House Removals Cost
Nobody moves house often enough to know what it should cost. This page does the arithmetic for you: realistic hour counts for a studio, one-bed, two-bed and three-bed, multiplied by the actual hourly rate, so you can find the row that matches your situation and see a total rather than a teaser price.
What a whole house move costs, by property size
Each row below is a complete job: load, drive, unload. The hours are what these moves actually take when everything is boxed beforehand and both addresses have workable parking. Find your property type and the sum is already done.
| Property | Van and crew | Realistic hours | The sum | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio / bedsit | Medium van, driver only | 2-3 hrs | 2-3 x £45 | £90-£135 |
| 1-bed flat | Medium van + 1 helper | 3-4.5 hrs | 3-4.5 x £57 | £171-£257 |
| 2-bed house | Luton van + 1 helper | 4-6 hrs | 4-6 x £72 | £288-£432 |
| 3-bed house | Luton van + 2 helpers | 6-8 hrs | 6-8 x £84 | £504-£672 |
Rates are £35/hr small van, £45/hr medium, £60/hr Luton with tail lift, plus £12/hr for each additional helper, with a 2-hour minimum on every booking and the first 15 miles between addresses included. The hourly card in full is on man and van prices.
Why the hours decide your bill, not the hourly rate
People shopping for a house move fixate on the hourly rate, then get a total that bears little relation to it. The rate is the small variable. Between a medium van and a Luton there are fifteen pounds an hour in it. Between a well-prepared two-bed move and a badly-prepared one there can be three hours, which is nearly two hundred pounds on the same crew. If you want to control what your move costs, you control the clock, not the rate card.
That is why the table above lists hours before it lists money. Every one of those ranges has a low end and a high end for the same property size, and the gap between them is entirely made up of access and preparation. A two-bed terrace with a driveway, everything boxed and the beds already apart is a four-hour job. An identical two-bed on the second floor of a block with no lift, loading bay fifty metres away and wardrobes still standing, is a six-hour job with the same amount of stuff in it.
The clock itself is visible to both sides. An in-app timer that you and the driver can both see runs for the duration of the job and rounds up to the nearest fifteen minutes, so there is no argument at the end about when loading started. That matters more on a full house move than on a single-item drop, because six hours of vagueness is expensive in a way that ninety minutes of vagueness is not.
One structural point worth understanding before you compare quotes: the price you see in the app is fixed before the booking is confirmed. There is no bidding, no doorstep renegotiation and nobody arriving to "assess" the job and revise the figure. Hours are estimated up front and the total is locked against them, which is the opposite of the open-ended hourly arrangement people reasonably worry about.
The six things that push a house move over budget
Ranked by how often they turn up on real jobs. Five of the six are about time. Only one is a surcharge, and it is avoidable if your dates allow.
| Factor | What it adds | Rough cost | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floor level with no lift | 45-90 min per van load | Roughly £43-£86 on a 1-bed crew rate | Every flight doubles the walk. A second-floor flat is not twice a ground floor, it is closer to three times. |
| Parking distance from the door | 30-60 min | About £29-£57 | Twenty metres is the rough tipping point. Beyond that, each item becomes a carry rather than a lift-and-load. |
| Boxes not packed when the van arrives | 1-2 hrs | £57-£114, or £25/hr per packer booked properly | The single most common overrun. A crew standing in your kitchen while you fill boxes is billed at crew rates. |
| Furniture still assembled | 20-40 min per large item | £30 per item to dismantle and reassemble | Beds, wardrobes and desks. Doing it yourself the night before is free and usually faster. |
| Weekend or evening slot | No extra time | 1.3x on the hourly rate | On a £360 two-bed move that is about £108 extra for the same work on a Saturday. |
| Distance beyond the first 15 miles | Drive time is charged time | Per-mile rate beyond the included 15 | Cross-city moves rarely matter. Cross-county moves change both mileage and hours, so check both. |
Two of these deserve expanding, because they are the ones people consistently underestimate. The first is floor level. Carrying a chest of drawers down two flights is not twice the work of carrying it down one, it is closer to three times, because the crew has to rest, re-grip and take corners more slowly with each landing. If you are moving out of an upper-floor flat, the honest starting point is the top of the hour range in the table, not the bottom. There is more on that specific situation on our flat removals page.
The second is parking. A driveway or a suspended bay outside the door means a two-metre lift from hallway to tailgate. A shared car park round the back of a building means every single item is carried fifty or sixty metres, and a three-bed house has a few hundred items in it. If your council allows a bay suspension or a temporary permit for moving day, it is usually the cheapest thing you will buy that week measured against the hours it saves.
