In the UK, around 4 million people move home each year. A person can expect to move home, on average, every 7-10 years. When you add it all up, that’s a lot moving house. And since we move house so rarely, it can be difficult to remember the important bits about the home move.
In this article, we’ll cover the 5 most important things to do when moving home. Ultimately, it’s getting you from A to B. However, if you do these 3 things when you’re moving home you’ll save money, time, and stress.
1) Compare services to save money
According to Barclays, the average cost of moving house in the UK is £9,000. If you’re a student changing flats it will cost a lot less. Likewise, if you’re selling your penthouse in Mayfair or moving across the UK you can expect to pay considerably more.
The big-ticket items that drive up the spend are; conveyancing (solicitors), removals, storage, new furniture and estate agency fees. You can reduce your costs by up to 40% by comparing services online and booking in advance. When it comes to choosing your solicitors, or removal companies take the extra time to do the research and check costs. However, you want to optimise for price + quality, not just price. If you’re looking to move home extremely cheaply you can run into problems with unreliable service and even let downs. It is possible to do the removals yourself by hiring protective packaging. You can compare competitive prices right here on the HouseShop through our homepage.
Smaller costs can build up too when changing address, so be mindful of cancellation fees for your energy and broadband providers. With some providers you can transfer your broadband from one property to another, bypassing any cancellation fees. Most energy providers will endeavour to place you onto fixed-term contracts for 12 or 24 months. They will fix a period of time so and offer you a cheaper rate commensurate with that commitment. The flip side of this is that when you’re moving home if you want to cancel you can need to pay exit fees, sometimes exceeding £100.
Think about these sorts of costs in advance. In the case of energy & broadband, you can usually take them over to your new property.
2) Update your address with everyone
You’re moving home, but who else needs to know about? With so much to organise when changing address people often neglect to inform others that they have moved home which can cause a host of problems. For example, if you don’t update your address, you are more likely to be a victim of credit fraud because others will receive your mail. Likewise, your personal mail, offers and important updates will all be going to a different place.
Therefore, when moving home you must update your address across all of your accounts. The most important address updates are governmental: HMRC, DWP, your council and electoral roll. You also need to pay close attention to updating your address across utilities such as broadband, TV licence & even energy providers. To save time on this you can use a UK change of address service that will help you update your address with these companies at the same time.
Most people neglect to update their address with some of their providers for two reasons. Firstly, it can be time-consuming; and secondly, you have a lot to do when moving. As we have covered, updating your address is important and you can use online changing services to reduce the amount of time it takes too.
3) Use a moving home checklist and stick to it
It can feel like very standard advice to say ‘use a checklist when moving home’. Notwithstanding, most home movers don’t organise their home moves in a methodical way. Even more, those that do aren’t organised or efficient. This is usually because of the sheer volume of activities a home mover has to undertake when moving.
The first step is to create an excel sheet or download a template and create a list for all of the actions you can think of. As we know well, mark these all with a due date and a status column. This isn’t hard to do, but it will prevent critical moving dates and tasks from slipping through the cracks when you’re moving house. Even better, it will help make your home move less stressful.
In summary, there are three important tasks to remember when moving home. Firstly, compare services online to save your costs. Secondly, make sure you update your address with everyone, including friends in a timely manner. And finally, make use of a comprehensive moving home checklist – and stick to it.
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