Guide · 5 min read
What actually affects the cost of a move
People expect removals to be priced by distance and by the number of bedrooms. Neither is a very good predictor. Two three-bedroom houses on the same street can differ by several hours once you look at what is in them and how you get it out.
Volume, not bedrooms
A bedroom count tells you almost nothing. A three-bedroom house where one room is an office with two filing cabinets and a family that has lived there fifteen years is a very different load from a three-bedroom house that has been rented furnished.
What is being priced is the volume — and volume decides the vehicle and how many trips, which is where the cost actually sits. This is why a survey is worth ten minutes of your time: it turns a guess into a figure.
Access, at both ends
This is the biggest single variable and the one most often left out of an enquiry. The floor, the stair, whether the lift is big enough to take furniture, and how close the van can legally park.
A ground-floor house with a driveway at both ends might be a five-hour job. The same contents from a third-floor flat with no lift and no parking outside could be nine. Nothing about the contents changed.
The date
The last Friday of the month is the busiest day in the removals calendar, because that is when most completions land. Fridays generally, month-ends, and the days either side of school holidays all go first.
If your date is flexible by even a couple of days, a midweek move in the middle of the month is easier to book and usually easier to price.
What you ask us to do
Each of these is a real cost and each is optional.
- Packing — full, fragile-only, or none. The biggest single add-on.
- Dismantling and reassembly of furniture.
- Storage between dates.
- Clearance of what you are not taking.
- Specialist items: a piano, a safe, a very large aquarium.
Why we do not publish a price list
Because a headline figure that ignores access is a figure that changes on the day, and a price that changes is the single most common complaint about this industry. We would rather look at the job and give you a number that holds.
A video survey takes about ten minutes on your phone and produces a written, itemised quote. That is a better use of your time than reading a table of prices that will not apply to you.