Box volume sits underneath both. Loose items cost far more time than boxed ones because they cannot be stacked, and a van packed loosely holds much less, which is how one-trip jobs quietly become two-trip jobs. Packing help is £25/hour per packer if you want it handled, and on a two-bed that is typically six to eight hours of packer time. Weigh that against the crew hours it removes rather than treating it as a luxury.
Estimating your own move in four steps
Worked example: a two-bed flat, first floor, boxed, Saturday. Luton plus one helper is £72/hour. Five hours for the flat, plus half an hour for the stairs, is 5.5 hours, so £396. Two beds dismantled and rebuilt adds £60. The 1.3x weekend rate applies to the hourly element, taking the hours part to roughly £515. Moving it to a Tuesday is the £119 saving.
Hourly versus a survey-based fixed quote
A traditional removals firm sends someone to look at your house, counts the volume, and returns a fixed price for the day. That number usually lands between £400 and £1,200 or more for a typical family home. It is not a scam, it is a different risk model.
| Route | Typical cost | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| TowManVan hourly | £90-£672 for studio to 3-bed | Fixed total locked in the app before you confirm, tracked on a clock you can both see |
| Traditional removals firm | £400-£1,200+ fixed | Pre-move survey, written quote, booked days or weeks ahead |
| Removals marketplace | Varies by bid | Post the job, wait for quotes, compare strangers by message |
The difference is who carries the risk of the job running long. With a surveyed fixed price, the firm carries it, and they price that risk into the quote, which is why a two-bed move can come back at £600 when the work itself is five hours. With an hourly booking you carry it, which is cheaper when your move is straightforward and more expensive when it is chaotic. For most one to three-bed moves inside the same town, hourly wins by a few hundred pounds. That advantage shrinks as the property grows.
The other practical difference is lead time. A survey-based quote needs a visit, then a written quote, then a slot booked days or weeks out. An hourly booking is made in about sixty seconds with same-day availability, which matters when a completion date moves or a landlord brings a hand-back forward. If your date has already slipped, see last-minute removals.
When an hourly booking is the wrong answer
It would be easy to argue that hourly always beats a fixed quote. It does not, and pretending otherwise wastes your time and ours. There are four situations where a full-service removals firm is genuinely the better buy.
You need storage between the two dates. Chains break, completions slip, and sometimes your stuff needs somewhere to live for a fortnight. TowManVan does not run storage. A move that needs it is better handled by a firm that stores and moves under one roof, because splitting it means paying for two loads and two sets of handling.
You are moving high-value items. Every driver carries goods-in-transit insurance with a £10,000 minimum plus public liability cover, verified before they can accept work. That comfortably covers ordinary household contents. It does not cover a single painting worth more than the limit, or a collection of antiques. If that describes your move, get specialist cover, and be aware a grand piano is a specialist job in its own right - see piano removals.
You are moving several hundred miles with an overnight. Long-distance moves change the maths, because drive time is charged time and the first 15 miles being included stops being meaningful. A fixed long-distance quote is often better value than hours plus mileage on that kind of run.
You want the old house emptied of rubbish, not just furniture. A removals van moves your belongings from one address to another. It is not a waste disposal service, and legally it cannot tip your unwanted items, because carrying waste for disposal requires a waste carrier licence and a licensed transfer station. If you are leaving a garage of junk behind, book a house clearance separately rather than expecting the removals crew to take it.
Four ways to cut the cost, and the catch with each
Every saving has a trade-off. Here they are stated plainly so you can decide which ones actually apply to your move.
| What to do | What it saves | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Book a weekday morning | Removes the 1.3x multiplier entirely | Saturday completion dates are often outside your control |
| Be fully boxed and sealed before arrival | Cuts the most common one to two-hour overrun | Needs a free evening or two in the week before |
| Dismantle beds and wardrobes yourself | Saves £30 per item and the crew's time | Keep the screws in a labelled bag or you pay it back in reassembly |
| Add a helper instead of extra hours | £12/hr often removes more than an hour from a stairs-heavy job | Pointless if the bottleneck is a single narrow staircase |
House removals cost FAQs
See the total for your move
Enter both addresses and what you are moving. The price is fixed before you confirm, the driver is DBS-checked and insured, and same-day slots are available. Booking takes about 60 seconds.
Price your moveMel Carrington - Head of Removals Operations
Mel ran national removal fleets at Pickfords for 15 years before joining TowManVan. She signs off every van-size recommendation, hourly rate and handling standard on this page. Questions? Email mel@towmanvan.co.uk. All figures reviewed August 2026.
Last updated August 2026. Prices verified August 2026 by Mel Carrington.