What to sort out first - moving abroad in 4 months...

[AdventureInKL]

We have just decided to move abroad (KL). We've written so many pages of lists that I don't know where to start...

Anyone any idea of shipping timescales - if it takes 6 weeks to get there, when do we need to arrange it etc?

What to take?

How to rent the house out?

How to sell the car?

etc. etc.

Any advice would really help. :)

Hi, we moved back after several years in Australia,it depends what company you go with,but definitly get a few different quotas.We went with a company that up lifted a couple of days before we left, and delivered within in a couple of weeks.With Packing just bring things that mean alot to you and are essential ,as it is expensive and honestly some of the things we bought home i look at now and go why??furniture/out door set /kitchen apps you can pick up cheaper then it would be to bring.And remember it will be hot and hotter.Also bear in mind that the plugs in your appliances will be different over there.any way thats just my opinion, but living abroad was the best experience and we loved it and best of luck on your adventure!

oh one more thing! one mistake we made is that we left quite quick due to work commitments and ended up giving away so much stuff i.e playstations,telle,really good kitchen apps ,as we never thought of cash converters, and its all money at end of day..good luck!

Thank you, that's really useful.

Just call some shipping companies now- Santa Fe, Pickfords, Asian Tigers etc. They will usually send someone to do a pre-move survey and then give you a quote. Often they will do some sea freight (bulky items) and some air freight. Air freight is more expensive but good for items which you need more quickly. Are you moving with your/DH's employer? If so, they usually sort this out for you as they'll have a preferred supplier. When you get to KL, will you be in a serviced apartment or will you move straight into a house? This impacts timing of shipping as you don't want a long time with no furniture at either end and Asian apartments are almost always rented unfurnished. At the same time, you dont want the stuff sitting in storage for weeks while you find an apartment.

What to take- if it's an open ended contract, and subject to house size, I'd just take everything, albeit have a really thorough clear out first so you're not paying to transport clothes you havent worn for 10 years, broken blenders and biros with 1mm ink in them half way round the world. My philiospohy was "chuck or ship" but to be fair we didnt have any priceless antiques or anything.

Pets- If you have any, decide whether you're taking or rehoming. If taking, the shipping company will usually have a recommended pet relocator who can sort all the paperwork for you at both ends, take your pet to the airport for you, and advise on quarantine/ arrange if required. If rehoming, do sooner rather than later in case the first attempt doesnt work out.

Renting the house- unless you have friends or relatives who live close by and are prepared to manage the property for you, best to use a managing agent. Get a few round. Find out which agents in your area are renting houses most like yours. If it's likely to appeal to a returning expat family, make sure it's on websites like Rightmove. You can do it all yourselves and ask the tenants to just organise repairs when needed, but that relies on the tenants good nature/being responsible. Also, it's tricky if tenants leave and you need to find some more whilst on the other side of the world with an 8 hr time difference

Car- this is always a PITA because you need the car right up until the last minute, but you also need to make sure you can sell it so cant leave it till the last minute. You'll potentially get more flexibility if you can sell it to the trade, but a higher price on a private sale. Lots of options- sell back to dealer if car quite new, sell to trade, sell via autotrader, local paper etc. If selling privately be prepared for timewasters and think about how you're going to handle test drives if DH not around- i.e. if a random guy wants to test drive the car, are you going to feel comfortable just getting in the car with him. I sold a crappy old BMW through "We buy any car" just for peace of mind that I could definitely sell it, but could keep it right until the day before I flew out. It wasnt a great price, but otherwise I would have needed a hire car, so net net, it was evens.

Schools- you havent mentioned this, but if not already sorted/ no debentures then this should be your no. 1 priority as often the international schools in Asian cities are hard to get into and have long waiting lists.

I would get in touch with a shipping company asap. I sold my car to the dealer due to flexibility and car was only 4 years old and was purchased from the same dealership.
Things to consider:
If you are going out before you relocate, take some toys and games for the kids that you can leave there (my dh left some boxes at work) and then you have something for the kids when you arrive.
Look at what vaccinations you need. Rabies eg. requires 3 jabs over several weeks.

Get a dental check up before you leave.
On the day of the move - label everything with post its - air freight/sea freight/storage - you may have 5 packers and you won't be able to oversee them all.
Get some passport photographs done before you leave - useful for visas/work permits etc.

Do you have serviced accommodation when you get there before you move to your own place? We had air freight and sea freight as Real mentioned. Everything was packed and sent about a week before we left. The air freight arrived not long after we did. We were then in serviced accommodation for 1 month before moving into our own place. The sea freight arrived not long after we moved in (we are in Singapore) if that helps at all.

