I am hopefully moving fairly soon and want to use my van (long wheelbase/ highroof transit) but I’m not sure how the logistics work regarding the move day? We are only moving a few miles away but it’ll take me a few trips etc. Can you arrange to have the whole day to move or do people want to get in as soon as they can on the day? Last time I moved we put things into storage and moved into my mother in laws so I’ve never been in a chain before. So basically how does it work? Cheers

When I’ve done it you’ve got until you hand the keys over. If the buyer can pick up at noon then obviously the estate agent needs them before then.

As a buyer I’d be pissed off if I couldn’t start moving my stuff in until 5pm, unless that was the agreed key pick up time.

The van part is the easy bit.

The slightly harder bit is making sure that the former occupants have fully moved out and you can get hold of the keys on the day you want. Even if it means waiting a few days after completion, to make sure.

Often you will have to pick up the keys from the estate agent, so you have to factor in their opening hours.

Sitting around with a hire van full of stuff and several more runs to do while the other lot are still faffing about at midday is a PITA.

Last time we did it our five-year-old decided that was the day to be ill off school, meaning that only one of us was available for all the loading and unloading …

It depends entirely on the specific circumstances – once you have sold your house (ie, when the solicitors complete the chain on the day) you technically shouldn’t be in it at all (although most people are reasonably flexible). So basically if you are meant to be out at midday on the Friday and the people that have bought want to start moving in at midday on the Friday you should be ready to hand over the keys and be out of their way.

We moved to the next street using my own and my brothers van. You will need a couple of people in each house to help load/unload quick. We got the whole lot moved in under 2 hours.

We moved the majority of our stuff ourselves a few months ago using our LWB low roof Transit dual-cab, i.e. 2 rows of seats so a small cargo area, and hired a XXL Transit high roof (one size down from a Luton van and IMO much more practical instead of faffing with a tail-lift) for a few hours for the big stuff. We did the move over a few days though so had luxury of time.

We’re moving again tomorrow and this time I’ve hired the same XXL high roof Transit for the duration. TBH small van wasn’t the most efficient way to do it and it’s only costing £160 to hire for 4 days via Enterprise.

do note that most lutons- and even larger XLWB transits and dailys can physically fit in lots more weight than they are plated to carry.

if you get tugged you wont be going anywhere till you reduce the weight and will get a nice fine to boot.

once you look at the weights if you have a typical 2/3 bed house youll find your number of trips going up and you may find it as economic to get a movers in with a 7/10 ton lorry who can do it in one trip – are insured for your belongings in transit – which you private van probably isnt and generally have somewhere they can store it if delays.

that said i moved into my current house with a peugeot partner and a berlingo…..but i moved out of a rental with no furniture it was just clothes bikes and tools.

so it really does depend on circumstances. — if i move again itll be with a truck now i have furniture etc.

Yes. SWB. Talk to the people moving in and see what they say.

*waves willy*
I once moved house only using my Peugot 405 estate. Only 1.5 miles though & the other house was clear.
Took about 3 days….

*stops waving willy*

Pay someone else to do it. You have far, far more crap than you think you do.

Pay someone else to do it. You have far, far more crap than you think you do.

There is that – for our first house move I employed mates at beer and curry rates. The last move we had someone move it all after we had boxed it all up. Next time round I am going to pay someone to do the whole bloody lot.

Remember to allow time to clean the house after your stuffs out – handing it over manky is a bit of a dick move

I managed to move contents of our house from Surrey to Norfolk using my Berlingo, thankfully i had plenty of time as i was off work with chickenpox which as an adult is draining, but a mate helped me load the bigger items in Surrey, i was doing the journey back and forth twice a day and put the stuff into one of the Big Yellow Storage places who give cheap rates for the first fortnight (or similar), i basically had mattress on floor, TV and wask kit left in the house ready for the exchange.

Amazing what you can fit in a Berlingo including king size mattress and a 3 seater sofa!

When you move you pay out lots of money to lot’s of people, the only people who actually earn their money are the removal crew. I don’t mind hard work, I’ve loaded and unloaded hundreds of trucks from 7.5 tonners to artics full of kit but helping others move is always so much more painful.

Unless funds are a significant restricting factor, get a removal service in. It probably won’t cost as much as you think,and it’s saves a huge amount of effort and ballache.

I did it with my Dad and brother.
We had a van- SWB, low roof- and cracked on.
Took us 8hrs and about 8 trip total (inc. a Polo for delicate stuff). The move was 20 mins apart.
I don’t fancy doing it again, unless I have a 2-3 day window.

We moved twice in three months with a van – both locally whilst a new house was being finished. We did not have a lot of stuff (small two bed house), but things like fridges and washing machines, a couple of beds and some sofas. Nothing major. The single most helpful aspect of this was that the van had a tail lift. Four of us, two to do the lifting (with tail lift). I’d hire one again in an instant for a small move.

