Moving tale
The easy way and the hard way to change houses.
There’s nothing difficult about moving, as long as you have $50,000 to spend on changing your address.
That was the bill for National hockey League star Saku Koivu when he packed up his belongings and left montreal for the warmer pastures of California to play for the Anaheim mighty ducks back in 2009. Mr. Koivu had just signed a $3.5-million contract, more than enough to cover his costs.
For that type of money you get what the industry calls its “white glove” move where you don’t lift a finger or do anything. you just point where you want things to go.
Better yet, movers can take pictures of your existing home and replicate it down to the last detail in your new home. The cost ultimately varies depending on how much stuff you have, where you live and where you are moving to.
“We can show up the day before your move, pack everything. We dismantle it and put everything together,” said Joe Gagnon, president of montreal-based Westmount moving and Storage, which calls itself the official mover of the Canadiens. “We even clean the home you just left and the one you are going into. We’ll hang curtains and set up light fixtures.”
Mr. Koivu didn’t pack any of his own stuff. The other end of
the moving tale is the cheaper but back-breaking do-it-yourself model where you rent a truck and convince a couple of friends to help you.
moving is not a small consideration when you consider over a lifetime we move five to six times, says the Canadian Association of movers. A Statistics Canada survey done in may 2011 found four million Canadians had moved in the previous 12 months.
The end of the month is always a busy time to move and with Canada day falling on a monday, this is expected to be one of the crazier weekends for packing up. If you are in a high-rise condominium and you haven’t booked that elevator yet you may be in trouble.
Quebeckers have a long history of making July 1 an annual rite of passage for exiting one residence for another. Mr. Gagnon says about 7%-10% of apartment dwellers move every year in the province and 60% do it on the same day, July 1.
“We were booked weeks ago,” says Mr. Gagnon, adding the earliest he can now assign a mover is July 5. “everybody moves out on the same day, we don’t do things in a logical way in Quebec.”
It’s not just Quebec. June 30 is the end of the school year for most children and people who bought homes in the spring market usually set their closing date for this time of year or just before school returns.
The easy and expensive way is to have Mr. Gagnon send a crew
to pack up your house from top to bottom and move you into your new home — usually done over a couple of days for a large home.
“It’s definitely a luxury service but that’s one of the challenges for our industry: a lot of people think they can do it themselves,” Mr. Gagnon says. “It’s like painting, I can paint myself so why hire someone?”
But there is a compromise. A full move for a large home in the
A lot of people think they can do it themselves.... It’s like painting
3,000 to 5,000 square foot range, not quite as high end as Mr. Koivu, is about $15,000; that cost comes down substantially if you are doing all the packing yourself and Westmount is just coming to load and unload all of your belongings. That type of move is $5,000 or $6,000.
There are options within the options. you can have the company bring all the bins, boxes and packing materials you need to your home for a fee.
“It’s not just the rich and famous that look for service, it’s people that value their time,” Mr. Gagnon says.
The other key valuation to consider is what your stuff is actually
worth: do you want to spend $5,000 to move belongings that are worth less than that?
“If you are a student and have all garage-sale furniture, that’s one thing,” Mr. Gagnon says.
young people tend to be more likely to consider moving themselves to save money, says Tim Prior, an area vice-president for Penske Truck Leasing Canada.
A typical move within your own city can probably be done for as little as $500 for seven or eight rooms, if you rent a truck.
“It’s the manpower that is going to be expensive,” says Mr. Prior, joking the usual cost for a couple of your friends helping out is pizza and beer.
There are some downsides to packing on your own. For starters, you have to know what you are doing or you could end up breaking your own stuff or damaging your home. moving companies are insured for that, but Mr. Prior says his company will only insure the truck and not your stuff.
“The real driving factor is [the cost]. It depends on the wage you make but it is more of a younger person’s move,” he says, adding that as we get older and have families it becomes that much more difficult to track down friends to help with the lifting.
One consideration when moving is deciding if you are up to driving the actual truck, although today’s modern vehicle has an automatic transmission with fewer blind spots. you generally just need a standard driver’s licence
with no restrictions and over 21 years of age to rent a small truck in most provinces.
“It is important to know where you are moving. It can be difficult to get a 26-foot truck into some smaller laneways and alleyways in the city,” Mr. Prior says. “One of the drawbacks for people moving themselves is the intimidation factor of driving the truck. even 20 years ago it was very difficult to steer. Today’s truck is every easy to drive.”
modern trucks or not, denis Cordick, vice-president of marketing for AMJ Campbell, wants no part of that. he laughs at what he told his brother-in-law the last time he asked for help with a move.
“I threw some money on the table and said ‘here, I’ll contribute [to hiring AMJ Campbell]. I’m not risking throwing out my back or breaking your stuff ’,’ ” he says. A couple of other relatives followed suit and he was convinced to go with a mover.
Like other movers, AMJ rates depend on service. The company offers what it calls a “quick move” where trained students will come and move your stuff at a lower price.
“It depends of the volume of stuff you have and whether you trust your friends,” Mr. Cordick says. “remember, once you ask your three friends to move, guess what? They are asking you.”