Guide
Office relocation cost: why nobody publishes a real price
Updated
You can find office move price-per-desk figures online. Most of them are one firm's average from a different city, and they will not survive contact with your building.
Why we do not publish a range
An office relocation is priced on hours, crew and vehicle movements. Two 40-desk moves in the same town can price very differently because one has a loading bay and a Saturday slot and the other has a single goods lift, a 6pm curfew and a long carry from the vehicle. A published price per desk hides exactly the variables that decide the bill, so we publish the variables instead.
The four questions that make quotes comparable
- Has the firm surveyed both buildings? A price given without seeing the destination is a placeholder. Movers who survey will tell you things the landlord did not, like the lift booking rules.
- What hours does the price assume? Weekday, evening and weekend crews are priced differently. Get the assumption in writing so a landlord's Saturday-only rule does not become a variation.
- What is in and what is out? IT disconnection, crate hire period, dismantling and rebuilding desks, wall fixings, disposal. Each of these is a line somewhere, and a cheap quote is usually one that has left several of them out.
- Who carries the risk? Insurance limits, single-item limits, and who is liable if a server does not come back up on Monday morning.
Where cheap quotes get expensive
- Crate hire running on. Hire is charged from delivery to collection. If the new fit-out slips two weeks, the crates are still on hire.
- Waiting time. Crews charged by the hour and a goods lift booked by another tenant is the most common overrun on a city centre move.
- Disposal treated as an afterthought. Old furniture, cabling and IT are business waste with paperwork attached, and a mover who has not priced it will price it later.
- Dilapidations mistaken for removals. Stripping out partitions, cabling and floor boxes to satisfy a schedule of dilapidations is building work, not a removal, and it is priced by a building surveyor and a fit-out contractor.
Dilapidations sit alongside the move, not inside it
Most commercial leases require the tenant to hand the building back in a defined condition. That obligation, and the schedule of dilapidations your landlord serves, is a separate cost stream with its own advisers and its own timetable. Movers do not price it and surveyors do not move furniture. Get both quoted early, and make sure neither assumes the other is stripping out the cabling.
The only number that means anything is a quote against your own two buildings. Use the form on this site and you will have several to compare.