property once a month, etc.
Even M and S home insurance allows 3 months away from home for ordinary insurance. Those offering holiday home insurance know you may only be there 2 weeks in the whole year Obviously the higher cost reflects this.
There are specialists for empty or mostly empty houses, I used one for my mother’s house when she went into a care home and her normal insurer didn’t want to continue cover.
As someone on this thread said though, some of them require regular visits by someone to check the property. I was lucky that one of the home carers agreed to go into the house once a week to do a bit of housework and to check all the rooms.
I’ll need to look into it Jennifer once we finally get a house. In the meantime, if anyone has direct experience of holiday home insurance in the UK that does NOT require fairly regular checkups, I would be most grateful if you could pass on the name.
You could try an insurance broker nearer the time, Helen.
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Will do. I was hoping to get over to the UK in March and start the house search but I foolishly neglected an NS&I bond and now it’s rolled over into another one. So we’re locked in until September. I’d assumed - wrongly - that if I did nothing, when the bond matured the money would be paid into our instant access Direct Savings account. Oh well. Hopefully if we go in June and find a house, we wouldn’t have to pay the bulk of the sale price until September. Not sure about the average time between having an offer accepted and payment.
Minimum of 6 weeks is normal but can take much longer due to legal searches etc.
I agree with Debby that 6 weeks is the (absolute) minimum, from past experience .
Like probably many on SF, I’ve bought and sold multiple properties, over 4 decades, in the UK. In terms of the average time between offer and completion, it generally seems to take about 3-4 months. This can be accelerated eg if there is an impending stamp duty change, or slowed down if there are problems with long chains of buyers, issues identified during searches etc.
I’ve twice had exchange and completion the same day (and obviously no deposit). Happily this worked out well, as in each case there was a high degree of trust between the buyers (both cases involved young lawyers) and us.
Thanks for the prompt. Just done a Compare the Market enquiry - lots of options, very reassuring.
Judging from my experience, not difficult at all. For the quote I’ve said property could be empty up to 3 months at a time. Obviously this is a general enquiry, once we know our completion date I’ll get a proper quote. Post Office and Admiral among the insurers, no sign of NFU. I use to consult to NFU, their business model is that they are very picky about who they insure in the first place, hence their willingness to pay out when there is a claim.
Yes, that’s why I like them. My brother uses them to insure commercial properties and any time he’s had to make a claim, they’ve been brilliant. Absolutely no quibbles.
Thanks for the tip about Admiral and the Post Office. Do you mind telling us what area you’re moving to? I’m just curious because - apart from a vague interest in Norwich based on one day’s knapsack spraying at the Coleman’s mustard factory in 1988 (husband) - we haven’t a clue.
Did you drive around the UK Sue or did you already have an area in mind?