Planning a move is quite the headache. A headache which only intensifies the farther away your move happens to be. When your move is across town, that’s one thing. Across state lines is another thing entirely. The cost to move increases with the distance. At a certain point, you may find yourself wondering if it’s really worth the money to move all your things or just upgrade with the new home. To make this decision, consider these factors.
Estimates
The first step you inevitably take during a move is gathering estimates from potential movers. There are several things that affect this estimate. Time, types of service, floors in a house, weight, bulky/irregular shaped items, and distance are all going to affect your final cost.
Let’s start with time. Your moving company may price by the hour, or a flat rate. Your decision to choose between these rates will depend on how far you have to travel and how much packing you plan on doing. If you leave all the packing up to the movers, it’s going to take longer. The amount of stairs they have to go up and down will affect how quickly they can move.
As we just mentioned, you can hire movers to simply move your items, or perform a full service of packing, moving, and unpacking/assembling your items. For things like beds and sectional couches, if you were to buy new items it’s likely that delivery and installation would come included. You’ll still have to get your old items out of the house, but this is where you could potentially save some money by purchasing new bedroom furniture.
The number of floors in your house and how many stairs you have doesn’t just translate into time, it also adds to the effort of the movers. Tight corners and the unbalanced weight makes the job harder and therefore cost more. It isn’t just the house you’re moving out of, it’s the one you’re moving into, as well, that will be added in.
Bulky and irregular shaped items are the other area where it may behoove you to forego moving certain furniture pieces and invest in something new. Weight and shape comes into play when it starts to exceed a certain amount. The heavier and harder to move an item, the more it’s going to cost you.
What’s The Work-Around?
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you choose to get a new couch instead of moving yours. It’s still going to need to be removed from the house or apartment. If you leave it behind a in a rental property, you could be charged a removal fee. However, if you can get it out to the curb (for the price of some pizza to feed your strong friends) you can request that the city pick it up for free. You can also look into other avenues such as Habitat for Humanity. Often, when you donate to this and similar organizations, if you don’t have a means to drop off the item, they will come to you and pick it up at little or no charge. As for new furniture, delivery and installation options are always available from the seller. Simple research and price comparison will be your best bet to determine which option is right for you.
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