End of Tenancy Moves in Central London

Your tenancy agreement gives the date the tenancy ends. The agent will usually want the flat empty and the keys back by a set time on or before that date, often midday, with the checkout inspection booked straight after. Moving on the last day leaves no room for a late crew, a lift that is out of order, or a cleaner who needs the flat empty before they can start.

If the new place is available earlier, move a day or two before the end and use the time to clean, fix and photograph. If it is not available until later, which in London is common, the gap is usually a few days in storage rather than a reason to cut the move tight. The last Friday of the month is the most heavily booked day for movers in the city for exactly this reason, and a Wednesday two days earlier is cheaper as well as calmer.

At checkout someone walks the flat with the check-in inventory in hand and notes anything that has changed: marks, damage, missing items, things left behind. Much of that is decided in the last week of the tenancy, and some of it on move day. A scraped door frame, a dent in the hallway plaster or a mark on the communal stairs from a wardrobe going out is the kind of thing that shows up on a checkout report.

We protect the door frames, the floors and the communal parts on the way out for that reason, and we take furniture apart where it will not leave the flat cleanly. Once we have gone, take your own dated photographs of every room, the meter readings and the inside of the oven and fridge. They are the evidence you will want if anything on the checkout report is disputed.

If you rent from a private landlord in England, your deposit should be held in one of the government-approved protection schemes: the Deposit Protection Service, mydeposits or the Tenancy Deposit Scheme. At the end of the tenancy the landlord can propose deductions for damage beyond fair wear and tear, for cleaning needed to bring the flat back to the standard recorded at check-in, and for anything else the tenancy allows. Normal wear from living somewhere is not a valid deduction.

Since the Tenant Fees Act 2019, a landlord in England cannot make you pay for a professional clean as a condition of the tenancy, though they can still deduct the reasonable cost of cleaning a flat left dirtier than it was at check-in. If you disagree with a deduction, each scheme runs a free dispute service that decides on the evidence, which is the two inventories and whatever photographs each side has. We are movers rather than advisers. For anything beyond the basics, the scheme holding your deposit, Shelter and Citizens Advice all publish guidance.

In a furnished let the landlord's furniture stays, and in a Central London flat full of similar white wardrobes and grey sofas it is easy for the wrong one to go on the van. Walk the flat with the check-in inventory before we arrive and mark anything that belongs to the landlord, so the crew knows exactly what is staying.

Anything of yours that you do not want is the opposite problem. A bed frame left in a bedroom or a sofa left in the living room is something the landlord will pay to have removed, and that cost usually comes out of the deposit. If you book clearance alongside the move, we take the unwanted pieces on the same visit and the flat is left as the inventory describes it.

Hand back every key you were given, including the fobs, the bike store key and the post box key, and get written confirmation of when the agent received them. A tenancy is not over until the keys are returned, and keys dropped through a letterbox without agreement are hard to prove afterwards. The keys are yours to hand back rather than ours, so if you cannot be there, agree with the agent in writing how they should be returned.

Managed blocks add one more step. Many want a move-out booked with the building in the same way as a move-in, with the goods lift reserved and the concierge told. Give us the building manager's contact and we arrange it, because a move-out turned away at the lift on the last day of the tenancy has nowhere else to go.