TODAY’S THE DAY
When it comes to moving house, we’re creatures of habit, says Max Davidson
WE HATE doing it on a Sunday. We are shy of doing it on a Saturday. We will do it on a Monday or Tuesday if we have to. We occasionally do it on Wednesday. We quite enjoy doing it on a Thursday. But we really like doing it on a Friday.
Unless, of course, it is Friday the 13th, in which case we get cold feet. ‘It’, I should explain, is not filing our tax returns, going to the dentist, or asking the in-laws round for tea, but something far more stressful — moving house.
New research by sellhousefast.uk confirms what one might have suspected: that more property purchases are completed on Friday than on any other day of the week.
Analysis of Land Registry data reveals that of more than a million properties sold in Britain in 2016, more than 40 per cent changed hands on a Friday. Thursday was the next most popular day, at just under 20 per cent, while only a minuscule number of properties were sold at the weekend.
‘It makes sense,’ says Robby Du Toit, MD of sellhousefast.uk. ‘Completing a sale on Friday gives both the buyer and the seller the weekend to move house, without taking too much time off work. And since the majority of people prefer Fridays to other days of the week, there is also less chance of disruptions in the property chain.’
Drive around suburbia on a Friday afternoon and you will often see removal vans coming and going.
Outgoing owners scurry around with vacuum cleaners. Incoming owners crouch in their cars, waiting for the goahead to move in.
Friday has become the day for moving house, just as Sunday is the day for a sit-down family lunch. But is it a tradition one should necessarily conform to?
Friday may be an easy-going kind of day, when people come into work in chinos and down tools early, but it can also be the most stressful day of all when urgent business has to be transacted before the weekend deadline.
It is a day which comes with specific pressures, when tempers can fray and dress- down Friday can quickly morph into frantic Friday, with coffee cups being thrown and people screaming at their computers. Be afraid of Fridays. On what day of the week, March 29, 2019, is Britain going to formally leave the EU? You guessed. The manic last-minute manoeuvrings by Whitehall mandarins could be comedy gold. People do odd things under pressure of deadlines, which may explain a secondary finding in the sell housefast.uk new research. Not only are more property transactions completed on a Friday than on any other day of the week, but the average price of properties sold on a Friday tends to be lower than other days. In the Land Registry data for 2017, the average price of properties sold on Fridays was just £319,466, compared with an average of £630,109 on Sunday, the least busy day. There may be some rich-and-poor subplot here. Perhaps wealthy home-owners employ topdollar solicitors who are prepared to do paperwork at the weekend.
But it also suggests that although Friday is the most popular day for property transactions, it is not necessarily the best day to sell your house.
Bad last-minute deals get struck under pressure of time. If vendors have a Friday deadline rigidly fixed in their heads, they may be more vulnerable to lastminute attempts to drop their asking price than if they plan to complete earlier in the week.
JUST as going to the supermarket on the same day as everyone else is a recipe for aggro in the aisles, so completing a property transaction on the same day as everyone else can lead to all kinds of unnecessary stress.
In 2015, the insurance company QBE announced that hackers had stolen £85 million from British law firms over an 18-month period in what they dubbed ‘Friday afternoon fraud’. And if that feels like a slightly far-fetched scenario, there are more common pitfalls with a Friday completion.
What do you do if every removal van within 50 miles is booked on the Friday you are planning to move?
What do you do if there is some last- minute hitch with transferring money, your bank is closed for the weekend and your solicitor is out on the golf course?
What do you do if you move into your new home on Friday afternoon and, by Saturday morning, need a plumber? Following the herd and moving house on a Friday might not be the wisest option.