Relocation Agents - are they any good and what do they do?

[michie40]

We are moving to Brussels for 2 years and have to do it in a very short period of time - by the beginning of September. Has anybody ever used them and are they any good?

They worked for us, they were employed by dh company to relocate four of us families from Seattle to the UK, although as we are British anyway, we knew what we wanted.

We have used relocation agents. They can help you find housing, rental furniture, get your utilities connected etc. Also help with getting started with schools. You still have to do a lot of the work yourself, but they can narrow down your choices, making it a lot less stressful.

We had an agent paid for by dh's company when we went to Berlin. He was very useful as we didn't speak German at the time. Also in Germany it's very rare to find furnished short-let apartments and I doubt that we would have managed to find one ourselves without the agent. We didn't have ds at the time, but I think the people with kids found him useful in deciding which school to send kids to etc.

I think it's Brussels where you have to be very careful when checking into a flat as the landlord can charge you for any damage or redecoration needed when you move out. If you contest the charge then you have to keep paying rent until the issue is resolved. So when people move in they tend to have some sort of offical check-in system where they pay for an independent person to make detailed notes about the state of the flat and take lots of pictures of any damage that is already there (chipped paint/cracked tiles/damp patches etc) so that you don't have to pay for it when you leave. An agent would be very helpful in knowing pitfalls like that, and could save you money in the long run.