What Does It Cost to Physically Move Your House from Point A to Point B?
-
t’s not every day that you see a truck rolling down the main drag of town with a house on the back. Mobile homes are one thing. But a single-family with a porch going from point A to point B? That’ll get your attention.
You might be curious why anyone would physically move a house—like, dig it out of the ground and take it to another location—rather than just find a new one like most people do. Typically, historic homes are the best candidates to justify the enormous expense and effort this process requires.
Take the 124-year old, 3,000-square-foot Mackenzie House on the Wayne State University campus in Detroit that will be uprooted in 2019 to make space for a new lobby and performance complex. It’ll be a $750,000 project to just go around the block. According to the National Register of Historic Places, more than 95,000 properties have been listed in the National Register as “worthy of preservation.”
But there are other reasons to move a house, too. Hard to wrap your head around how such a colossal feat gets accomplished? It’s interesting stuff… we found out all the details from a pro who’s crew does 200-250 house lifts annually.
Source: (Rebecca Siegel/ Flickr via Creative Commons Legal Code)
How much does moving a house cost?
As you might imagine, moving a house is not a “flat fee” type of service. There are many factors that go into the pricing of a home move, though on average, costs for the industry seem to land between $12 and $16 per square foot.Mike Brovant, lead of the sales and marketing team at Wolfe House and Building Movers, a company that’s been moving houses for 50 years, says moving a house is not an impulse decision.
“It’s not something where people go ‘Eh, I’d kind of like to have my house somewhere else,’ pay 10 grand and they’re done,” Brovant said.
It’s a mashup of logistics and expenses, usually costing between 50%-75% of what a new build of comparable size would cost, sometimes even more than a new build. Reports range from $15,000 to $200,000 for just the labor and transporting parts.
Here are some of the criteria a mover will use to give you an estimate:
Size and weight
Square-footage, as well as the structure’s length and width, matters when it comes to getting a quote. Moving your prefab house will be less expensive than moving a historic 8,000 square-foot mansion.Structure and shape
A meandering ranch-style single-story with tons of nooks and crannies could cost more to move than a boxy, industrial tri-level regardless of square footage, because of the equipment needed.Wrap-around patios and intricate chimneys (as well as other accessories) add time and money to move costs. In addition, the materials the home is made from matter—brick, logs, stone. No material is necessarily more expensive or harder to move, but all factor into the general costs.
Foundation and crawl space
A home built on a pier foundation (like near a waterfront) is vastly different than a home built directly on a concrete slab floor. The crawl space is a big factor in pricing as this is the space the steel slats are inserted to lift and move the house.Accessibility and route obstacles
If you’re just moving the house a few yards so it’s further back from the main street, there might be minimal obstacles—a mailbox or trees limbs, uneven terrain that needs to get smoothed out or a pool the pros will need to maneuver around.Generally, larger areas are easier to work in than smaller lots, and flat surfaces easier than homes on the cliff’s edge.
If you’re wanting to move the house down the block, you and your contractor have a few more factors to consider (and more homework to do). They’ll need to make sure the roads are wide enough for the house’s transport, that there aren’t powerlines or trees in the way and that all the proper permits have been secured.
Even a short stretch of road can have multiple obstacles, meaning the further you’re moving your house, the more logistics there are to think about.
Labor and time
You won’t see HGTV hosts doing this work themselves. Everyone who wants to move their home must hire the big guns to do it. This means you’re paying for experts who have years of experience, all the highest tech equipment and machinery (and solid high-premium insurance if anything goes wrong).Home moving companies usually visit both current and future sites of the home to gather all this information before calculating a quote, though some are able to produce a quote with given numbers, without an on-site visit.
Brovant says most of the moves they assist with happen within a span of just a quarter-mile; as in point A (where the house is) and point B (where the house needs to go) is usually less than 1,400 feet. Though it may be just a stone’s throw from its original location (or not even that if you’re just lifting it) the price tag is hefty.
-
Prices for the services of moving companies are different. It all depends on the number of things, additional services and tips. If you pack everything yourself, it will be cheaper. If you need help with packing, then the cost will be more. Therefore, I advise you to contact the company https://www.goborntomove.com/local-moving and find out everything from them.
-
The cost of physically moving your house from Point A to Point B depends on many factors. It will vary depending on where you live and the length of time it takes to move your home. If you plan to move within the same state you could save money by hiring a moving company in Toronto http://moversintoronto.ca that specializes in interstate moves. If you plan to move across state lines or into another country, however, it may be more economical for you to hire an international mover who specializes in trans-national moves.
-
Thanks for helping me out by sharing this article with us. I was searching for it for my friend and I am so happy I found your post. I will surely share your post with him. When I was searching for it online, I also found Hill House Price List on google search and I am glad I found that website because I also search it online. I want to buy a house on hill.