In today’s highly competitive real estate market, it’s important that you provide assistance far beyond simply helping clients sell or buy houses. You need to be armed with a whole range of information, designed to help clients throughout every step of the buying and selling process. Moving house is a huge part of this process. Sally Wood from Kent Relocation Group has some tips.
Choose The Right Company
The moving company that your clients choose to provide their removals service has an enormous responsibility, and plays a huge role when it comes to making their move stressful. They are quite literally in charge of moving your clients’ entire life from one space to another. As such, significant research should take place before a moving company is decided upon. A few criteria that your clients can use to choose a moving company include:
- Third party accreditation: from the relevant industry bodies, such as FIDI and FAIM. These accreditations prove the company has been vetted by an independent source and are a reputable service provider.
- Excellent reputation: these days, there are plenty of online review sites (such as ProductReview.com.au, WOMO, Yelp, and even Facebook). Encourage your clients to check all these sites before they decide upon a supplier.
- Industry experience: there are new removals companies popping up every day. After all, you really just need a van and a couple of strong, able-bodied movers. The thing is, some of these newer suppliers just don’t have the industry experience to make moving day stress-free.
Don’t Rush
Moving house is a significant undertaking. It’s just not the type of task that can be completed in a weekend. Encourage your clients need to start preparing months in advance if they are going to enjoy a successful and stress-free move day. Pass on this Ultimate Moving Checklist to help guide them through their preparations. This checklist starts at least two months prior to moving day, just to ensure that there is no stone left unturned.
Pack With Purpose
Placing valuables in transit opens them up to breakage and damage. To prevent this encourage your patients to pack with purpose instead of just throwing things in a box.
Packing with purpose means using quality materials (bubble wrap, new moving boxes), not overfilling boxes and reading instruction manuals to ensure you have taken all the precautions that the manufacturer recommends.
Certain items will also require more care than others. For instance, washing machines will need to have transit bolts installed to prevent the internal mechanisms moving and breaking during transit. Fridges should also be completely emptied and thoroughly cleaned, to avoid the build-up of unpleasant odours. Gas bottles, scuba gear, mowers and other tools should be completely emptied of all liquids and flammable materials.
Ancillary Services
Encourage your clients to seek out moving companies that offer a breadth of services rather than just a basic removal service. There’s always a chance that the move will require your client to seek out help and it makes it a lot easier if their moving company can supply most of the things they need. Services to look for include pet and vehicle transport, cleaning, packing and even handyman services.
Book Storage Early
It’s impossible to know how belongings will fit in a home until the client has moved in. With this in mind clients should be encouraged to seek our storage services to ensure they have a safe space to store their belongings while they set up their new address.
It’s important to remember that storage spaces are limited and there is a huge demand meaning spaces do book out. Clients need to book storage nice and early to ensure they end up with a space they are happy with and a space that suits their budget.
Finalise Details
Moving days are often derailed due to a lack of communication between customers and their moving companies. It’s vital that customers contact their moving company a week before the move to confirm all important details such as arrival times and access points.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Having worked in marketing, communications and public relations roles for over ten years, Sally Wood is well-versed in just about every aspect of message delivery. She is the Communications Coordinator at Kent Relocation Group, and the Chief Wordsmith at her own agency, Wordly (www.wordly.com.au).
