When to start buying?

A question about : When to start buying?

Hiya,

I have a question which I hope you kind people might be able to help me with.

My partner and I are first time buyers, we're renting a house at the moment and we're buying an identical house 3 doors down from the one we're renting (lucky find!)

The process is running smoothly so far (touch wood), we've been told verbally that the bank has approved our loan subject to a satisfactory survey. The survey was done on Friday (20th) and we've been told we should get a final result either today or tomorrow (hopefully today, my nerves are bad enough as it is!)

Meanwhile things have been steaming along nicely with the solicitor, and because there are no chains at either end and the vendors are after a super quick sale, we're actually looking at a potential completion date of as early as 13th March.

Now I know that, rather terrifyingly, the whole thing could still go wrong, and in fact the seller could pull out right up to the last minute. For this reason I wanted your opinions on when you think it would be reasonably safe to start looking at the buying of sofas and beds - sounds trivial I know but I don't want to leave it so long that we're without furniture for weeks on end, but equally I don't want to go on down to DFS this evening and buy something that we then won't have a house for it to live in.

I'd be interested to know when others who have been in similar situations did their furniture shopping?

Thanks

Best answers:

• most sofa companies have a 4-8 lead time anyway, unless you want something standard that they have a lot of stock of at the time.
  I would personally wait until you have completed. Someone I know asked all friends/family to buy them the furniture they needed when they moved in, only for the vendor to pull out last minute. They are now paying to keep said furniture in storage.
• As above, wait till you have completed... or perhaps wait till after you have moved in.
  You many find that it needs a little more work doing to it than you notice on your viewings.... bit of plastering, decorating, new flooring... all of which should Ideally be done before you get your shiny new furniture delivered.
• Try Freegle / Freecycle / local Facebook groups for stuff to keep you going for now.
  Or ask your landlord if there's anything in your current place that he won't be keeping that you can have.
  You'll have a much better idea of what you want once you've moved in.
• Thanks for all the advice guys, I think I will have a window shopping trip to DFS just to get an idea of prices and delivery times and then hold off on ordering until we know for sure! Thanks.