Re house definitely get an agent. We had viewings in the month before we left. Also join the non- residents landlord scheme with hmrc so you get rental payments without tax deducted at source from your rent.

Can't help you on the car as my parents had ours as my Dad managed to write his off not so long before we left.

Thank you all for your brilliant responses.

We are going because I have a job in an international school, so no school worries.

They provide a serviced apartment for one month, then we'll rent furnished. We were intending to leave our furniture here and rent this house furnished.

We did have thoughts of asking a trusted friend, who is a handyman, to manage the house rental. DH manages another house - that one will go to agents as it's too far away from anyone we trust.

The car really is tricky. Unlikely to get a buyer who would be willing to wait, unless it's a friend or family member I guess.

Can I ask, those who took everything (or in fact, anyone with any experience), how much did shipping end up costing? Seven Seas seem to be cheaper than the others, but I can't really visualise the amounts compared to stuff!

Pets are going to be rehomed. One of the chickens go eaten last night :( so a bit less to rehome :(

I dont have experience of KL but are you sure it's easy to rent furnished? - it might well be but my experience of other Asian cities (in fact other non-UK cities) is that needing furnished massively cuts down your choice. In Hong Kong only about 1% of (non-serviced) apartments are let furnished and they tend to be relatively expensive (and the furniture taste can be interesting).

Cant help with costs on shipping as ours was done through DH's company. However, if you call them and tell them number of rooms etc they can normally give you a rough idea. Otherwise, get them round to give you a quote. They're used to it.

I'm in KL although only new to the area . I think there is quite a good selection of furnished apartments here. My dh lived in one for a year before we arrived. and we have just spent the last 2 months in one waiting for our stuff to arrive (not from the UK though). Most of them are congregated around KLCC though you may struggle if you want to live in the suburbs. Also agree with reallife they tend to be serviced apartments which you will pay a premium for. I guess you just need to cost it up and decide if it is worth shipping or not. A good property website is iproperty check out the prices/availability there

We just moved overseas with DH's company in Sept. We were initially going to rent furnished but realised that all the accommodation over here was unfurnished and we would be cobbling together various bits of tat as we could afford them which we would then have difficulty getting rid of if we moved back to the UK. When we got an agent to rent our house for us he actually said that 70% of renters want a house unfurnished, and talking to friends who had moved abroad they said that they would always take their stuff as it made them less homesick. We went with an agent who guarantees rental income for 12 months, whether they have tenants or not. Higher in commission but worth it for hassle free peace of mind. They are Northwood UK and I can't fault them. Every time something in the house is broken or not working it is fixed asap and deducted from our rental income, with the invoice scanned and e-mailed to us as proof, and for our tax returns. They began marketing our proerty while we were in it and it was rented in less than 48 hours.

DH's company gave us £4000 towards relocating and our shipping was just over £5000, so in the end we decided it was better to shell out £1000 than kit out a whole house with new stuff. It took 6 weeks to go over the Atlantic from door to door. The company packed everything for us and itemised it, got it ready for customs etc. All I had to do was provide tea, coffee and biscuits! It took 3 men 2 days to pack up our 3 bedroomed house, garage and shed. Then 1 day to move in, unpack everything and take away all the rubbish. Again, I cannot fault them at all. Brilliant! They were Aberdeen Shore Porters.

We brought our dog over with us and that cost around £700 all in, for vet's fees, shipping, crate, airport inspections etc. He was in the crate around 12 hours and was absolutely fine when he got out. He settled in straight away.

DH's company gave us a condo for 1 month but we had already scouted around and got a house to rent for when the condo ended. Luckily we had friends here to help us look.

My lovely dad polished up our car and cleaned it all up. He sold it for us about 2 weeks after we left.

I made sure I had a copy of all of our medical records to take with us so that our new doctor had a full history, and also made sure that I notified the tax man, the child benefits people and others like that. We had to get permission from the mortgage company to allow us to rent our house. You may also want to make voluntary contributions of National Insurance to the UK.

Hmmmm, I'm trying to think what else might help. I just remember the last couple of months sorting, resorting and sorting again, having car boot sales, trips to the tip and being ruthless. Because shipping goes by cubic feet we didn't want to take anything that we didn't need. I left all our electrical stuff in my parent's attic as it wouldn't work over here, so they have many lamps, power tools and a lawn mower up there, just in case we come back. DH's contract is for 2 years to start with.

