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Selling up


Joanne kenyon

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Hi guys my husband and I are about to start the application process for a new life in Oz with our son who is 1. However we don't know what to do about our home. Would be be better so sell up now and rent in the interim to ease the stress of having to do this once everything is completed, given we have to visit the country with 12 months to have the visa activated. Or should we wait until the we are at the end of the process to put our home on the market? 

 

Any ideas on what to do for the best? 

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I’d not sell before a visa is granted. Worse case scenario being you don’t get a visa and you’ve sold your house for no reason.

Put it on the market towards the end of the process perhaps, price it to sell, but to sell before you have a visa in hand seems rather risky to me. 

What visa are you applying for? The processing times do seem to vary. 

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We rented a house for 6 months while our new build was being completed... Application fees etc cost about £500, then we only need 4.5 months, so that less hassle you mentioned cost about £2000.  If you don't have a set date to move, then I would sell when you are pretty much ready to go, then you can always move flights or air bnb for a bit.

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Guest The Pom Queen

Although it was 14/15 years ago now, we ignored all advice and sold our house before the visa grant. Unfortunately we didn’t have a choice because we needed to put $100k in to a Bond to claim an extra 5 points. 

‘What made it even harder was it was our dream house in the UK, one which we would have probably stayed in for life.  We took out a rental close by so that my son didn’t have to change school. I remember the night before we were due to sign it over having a breakdown and crying in the garden saying I had changed my mind. We had sold to a developer and because there were lots of complications and they couldn’t build as many houses as they wanted due to planning issues I knew no one else would buy for that price. Although it didn’t stop me messaging him and telling him I was staying. You should have seen the flood of phone calls the next morning from the solicitors.

Anyway rambling aside we moved out and took on a 6 month lease. 5 months in to it we were told my medical had been referred (we knew it would happen but it knocked us for six). The same day we got an email from the rental agent asking us to sign up for another 6 months. We didn’t but took the risk of a roll on tenancy knowing that we could give a months notice but so could they. Thankfully a week before the original tenancy was due to expire we got the visa grant. Thankfully it gave us a month to move to Melbourne 

Personally would I go through all that again, probably not, I’d say it was the most stressful time of our whole Visa process. 

‘If you have any attachment to the house then don’t even consider it, especially if you have funds available and don’t need the money. Unfortunately not everyone can make the move without their equity. 

Do you have any idea of how long your particular visa applications are taking to process? If it’s another 6 months then it may be worth considering if you need the money. I always forget that houses don’t sell as quickly in the UK like here. You can buy a house and move in within 5 weeks in some cases.

One thing that was good about moving in to a rental prior is that it gave us chance to scale down and sell a large amount of our belongings, as we packed we would have a pile for car boot sales, a pile to take to Australia that we wouldn’t need before, a pile of things to sell etc.

 

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Guest The Pom Queen
35 minutes ago, displaynameash said:

why sell if things dont work out you have a home to go to ?

@displaynameash unfortunately a lot of people need the money from their house to make the move. 

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17 hours ago, Joanne kenyon said:

Hi guys my husband and I are about to start the application process for a new life in Oz with our son who is 1. However we don't know what to do about our home. Would be be better so sell up now and rent in the interim to ease the stress of having to do this once everything is completed, given we have to visit the country with 12 months to have the visa activated. Or should we wait until the we are at the end of the process to put our home on the market? 

 

Any ideas on what to do for the best? 

We emigrated when our son was 2. He was one when we applied. We had to sell the house to free up cash for us to come. We knew we were going to try really hard to settle and thought we would never go back. It was one less thing to have to think about and organise and we had made a decent profit on it.

Have you got your visa approved yet?  If not it can be a painstaking, emotional, long and expensive exercise with no guarantees you will get one.

Best of luck to you though. Best move we ever made. We love Perth and it's been great for the kids and us.

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3 hours ago, displaynameash said:

why sell if things dont work out you have a home to go to ?

That's the type of attitude that keeps people in two minds and you have to be on the same page as a couple. If one is forever unsure, things don't go well for a while and one starts saying we still have the house to go back to. I reckon it's a recipe for disaster. 

I would have thought most people emigrating would push any thought of not working out right out of their head. 

Otherwise there's not much point in applying for emigrarion in the first place.

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As soon as the visa was granted we sold our house. It worked for us as we only had to stay with family for a few weeks before we made the move to Aus and it meant we had the cash to set ourselves up here and buy a house when we found something we liked.

 Cal x

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