Everyone acts like moving home is the greatest thing on earth. To be fair, it should be! You’re often moving somewhere new and exciting, opening a new chapter in your life. You deserve for this to be an enjoyable time yet there are aspects of moving house everyone kindly forgets to mention.
As you can guess, these aspects aren’t particularly fun to deal with. We’ll go through three big things no one tells you about moving home that you’ll benefit from knowing.
Your new house might not be clean
You like to think of yourself as a responsible homeowner. As you’re planning to move out of your old home, you give it a proper deep clean. You want to leave it as neat as possible for the next owners so they have a lovely fresh start.
Sadly, not everyone thinks like this!
Something nobody ever mentions is that your new house might not be clean when you move in. Previous owners aren’t technically obligated to clean their properties and many don’t. This means you move into a dirty place that feels icky. One recommendation is to book a move-in cleaning service to handle the cleaning for you before you move. Inform the previous owners so they don’t have to do anything. It costs money, but it’s better than hoping the old owners cleaned the place properly.
It takes a lot longer than you expect
You’d like to imagine that moving home takes maybe a week at the absolute most after you’ve bought a house. It takes time to pack your items and move them, but it shouldn’t take that long…right?
The average time it takes to move house is between 12 weeks and 6 months.
Yep, it genuinely takes that long – and this is the “average” so it might take even longer. Be prepared for a drawn-out process and do everything you can to speed things along. Ensure you’ve got all the right documents to hand over and be ready to respond to emails or calls so you can secure the keys and move according to your own timeline.
Moving companies cost a bomb
Everyone tries to move home by themselves, but moving companies are almost always required for bigger items and to relieve your stress hormones. It’s virtually impossible to avoid hiring one – especially if you’re moving out of state or to a new city. People are happy to recommend moving companies, though they never mention how expensive they are.
It could cost between $800 to $2500 for local moves and upwards of $10,000 for long-distance ones. This is something to factor in when buying a home as you should try to get the moving costs out of the asking price. Bargain with the seller to get a neat reduction and it won’t make your move as costly. If you pay full price and then pay for moving companies, you’re adding an extra few thousand dollars to the total cost.
Be wary of these three things when moving house as they can bite you if you’re not careful. Get ready for a fairly lengthy moving process and do whatever you can to make it less stressful.
