Moving next week - what's the best way to tell our new neighbours our removal van will be blocking the street?

[thesmallestpotato]

This is our first home so we're not sure of the etiquette.

I was thinking of getting some nice notecards to push through their doors but I'm not sure what to write (this will also be our first contact with most of them so it'll be a little introduction too I suppose?), I'm also not sure how many people on the street to tell, there are maybe 20 or so houses on the immediate street but it is also a through road for another street and cul-de-sac around the corner.

As this is our first move I have no idea how long it will take the removal men to unload the van, and that's assuming we get the keys on time? I don't think it'll block the whole street so it's completely impassable but people do park cars on either side of the street so might become tricky to navigate while the van is there.

Is pushing a note through the door a bit impersonal? Knocking on doors would feel a bit intrusive to me so I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable doing that - plus I am 8.5 months pregnant with a toddler in tow so might not be a good idea anyway.

How much notice should we give people? As long as everything continues to go to plan we'll be moving on Friday next week.

Am I overthinking this??! I'd like to do things properly, we're planning on making this our home for the next 10 - 20 years, maybe forever so getting off on the right foot with the neighbours is important.

Any tips on how to go about this would be most welcome :)

I would do notes ..and add a comment to say , apologies for any inconvenience in advance

...hopefully stop people whinging at you, though if house has a sold sign on it should be obvious there will be people moving in

I think you are over complicating matters! Presumably the departing owners will have had a removal van parked somewhere on the street?

Alternatively (if you are moving into an empty house), get there a bit early and try and reserve some space for the removal van to use, maybe by parking in it yourself?

Last time we moved, wE had to get the council to reserve parking spaces for us, but we had residents permits for parking.

Good luck!

I've never heard of anyone giving advance notice! You and your removal guys will presumably be around all the time so if someone really needs to get in or out or past, they just move the removal van. It's not like you'd be going off somewhere and leaving the street blocked.

What you might want to do is try to arrive early in the morning and save a space (using your car) near to your new house - when the removal van arrives it goes in that space - that way at least it's on one side of the road rather than between parked cars.

I did it We are the only house on one side of the road, and on the other side there are houses whose driveways all face onto the road.

As we had our stuff in storage and they have to fit in those crates, we had 2 Pickfords vans worth of stuff

So knowing that some people are not the best at reversing off a drive when half the road is blocked we put a letter through all the houses we thought it would involve giving them the opportunity to turn their cars round or park on the street further down the road (modern estate so not that busy)

We also did it at another house where the van would be blocking some garages but as we were leaving that one we already knew the neighbours so sweetened it with a bottle of wine for them.

Are there parking bays on the other side? I've seen the council 'shut' designated bays before and stick cones out - is it an option to talk to the council? What happens if you get there and your van can't park near to the house because someone has already parked there?