Moving On Budget

We are all familiar with the most stressful events in life, with moving home ranking alongside bereavement, divorce and other emotion draining events in our lives. In addition, it is so easy for hard earned cash to be haemorrhaged away during the process. Not all employers will meet the costs of a Relocation Agent’s support, specifically designed to ease the stress of moving home and speed up the process of settling into a new area. However, many provide their relocating staff with a fixed budget, available for them to spend in whatever manner they wish.

Finding somewhere to live is often a task which the family will undertake themselves; why should they pay to be driven around an area to see various properties, when they can contact Real Estate Agents themselves and make their own arrangements, using the money available on other important costs?

This is a situation that we often find and are frequently asked to help out and provide advice at a later stage, once a lot of time and money has already been spent.

An experienced, competent Relocation Agent will listen carefully to what you are looking for. What are your hopes? Your expectations? Your essentials? We will guide you through the market maze, from a totally impartial and independent view.

  • What is available?
  • Where else can we look?
  • What about …..?

You may choose to have an Orientation Tour of your new location.

A day wasted? We guarantee that you will not think so after you have experienced this.

This will not be a tour of the sights – although one or two may be pointed out! We will prepare a detailed agenda for your tour, whether for a whole or a half day, during which you will be shown:

  • Residential areas where you may well find what you are looking for within your budget,
  • School locations,
  • Leisure facilities – whatever your preference from golf to cinemas,
  • Shopping facilities - daily needs and more occasional essentials,
  • Medical facilities, Hospitals, Doctors, Dentists etc.,
  • Transport links and have a discussion about travel to work times and bottle necks.

In addition, it may be possible to show you inside one or two properties that are available to give you a better indication of what may be your new home. (Please note that Real Estate Agents rarely work at weekends and this may therefore not be possible).

Can you do all of this in a day on your own?

At the same time, you will be spending time with an experienced, friendly expert on the local area, who really will have “Been there, Done that and Got the Tee-Shirt”; someone able to tell you what living in the area is really like. You will have the opportunity throughout to talk generally about whatever points of concern or interest that you may have.

Once you have completed the Orientation Tour, you may feel that you have identified the area in which you wish to live and decide to seek out what accommodation is available for yourself. Alternatively, we will of course be pleased to help you further. Often the cost of our own fees is saved by the skilled negotiations which we enter into on your behalf.

And the costs?

Consider if you are coming from the UK to have a look around, say, Brussels. You search through the Internet extensively beforehand and find several properties that are in your price range and are worth a look. You travel over for a brief stay, requiring two nights in a Hotel, ferry or flights, meals, not forgetting either bringing the children or finding babysitters back at home. The cost? Only evidenced by the disappointment when you get back home having seen several totally unsuitable properties in uninspiring locations about which you know very little. This after all is where you may be spending the next 2-3 years – so do you want to make a decision in two days? There is nothing for it but to repeat the whole exercise again.

The alternative? Have a leisurely chat before you travel with a Relocation Agent, who will make it their business to get to know you. Spend a valuable, worthwhile day looking at what really matters and counts in moving to a new location. Over your stay you may even have some time left to really enjoy it and treat it as a break……. and you will not have to keep travelling over so often. You are ready to make some firm decisions.

And the costs of moving into the wrong home do not bear thinking about.

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