Great Cut The Cost Of Moving Home Hunt

If you're using a 'professional' removal company, don't get conned into taking their insurance to cover your belongings during the removal. It is usually very expensive and often unnecessary.

Instead check with your household contents insurer. If you have accidental damage cover this will often include cover for during removals. If it doesn't ask your insurer if you can add the extra cover needed for the couple of days of the move. It often works out far cheaper.

Also, if the removal company damage or lose anything - they should be paying for it - so why would you want insurance?

Also, you can save money by packing yourself rather than have them pack everything for you.

The other saving you can make is in the packing materials. If they supply boxes etc, don't write on the boxes but instead get a pen that will write on the sticky tape. That way, the removal company can take the boxes back and use them for another job - and many will either not charge you for the boxes or charge you a much lower rate.

Time-saving tip - get your removal company to provide 'wardrobes'. These are cardboard packing cases that come with a metal rail across the top. You simply lift your clothes out of the wardrobe on the hangers and hang them in the cases. Then simply rehang in your wardrobe at your new house. No folding everything into bags then reironing and rehanging.

Cut down the cost of your removals

As I used to be heavily involved in the business of Removals so I know a thing or two

The classic is customers who say they have no time to sort out the rubbish before they move and will sort it when at there final destination.

Most good removal company’s base there costs on quantity usually Cubic feet, they use this figure to estimate the vehicle size and manpower needed and storage space if required.

So ditch the rubbish, and save £100 - £200 :T

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this or if its OK to do so but could we not post here if we have a house to sell ie four bedroomed detached for sale Sussex, and then pm each other if interested. It would be worth a try and we would have lost nothing. I'm not sure if we can do this on the forums but I'm sure someone will tell me if not. I just thought it was a good idea and since I have been looking for a run down building in Northumberland for two years with no luck I thought that so many people could help each other in this way, it could also save the dreaded estate agents fees.
Shelagh

Jessbehan wrote:

Not sure about 'primelocation' though. I have just put my house on with 'propertybroker.com' and is just being 'dished out' to the portals so will let you know if it ever appears on primelocation.

Primelocation don't accept private vendor advertising nor do they allow their members to subscribe to any other 'portal'. This exclusivity was supposed to be one of their USP's for gaining more agent members, but it rather cripples their future expansion and is out of tune with the way the internet has opened up the property market - it doesn't really add value for buyers as the property selection is restricted to a particular type - but as a specialist site if you are looking for more 'up-market' properties, that is the brand the agents who use them are trying to aspire to.

These types of restrictions (Rightmove /Primelocation /Findaproperty) are anti-competitive and sooner or later the Competition Commission (part of OFT) will probably look at the practices of these sites as there is no valid reason to exclude professionally run private sale websites from listing properties - Rightmove et al will tell you it is for the protection of buyers as, of course, only estate agents operate with integrity in the property market [ :rotfl: ].

The reality is that the estate agent shareholders of these sites are just trying to protect their own offerings from real competition.

Primelocation are now owned by Associated Newspapers (ANM), who own the London Evening Standard and the Daily Mail /Mail on Sunday, together with Findaproperty. It is possible to list on an associated property website equivalent to Primelocation, which benefits from the group's joint marketing - that is HomesandProperty.co.uk. Only one or two private services include this highly underrated portal in their packages.

At some point in the future, it is likely that ANM will merge one or more of their 3 property sites together (probably Findaproperty and HomesandProperty being the main Daily Mail promoted services) creating a single service to rival or exceed Rightmove in terms of sheer marketing clout - remember these sites are backed by national newspaper groups with a 10 million readership and I suspect that the old-fashioned and outdated 'agents only' restriction for Findaproperty listings will disappear altogether in accordance with more modern thinking.