Moving

Living in another country presents all sorts of challenges with moving households. You'll need to decide how much of your household you want to move. Research the size of New Zealand houses and assess what possessions you may want to leave behind.

You'll want to consider not only moving furniture, but if you want to move your family pets or even your cars.

Moving a pet to New Zealand can cost several thousand New Zealand dollars. Cost are generally broken down into:

• vet costs before you leave
• getting a permit to import an animal into New Zealand
• air transport
• quarantine costs in New Zealand

Research in advance companies that shift pets overseas and see what services they provide. You can find helpful information on regulations and procedures on the Biosecurity New Zealand web site.

Moving a car will cost money to ship and at some point if you want to sell it, you may have to convert it to a right hand drive. Investigate the costs associated with this before you do it.

Shipping

Look for a moving company that ships international on a regular basis; experience is a good thing when it comes to moving house.

Getting advice from recent migrants is a good idea as well - they can give you tricks of the trade and let you know what works well, and what doesn't. If you network on the internet with other migrants, ask them to help answer your specific questions.

There are a few options for shipping your household:

• full container shipping where you rent a container of either 20 feet or 40 feet in length and it is dedicated to your items
• shared container where you pay for only the amount of space you use
• packing boxes onto a pallet where you just ship your items boxed up and share pallet space with other packages

Shipping companies should provide free estimates based on what you are looking to ship.