Planning a Long Distance House Move

The single biggest question on a long move is whether loading, driving and unloading fit into one working day. Loading a family home can take most of a morning. Add a long motorway journey and you may be unloading into the evening, in the dark, with tired people carrying heavy furniture up stairs.

Talk this through with your removal firm before you agree a completion date. Sometimes the right answer is loading the day before and delivering the next morning, which turns a rushed, exhausting day into two calmer ones. That choice changes the plan, so it is far better made early than discovered late.

On a local move a delayed key release costs an hour of waiting. On a long move it can mean a loaded lorry arriving at a locked house with nowhere to go. Ask your solicitor or conveyancer early how funds and keys will be released on the day, and who holds the keys at the new end.

If the keys are held by an estate agent near the new property, check their opening hours. An office that closes at half past five is a genuine risk when the van is still on the motorway at four.

You will almost always arrive before the furniture, or long after it has been loaded. Either way there will be hours when your belongings are sealed in a vehicle. Pack a bag for each person as if you were going away for two nights: medication, chargers, a change of clothes, toiletries, documents and anything the children cannot sleep without.

Keep that bag in your car, not the van. It sounds obvious, yet it is the thing people most often regret on a long move.

What goes on last comes off first. On a long move that matters, because the first things off the vehicle should be the ones you need that evening: beds, bedding, the kettle box and anything the new rooms must have before you can use them.

Label boxes with the room at the new house, not the room they came from. The crew at the far end has never seen your old home, and a clear label saves them asking you the same question fifty times.

Parking at an address you have only visited once is easy to underestimate. Use a street view check and, if you can, ask the sellers or a neighbour whether a large vehicle can get close. Look for width limits, low bridges on the approach and whether the council needs notice for a suspension.

Share what you find with your removal firm. A quick photo of the frontage and the road outside helps them send the right size of vehicle, which is much cheaper than finding out on arrival that the lorry cannot get down the lane.

Every item you move a long way costs time to load, carry and unload. It is worth being ruthless before the move rather than paying to carry old furniture, a garage of paint tins and a loft of boxes you have not opened in years to a house that may not have room for them.

PHX Services also handles house and garage clearances, so the things you decide not to take can be cleared before the move instead of cluttering the last week.