When we moved from the village nine years ago, it took TWO large removal lorries 😀

Have you considered hiring a storage locker? I did this when I moved last year. I moved everything non essential into the locker over the week before hand. This left only one vans worth on stuff to move out on the day. This was useful as I was going on holiday the next day and didn’t have time to move everything in one day. It also meant I could move the remaining stuff from the storage locker into the new home over a more leisurely period of time.

I did it in a hi-top LWB sprinter, and that was just a furnished rental that I’d been Mon-Fri for 2 years. You have WAY more stuff than you think and it takes days to pack it all, and then load it and then unload it.

And as above, you’re expected to give the keys to the estate agent sometime before the completion deadline, and won’t get the new keys until after completion. The banks wouldn’t want you to own two houses for any period of time, what if the buyer pulls out between you getting the new house and them buying yours off you? That’s why you have to pay solicitors to handle the money and complete the chain. As above out of the whole chain the removal guys are probably the only ones who actually do enough work to appear value for money!

Note that most of the people saying they’ve done it (including me) are rentals, that’s easy (and often impossible not to unless your moving day coincides with the end of the tenancy) to overlap by a few days/weeks.

*waves willy*
I once moved house only using my Peugot 405 estate.

Pah, amateur. I moved house a number of times with just a bike and a ruksak. No idea how many journeys I had to make.

These days, in common with many posters above, I’d say to just pay someone else to do it all.

Where are you on the following:
Do you work full time?
Does your partner work?
Full time?
Do you have at least one kid?
Do you have more than one kid?
Do you own your current house?
Have you lived there more than 5 years?
Have you owned a house for 10 plus years?
Ate you at least 35 year-old?
Are you at least 40 years old?
Are most of your close friends and family in a similar situation? Ie kids, jobs, busy lives.

If the answers are generally yes then just pay someone else. It’s not worth the pain.

Storage locker here too. 20ft container.
Rented it for 2 weeks either side of moving day, cost about £90 for the month.
Slowly moved everything in there starting with nopn-eseentials and getting progressivly more essential as moving day got closer. Ended with a single van full of stuff on the day.

do note that most lutons- and even larger XLWB transits and dailys can physically fit in lots more weight than they are plated to carry

Very good words of wisdom there ^

It is all too easy to get one overweight.

If you know someone with a 7.5T license then that would be the way to go if DIYing. Getting it he day before means you can load up one evening, get a good nights sleep and then finish off the next morning.

Unless money is tight pay someone!

Full packing and moving service from 1 part of the country to another has just cost us £900 (big ish house)

We are currently renting a 2 bed flat and have been quoted £350 to move that to the new house 10mes away

Moved house myself hiring Luton van before. Never again

Storage locker here too. 20ft container.
Rented it for 2 weeks either side of moving day, cost about £90 for the month.
Slowly moved everything in there starting with nopn-eseentials and getting progressivly more essential as moving day got closer. Ended with a single van full of stuff on the day.

But WHY?

Sounds like hell?

if you’ve got big wardrobes to move this is the biggest pita because you’ll use one whole van trip per item
Sofa’s are also tricky – we moved a corner sofa last time and even with a professional team with a van it was tricky
Beds – think about how to dismantle and reassemble, you need a way of organising screws and bolts and not lose them
Kitchen – you have way more stuff in those cupboards than you realise
clothes – as kitchen
do you have kids ? this ramps the complexity of moving all their stuff

I’d also be starting on a storage locker now if I were doing a personal van move

Agree with the above. We’ve moved and had people doing a DIY move with multiple trips in the chain below, and it’s a complete PITA.

They save some cash – we end up parked up with our removal team at the side of the road until 9 pm. Once in, any idea of taking time to unload stuff in the correct rooms out of the window.

Then I get a bill from my removal folks for overtime. I asked my solicitor to recover this from the people who caused the issue – which they did.

But WHY?

Sounds like hell?

Must really like loading and unloading vans and have lots of free time!

I borrowed a 7.5t curtain sider and a few mates.
Even with that it took two trips.

Main problem we had was getting the keys to the new house, I sat for 3 hours on the drive fully loaded, unable to get in because the other party were late in transferring the money.
Ended up unloading into the back garden so I could go back and get the second load….. of course then it started to rain!
NEVER EVER AGAIN!!😂

When we moved the £450 we paid removals guys was the best money we spent.
All we did was tidy the flat up the night before, at 9am 5 guys turned up, had everything packed into boxes and loaded in to their trucks by about midday. They took apart furniture etc and rebuilt it the other end.

Then we all went and waited outside the new place until after 5 when the old owners finally moved out of our house.

There’s no way I would have wanted to do it on my own, and that was only a one bed flat we were moving from.

Echoing other comments, last time we moved 3 years ago from a 4 bed house to another 4 bed, getting removals people in was the best money we spent. And despite their huge truck, we also filled a Luton van, our own T5, a Polo and a Golf.

