You are leaving London or the south-east for somewhere in Norfolk.
The London end is the easy end
This surprises people, because in London the move feels like the hard part — the parking suspension, the stairs, the narrow street. All of that is routine and entirely solvable.
The Norfolk end is where moves go wrong, and it goes wrong because nobody describes it. A postcode and a photograph of the front of the house tell us almost nothing about whether a loaded vehicle can reach it.
Describe the last half mile
This is the single most useful thing you can send us, and it takes a few minutes with a phone on the way back from a viewing.
- Film the approach from the main road to the property, not just the property.
- Show any passing places, and whether the lane has hedges or verges you could pull onto.
- Show where a vehicle could turn round at the far end.
- Note any low bridge, overhanging trees or a narrow gateway.
- Say whether the surface is made up or a farm track.
Which road you come in on
From London and the M11 it is almost always the A11, which is dual carriageway nearly the whole way and is the fastest approach into the county. The planning question on that route is not departure time but when the vehicle reaches Thickthorn, outside Norwich, which is the busiest road in Norfolk.
If you are heading for the north coast you will leave the A11 well before Norwich and cut across, and if you are going to west Norfolk the A47 from Peterborough may be better despite looking longer on a map. We work that out at quote stage rather than on the day.
What people under-plan
Broadband and mobile signal, which in rural Norfolk is genuinely variable and worth checking before you commit rather than after. Oil heating, if the property has it, because the tank needs reading and the supply arranging. And the sheer amount of outbuilding storage a Norfolk property tends to have compared with a London house.
That last one affects your quote directly. A London three-bed and a Norfolk three-bed with a garage, a shed and a barn are not the same volume, and the difference is usually discovered at the wrong end.