Right, if anything else comes to mind I will jot it down. PM me or ask on here if you have any other specific questions. Always happy to help! :)

We shipped EVERYTHING and that included paintings, some antique pieces of furniture (just one or two), a few sculptures, rugs and then all the books, toys, cots,beds, etc etc. It didn't cost us anything but it did cost the corporation about 60,000 pounds. But that was including their packing, transporting, storing, delivering and unpacking / assembling over 3,000 miles. If we had had to pay, I would have taken my favourite rug and bought everything new / rented stuff.

Anonymosity £60000!!!!! Yikes. We shipped everything too, over 3000 miles and they disassembled and reassembled everything, except the cot as apparently some American people had sued a company who did that and the cot collapsed. The baby was fine! Your corporation are incredibly generous :)

I did a lot of research around shipping from London to Asia (Singapore) - sea freighting a family's possessions, with no furniture (so toys, kitchen equipment, books, rugs, mirrors etc) was around £3-4k with bit of airfreight on top at about £2k (clothes and bedding, a few favourite toys).

Shipping the entire contents of a house including furniture on a 40sq ft container (the standard size for a family move) was around £9k.

That was a reputable company, who did all the packing and unpacking and customs clearance at both ends, and included insurance (very important as containers do go overboard...). For insurance you need to think about the total value of your goods, so as you label things for shipping, video them as proof of their existence and keep a list of their approximate value.

If you are going in to a serviced appt you just need clothes and toys, until your sea and airfreight arrive - airfreight takes about 10-14 days, sea freight 6 weeks.

60 K!

We have an allowance of £750. That's not going to go far, is it?

There must be an extra 0 on there surely?

To give you a rough ballpark Iirc we paid about £ 750 to have 18 boxes ( toys and bits and bobs which took up about 3 quarters of a mini van to be shipped ( London to Dubai)

We paid extra for insurance ( it was a percentage of the estimated value)

Nope, no extra 0.

We were only thinking of shipping clothes, toys and linens.

Apparently 'furnished' over there means crockery etc. is included.

Soz the extra 0 was on the £60 k ..as in I was thinking £6000,

I'd. I'd buy my own cutlery there tbh .

That's all we shipped btw ( except linen as we bought bigger beds when we arrived as our old ones were knackered)

I think it is a matter of getting several quotes. I have moved several times within Europe taking everything in four bedroom house. Quotes ranged from £3000 to £18000 for exactly the same job.

You have to also take into account what is available at your point of destination and at what price so weigh up shipping costs vs repurchase costs. If it's expensive to buy stuff in malaysia it might be worth shipping more of your own stuff. Some options are cheaper (eg shared container which can take longer as have to wait for other people's stuff)

If I were you OP I would do the following

(1) Go and see local estate agents re renting your own house. Determine preference for unfurnished vs furnished amongst prospective tenants. My own experience of renting and leasing is that for houses, most tenants want unfurnished and if they want furnished they literally just want the furniture (not all the kitchen stuff etc). However, that's London. Might be different elsewhere, but def listen to what the agents tell you.
(2) Find out about accomodation in KL. Is there any furnished accom. in your budget/preferred locations excl serviced apartments (which are often pricey)
(3) get quotes from at least 3 shipping companies excl and incl furniture
(4) Find out if there's an Ikea in KL
(5) Calc what's going to be cheaper/ more efficient for you

ps dont necessarily go for the cheapest quote but dont be embarrassed to make it clear that you're self-funding on a tight budget as then they will talk through where they can make it cheaper (eg you could self pack non-breakables etc, part container etc)

With our cars, we've registered them to someone kind and they have sold them for us and put the money in our account. That means we had use of them until we moved.

Thanks all. :)

Now, there is a ridiculous amount of paperwork to sort out, including a medical and chest x-ray. How do I organise this?

Who can sign these certified copies of things?

This beurocracy is irritating me. grrrrr.

Medical and chest x-ray you will almost certainly have to have done privately. I had mine at a Medicentre in London but most private GPs can oblige, or your NHS GP might do it but will probably charge

Certified copies- I think it's someone who has some professional standing and who knows you. I'm pretty sure the head teacher of your current school would be able to do it.

We moved within Europe and initial quote for moving and storage was 14,000 Euro. We were financing it ourselves and so sold/gave a great deal of things away as it was just cheaper to do so and buy new on the other side, plus we helped out a recently divorced friend of ours to start afresh with her kids and our furniture.

No experience of the kind of move you're doing, so no other words of wisdom I'm afraid. Good luck with your adventure though!