Home & Design

What Should You Leave When Moving Houses?

How to Refresh Your House Without Breaking the Bank

Moving houses is one of the most stressful parts of life, if you’re selling your home and buying a new one, you need to prepare your home for viewings, go to viewings yourself, find an estate agent and that’s just the start of the process, you’ll still need to speak to solicitors, have property inspections done and do a boatload of paperwork before you can even think about moving.

But once all the admin and legal work is sorted out, you’ll get a date for when you’ll be moving and then you need to pack up all your possessions ready to move to your new property, you likely know what you’ll be taking, but you may not know what things you should leave when you move.

The things you should leave are a mix of legal obligations, convenience and bartering. So now, let’s look into what things you should leave in your home and why!

Fixtures

Any fixtures in your house like: light fittings, radiators, kitchen cupboards and bathroom suites should be left when you move. It’s generally agreed that anything that would require tools to remove should stay in the property, as their removal will decrease the value of the property you’re selling (which can cause legal issues) and cause you a great deal of hassle.

You shouldn’t need them in your new property either, as the owner of the property you’re buying will have the same obligations as you and leave all the fixtures in place when they leave that property.

Made To Measure Fittings

Made to measure fittings like window curtains, splashbacks or blinds for bi-fold doors should be left behind when you leave your property, there’s no legal obligation to do so, but as things have been made to measure to your current property’s size, it’s highly unlikely that they will be the correct size for your new property. Regardless, you can always order new blinds online for the new place for a price that won’t break the bank.

These made to measure fittings can be used as a bartering tool when negotiating a sale price for your property, you can include these fittings in the sale and have that reflected in the sale price of the property as most buyers are amenable to paying extra to keep these features.

White Goods

White goods usually refers to kitchen appliances like dishwashers, ovens and fridges. Again, unless agreed with the buyer of your property, you have no obligation to leave them, but it’s common to leave them when moving house as they’re often built in or may not fit into your new property.

Again you can use these appliances as a negotiating tool to get a slightly higher sale price on your home. The one common exception to this is freestanding refrigerators, which some people do take but won’t be necessary if the property you’re moving into has a built in fridge.

They are controlled by remote or voice-operated equipment, which makes them perfect in homes that have small children. Also, if there is someone in your house with a disability, you can consider using motorized blinds so that they don’t have to use their hands.

Features That Boost Property Value

As mentioned earlier, taking things that make your home more valuable can cause some legal trouble for you, if you remove anything which will make your home less valuable than it was sold for like water features, pagodas or historic masonry you’re opening yourself up to legal issues down the line.

Unless agreed with the buyer of your property, it’s smart to leave these features at your property as they figure into the overall value of the property you’re selling, if you wish to keep them you should inform the buyer and make sure that’s factored into the sale price.

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