Moving...

[hawkida]

Does anyone know the approximate costs of removals companies?

Specifically I'm going to be moving stuff from a reasonably full mid-size 3 bedroom house approximately 100 miles. Like with storage firms, websites are bloody useless. They want to give me exact quotes, or send people out to asess my needs. All I want at this stage is a ballpark figure - I want to know if I'm talking about 250 quid or 2000 quid for this sort of thing in order to consider alternatives such as friends, family and van hire.

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Last time I moved (although across the same village) it cost me about £250 quid and a crate of beer.

I had a fair amount of stuff though.

[drplokta]

It should be much closer to £250 than £2000, as long as you use a local "man with big van" kind of outfit. I'd budget £500.

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

I've usually paid around £500 just for the move (no packing or unpacking). That's between three bedroom houses with a lot of stuff. Don't rely on that figure too much though, I've stayed put for seven years now (blimey).

[kalorlo.livejournal.com]

IIRC, it was about £800 to move our stuff from Edinburgh to London. This was in a huge lorry that we only used up a tiny amount of, as we weren't transporting furniture. It wouldn't have cost any more if we were, though. So I'm guessing that should be the top end? They set the date, because we were using a lorry that had moved stuff up to Edinburgh and needed to go back down again.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Yes.

If you want to be mildly horrified, ask Pickfords for a quote.

I forget how much we paid in total, but it wasn't a simple house move. It involved slowly moving half the house into a storage unit in Hanwell before putting the house on the market, using a removals company to place the remainder into 2 storage units in Stevenage when we moved out, and then using that company again some weeks later to collect the content of the various storage units and bring them up here. So we were complicated by two different removals involving 4 locations. And not to mention the storage unit fees, and the cattery fees.

(On the other hand, the money in the bank did actually earn almost enough interzest to pay those fees.)

Having said which, we found Britannia a pretty good bunch. They did an exceedingly good job of packing a small house load into a storage unit, such that when bellinghwoman visited the storage unit in SG, she opened the door, and boggled. There was a solid wall of stuff an inch behind that door, floor to ceiling.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

At the very low end, a single move involving a great big bed and about ten or so pieces of Ikea furniture that were too big to fit in our car moved 15 miles, in Ver North, was barely into triple digits. One of the pieces of Ikea was too big to leave the room and so the mover took it to pieces (in a way that meant it could be reassembled; we weren't sure they were that well-made, but apparently they are - at least for one remake) for an extra £30 or so. He estimated about twice that at first but took just the 30-ish upon seeing our desperation. Cash in hand probably helped.

With more to move, a longer journey and people wanting London rates, I think you're probably looking at somewhere between 250 and 500 sterlings.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

What they all said. When we moved, we paid for packing though not unpacking; just packing doubled our cost (though we were only moving 1/4 mile) and I would do it again in a heart beat. I think paying professional movers (and we used a local company) is one of the single best things you can do to reduce the stress involved in moving house.

Oh, and congratulations on finding the house of your dreams!

[raven-mocara.livejournal.com]

if you have the spare cash, it is definitely worth paying for the packing, really takes about 90% of the stress out. Make sure you pack one box with stuff you know you will need though - kettle, duvet, spare clothes, anything very breakable etc.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

Last time I moved (about 4 years ago) the quotes varied from £300 to £800. That was a fairly small move, from a very full one bed flat and under 10 miles. Street access can make a difference, what cost me was the time allowed to move out of my flat was very constrained so it needed an extra body. I did my own packing and unpacking.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

It was two hundred and fifty quid for two movers and their van when I moved from London to Reading around 2000. Admittedly I had less than a three bedroom house's worth of stuff, but I think the movers' time, and the van for the day, and the petrol over the distance, are the dominating factors, so it's fairly insensitive to size of move. You're unlikely to have to shell out four figures even now in 2009 and even with all your goods.

If you really wanted to save money you could just hire a van and fill it, drive it and empty it yourself. But the two movers are worth the money.

[evil-mogwai.livejournal.com]

I would not suggest a man and van, it takes far too long and is far too much trouble. You will also need practically a lorry/truck for a decent amount of stuff in a three bed house. They are also experts at getting things like sofas etc apart easily to get them out of the house when they were 'built' after being brought in

When we moved we filled a full truck of the biggest variety (about the size you see on the road with transport company names on - 2700 cubit foot if I remember correctly). We also had 6 guys working on packing, moving and unpacking.

We spent £1400 including VAT and no packing service. DO NOT ask Pickfords IIRC they came in over £2k and wanted 3 days to do the loading/unloading.

They said that our house had enough in it for a family of four who were all hoarders :) so yours should be under £1k.

Some things worth remembering:

- most of them will have "hangng" boxes so no need to pack your wardrobe stuff into boxes.

- Most will give you a number of boxes for "free" as part of the quote... get those nice and early to help packing time! The ones we were given were 18X12X12inch and 18X18X18inch. They get bloody heavy though. You may have to buy more but we just raided the supermarkets for empty boxes of a decent size instead.

- Items that do not need to be deconstructed to fit in the van and have drawers do not need the drawers unpacked. Our removals company just took the drawers out, put it in the van,and put the drawers back in.

Obviously you should have it easier than us... we had 2 days notice that it was all going through and hadn't done much the week before as we had thought it had fallen through. We finished packing at 11am friday morning by literally shoving things into black bags and shoving them in the car.

[egyptophile.livejournal.com]

What everybody else said.

Plus, if you do get removers, I'd suggest getting insurance against cancellation or change of date. Firms who are members of the British Association of Removers will be able to offer you that option.

House buying can be a chancy business: you never know when there's going to be a last minute delay. Last time I moved the removal men were booked to turn up and start packing the day before completion. On the same day the solicitor phoned to say that we might not be able to proceed, because one of the vendors further down the chain couldn't be contacted.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

It might be worth getting a few standard boxes and packing stuff into them, to give you an idea of how many boxes will be involved -- at which point a ballpark quote might well be forthcoming.

Weirdly, when I moved back from Birmingham to Solihull, I was reunited with the stuff I left behind when I moved from Solihull to Birmingham. Pretty much the only benefit of buying your childhood home.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I would budget about 500 quid though there are means to do it a lot more expensive.

Personally I rented a self storage place and packed most of my stuff myself and shipped it to the storage place before moving. (And then taking it out again when I was moved in). That made things much longer, more expensive, but it meant I had more control over the packing.

Goodluck!

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

I don't know ballparks for the UK.

However the best deal I made when I moved here was to hire three HMONG who worked for a friend in the wholesaling business. They moved 125 boxes of books out and then up three flights of stairs for $5/hour. (I supplied truck.) The offered to do it again!

So maybe if you know soneone who has immigrants in the area that would help.

Anyway, congrats on house.