The Cost of Moving House
Jul 05, 2022Moving house is one of the most full-on experiences, and a few years ago I went through it for the first time with a toddler. Compared to many people I know, I haven’t moved all that much – about 7 times in my whole life. Each time I seemed to have accumulated more stuff – furniture, books, clothes, and just stuff.
Every time until now it’s been to move from properties I’ve rented, to yet another rental. This time my husband and I bought a house and moved to the home where our daughter will grow up. I was astounded at how expensive it is to buy and move!
Moving between rental houses costs the cleaning fee and the removalists (or at the very least a truck and getting some strong friends to help).
Buying a house and moving out of a rental is a whole different ball game. Here are just some of the costs we incurred:
- Cost of cleaners for the rental
- Cost of a gardener for the rental
- Inspection fees for the house we bought (building, pest, and pool inspections)
- Legal fees (conveyancing)
- Valuation fee (for gaining finance)
- Building insurance (because up until now we’d only needed Contents insurance)
- Stamp duty to buy the house
- Removalist costs (because you can’t ask friends to move that much stuff)
- Initial renovation costs (we replaced carpets, did some painting, and had to replace some security doors because they were broken).
All up these costs amounted to about $24,000. Moving house is certainly not a cheap exercise!
If you’re selling and then buying, you also have the added cost of the real estate agent’s fee to factor in.
Definitely consider all this before you decide to move house. It’s not just about the buy and sell price!
