Moving house isn’t cheap. It turns out that the average person spends more than $40,000 just on the moving process itself. That’s $40,000 that could be put towards kids’ college fees or a new car. The question on the lips of many moms, therefore, is “how to reduce moving costs?”
It turns out that there are many things that you can do to slash the costs of moving, none of which will have any material impact on the actual outcome. Here’s what to do.
Cut Your Estate Agency Fees
Although they might act like they love you, estate agents are not your friends. Instead, they want to get the biggest cut possible from selling your home, and they can often run off with a lot of money. If you sell your home for $200k, then estate agents might take a $6k cut, which is a lot.
The good news is that there are many ways to get the price you pay at the realtor down. The first thing to do is to shop around for quotes. Different estate agents have different pricing strategies which means that you’re able to compare quotes and use them as leverage. Often if you haggle, realtors will cut their prices so that they don’t lose your business.
You’ve got other options too. One is to bypass estate agents entirely and use online services that don’t charge any estate agency fees. There are sites like HouseWeb which allow you to post adverts of your home publicly for a much smaller fee than what it would cost if you went through an agency.
If you do decide to go down this route, it’s worth pointing out that you’ll have to do a bit of extra work yourself. For instance, you’ll have to take photos of your home as well as come up with a valuation that is sensible for the area in which you live. If you charge too high a price, you won’t get a lot of interest. If the price is too low, however, then you’ll miss out on equity for your next move and may have been better off just selling through a realtor.
Cut Your Shipping Costs
Transports items of furniture from one location to another might not seem like a costly task. But when you think about how much manpower it requires, it turns out to be a big operation. You’ve got to pay the wages of up to four removal workers, plus the cost of the van and all the maintenance it requires. Thus, it’s not usually to pay over $2000 for a single removal, which is a lot of money.
The good news is that thanks to services like Shiply, it’s getting a lot cheaper to transport large items. Rather than having to arrange a separate trip to transport your grand piano, these services allow you to get quotes from couriers in the local area and then compare prices. Often the prices are much lower because couriers are in-between jobs and just collect your stuff on the way to their next delivery.
Speak Your Mind