Moving Costs More Than You Think

One of the single most stressful things a person can do in this day and age is move. Not only do you have to say goodbye to a place you lived and most likely loved, you have to find a trustworthy real estate agent, or if you decide to go it alone, you have to weigh the pros and cons of what you think you can do versus the reality of what you can and can’t do. If that wasn’t enough, the process of house hunting is exhausting and frustrating, and then you have the fun of closing costs and then once that’s over with, the actual move.

Well, here is another piece of good news. According to Move Inc, a company that operates many online home-searching-and-buying sites, reports that the average home buyer spends approximately $9,000 on services and products related to their move. That’s nine grand per household, per move. If you factor that out to every move made in the United States in the past year, that’s $170 billion spent on moving expenses.

Yes, that’s billion with a b.

If you didn’t think you could spend nine grand on boxes and packing tape, let’s take a look at what exactly the average family is spending that money on.

Move Inc broke down the survey into 40 different categories, and found that about half of the total moving expenses were eaten up by fixing up your old home in preparation to move. Things like repairs, improvements and decorating costs usually end up running higher than most people thought.

The rest of the money was spent on switching services that are used on a daily basis in the home. Things like switching the cable or satellite TV, switching banks, internet access, telephone service, as well as pharmacies, insurance companies and auto mechanics. All of these moves come with costs and fees that most prospective movers don’t figure into the budget.

The study showed that most of the purchases were impulse, last-minute buys and were concentrated around the last two weeks before a move and the first two weeks after a move.

The lesson to be learned here is that when you’ve finally decided that a new place to call home is needed, you might want to review your expenses for the move to include a few extra rolls of packing tape and a few more boxes.