Are You On The Move This January?

January has traditionally been the biggest month for house moves in Melbourne, Victoria, in pre-COVID19 times.  There are several reasons for January to be the peak month for moving, namely, but not limited to:

• Families trying to complete their move prior to the start of the new educational year and ensure no interruption to the start of school
• Many people take their annual holidays during January, thus creating time and opportunity to organise their move
• As December is usually filled with end of year parties and a festive season celebrations, any move is usually post poned to January

Now, as we find ourselves in the post-Covid era, there are more reasons to move for both businesses and households.  According to REIV data and various articles from Domain.com and other real estate giants, here are the latest trends being noticed behind the large movement of population:

• Due to a large number of industries allowing employees to work from home, there is no longer a need to live closer to work, hence allowing employees to opt for a cheaper living option, further away from the CBD, in some cases even completely away from the CBD and into regional Victoria.  These types of moves are not only allowing residents to reduce their mortgage cost or rental cost but also provides improvements to their lifestyle, such as living closer to nature, living in larger properties, with larger land component and so on.
• The flow on effect on business is that an increasing number of tenants in Melbourne CBD have opted not to renew their leases and instead allow their workers to work from home.  The latest trend is to just lease a meeting room for a few hours for a face to face team meeting if required and then continue working from home.  Based on the survey by City of Melbourne largest landlords, two largest factors, influencing people's decision not to come back to CBD offices are:
  • People are worried about the risk of infection in the office, using a lift and using a public transport to and from work
  • People are actually enjoying working from home and are not willing to resume commuting and working in the office
• Another driving force for some business to completely "close shop" is that after prolonged Victorian Lockdown, keeping up with their commercial rent was simply not feasible or not possible in some cases, particularly for smaller retail business, who didn't have any online presence or some food businesses, which heavily relied on foot traffic and were not sustainable to only offer take away option.
• Some of the retail has moved or is in the process of moving predominantly online, hence the need to "close the shop" and organise a move of their merchandise and furniture and fittings.

Moving Home and Using Skip Bins

If you find yourself in a situation where you are planning to move homes in Melbourne, Victoria then you will face a daunting task of packing up your existing house.  A necessary part of packing of cause is sorting out what you will take to your new home and what you will leave behind.  While we've done various articles on the science of packing and how to dispose of some of your unwanted items, eventually you will be left with a pile, which you either can't or don't have time to sell or give away.  Some items will need to be simply thrown away.

Once you have a pile of stuff, which is a definite "no" for your new home, you will be able to estimate the size of the skip bin you will need to dispose of that pile.  The size of the Skip will vary from family to family, depending on whether you have kids and how long you've stayed at your current home.  From personal experience and that of our customers, when moving home with kids, the usual Skip Bin Size required is 12 cubic meters, in some cases a bigger size. If you are a visual person, we recommend to jump onto our Bin Sizes Page to help you estimate the right size bin for your home move.

For more information about the benefits of Moving Home in January, read our latest blog.

Moving Your Office and Using Skip Bins

As the emerging "living with COVID" trend continues, we see more and more offices pack up and move either out of CBD or move completely to work from home.  Majority of Offices will have some specific office furniture or fixtures & fittings, which are simply not suitable for the relocation and need to be disposed of.  Depending on the size of your office and if you've made any changes, such as installed partitions, various shelving and other fixtures and fittings, skip bin size required for the disposal of the waste will vary from project to project.

For smaller offices, you could probably aim for a minimum of 8 cubic meters bin, depending on whether you will dis-assemble the furniture to try and maximise the space usage.  A lot depends on the style of packing.  If you have time and tools and able to flatten most items, i.e. unscrew the legs of tables wherever possible, unscrew all the shelves and neatly stack them, then you can get away with a certain size bin.  If the packing style is just throwing items into the bin as they come then of cause you would require a larger size bin.  For medium to larger size offices - we recommend to start with a 21-31 sizes bins as the higher you go in size the more savings per cubic meter you will achieve, hence 1 x 31 cubic meter bin will be cheaper than 2 x 12 cubic meters bin, due to transport component included in each bin.

End of Lease Clean Out

If you are in a situation of closing a commercial business, such as restaurant, retail space, beauty salon or factory / wearhouse then we strongly recommend to go for the largest size bin in our stock - 31 cubic meters bin. You might require another bin afterwards, but by starting big, you are saving money on re-ordering smaller sizes bins, which from experience will never be sufficient for an end of lease clean out.  The only thing to consider when ordering largest size bin is that it has to be a light waste, meaning not including any heavy materials, such as concrete, brick or soil.  For any discussion, please contact our friendly team on 1300 605 624 and we'll help you select the right size bin for your project.

In summary, utilising Skip Bins for your move will ensure that you are not taking unneccesary items into the new home or place of work and not spending extra money on removalists to transport stuff, which you no longer use.  If you can't sell it or give away on time, using Skip Bins is the most time efficient way to dispose of all your unnecessary items and start fresh in your new place of residency or work.

We wish you luck in your move and if we can be of assistance, we'd love to chat to you about your project, we are only a phone call away on 1300 605 624.