Thinking you could shift everything in x trips in real life means it’ll be x+10 trips.

its about preparation. once took almost a week to move a mate from his bedroom at his mums house to his new house as the stupid **** hadnt organised and packed a thing before i turned up with the borrowed works van.

when I moved out of my parents and boiught one with the mrs (who had her own house) it took until the wee hours despiite the fact that most of my stuff was in a storage unit (will cover below as its been mentioned above) mostly because the guys from removal company the woman we were buying from took frikkin ages to get out of the way as they didnt seem to have prpoerly factored in all the potted plants in the garden. despite having the keys and the first luton full of mrs’s stuff outside we didnt get to unloading til gone 3pm. then had a my parents and my storage unit (closed 7pm IIRC) to sort out.

i had a storage unit becayse 2 weeks before i moved out with the mrs, my parents moved. the got itchy feet when we were looking and completed before I’d moved out. my dad being old had told the removal company i was moving myself and then that screwed me over. i spent a few weeks moving my stuff into boxes and a storage unit. tbh its a really attractive solution. to have a small van with the essentials and the rest in storage bar a few essentials could work well. i bought a job lot of plastic boxes and still use them, and a few more lots I bought to this day to organise my stuff.

the mrs mother has moved roughly every 2 years since I’ve been with the mrs (about 12 years) and she mostly makes it easy by using plastic tubs. moved her a few times in a LWB sprinter (another fam member was a carpet fitter) and it took about 4 trips. as she rents now its not been so bad.

If I were moving again. I’d hire a company to handle the big/ehavy stuff, but be hot on the packing/labelling. to make things like getting to essential kitchen/washing/bedding/baby etc stuff and stuff like that easier. I’d also be tempted to put a lot into storage temporarily.

A friend of mine moved his family in a rented van, took several trips and had 6 relatives roped in to help.

A work colleague did her house move herself, the van got robbed whilst she was packing stuff up in the house, lost loads of valuables!

When we moved, we got professionals in, they had our house in the back of their van in about 90 mins (it could have been less than that.) We then went and sat in a cafe drinking tea until we got the keys, the van showed up and had us unpacked in no time. Seems a no brainer to me, just pretend your new house Cody you an extra £400 or something. You won’t regret it.

*waves willy*

Call that willy waving? I’m in the process of moving from Scotland to Malta (Gozo actually so +1 ferry). 1 car trip (van not available due to incompetent mechanic meaning van not available, thank you Winchburgh Garage in Lothian, wbe seeing you in court), van trip December past and another at end of March. Possibly 1 more, depends on how March goes. Shipping was priced at about the same as 3 trips, including fuel and ferries but not depreciation on the van. Shipping company could only offer a two week window for delivery so difficult to be certain that I’d be there when they arrived.
Long drive, but who doesn’t love a road trip across the Alps and having a couple of days on Italian Autostrada living off espresso and pizza? Inflatable mattress and doss in the van on the way back

Most of my stuff went in the van when last moved, other than the fridge and washing machine. I took them on a sack truck! Only moved 1/4 of a mile to be honest

Ladt time we moved we paid someone to pack, then they moved it best money I’ve ever spent.

I didnt let him touch the bikes though. I moved them!

Agree with this. When we moved into our house the previous owners hadn’t done anything and the place was really mucky! it took the shine off our moving day a bit so would never do it to anyone else.

Cheers for all the replies, horror stories etc! I think I have decided to get my hand in my pocket and go with a removal firm. I suggested to my wife we try to raise the money by selling off some unwanted things that would otherwise end up coming with us to the new house… two birds, one stone etc. Thanks again all.

We should finish moving tomorrow, started Monday. Mostly my parents T5, but a Luton for today and tomorrow.
If we were moving to a finished house we would have used a removal firm, but we are moving into a shell that needs renovating, so have been stashing stuff in a few places that I can use as storage, a rental flat as we have a little one and some stuff to site tomorrow.

To move in one load would need a long 7.5 ton box for our small 2 bed house.

A summer move would have been more convenient, could have just borrowed a grain trailer from a neighbour to put behind the tractor.

You won’t regret it!
We moved from a flat to house ,5mins away with a hired lwb transit. My 2 brothers traveled 300+ miles to help me. Bless ‘Em. Anyhow , it was a complete ball ache from start to finish. Keys were due at noon and we had agreed a three hour window to do three trips with the van. Keys didn’t come til 3.30 ,by then they wanted to move in and their removal men , understandably, wanted to go home.aaaagghhh. Que frenzied dashing about& then had to remove window in new house to get sofa in whilst it bloody rained. All in by 730 pm and my then 18 month old said he wanted to go home.I can feel my blood pressure rising as I type. Never again.

We bought a 1979 LWB Landrover with a roof-rack for our move… definitely not the right vehicle for a house move, but it was great for the many trips to the tip.

Got it for £780 off ebay, and flogged it for about £200 less 8 months later.

We had a three week window as we were moving from a rented house, but I would definitely not do it if we were moving same day.