As promised in my earlier post, our video footage is all shot and edited and ready to deliver to your monitor.  Make sure your volume is turned up for this one!

We hope that our promotional video will give you a better idea about our service and what you can expect when we pick you up on your viewing day.  We don’t want there to be any anxiety lying in the unknown, as there’s already enough of that involved in an international move!

And so, for your viewing and listening pleasure, please follow the link below to our promo:

http://www.londonrelocationservices.com/presentation.php

We hope you enjoy it and look forward to hearing from you soon.  Cheers!

This week, we at London Relocation Ltd. are proud to welcome Mat Paramor to the team.  Mat will be serving as our Head of Corporate Services to liase with our corporate clients as they manage their employee relocations.  Like our American staff, Mat is an expatriate living in London who can likewise identify with the challenges and transitions that accompany an international move.  Since moving here from Australia, Mat has been working within London’s property industry, so is well-versed in timely market trends and desirable locations.  We are ecstatic to bring Mat and his expertise aboard to further enhance the quality of our client services and assure you that you’re making the right decision when you choose London Relocation Ltd. as your destination service provider.

If you would like to contact Mat directly, please follow this link.

Good morning, Alice!

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” as Robert Frost once wrote, and while I need not cut through the woods to get to work, today I did contemplate the choice between two roads.  While it isn’t the shortest way, today I couldn’t resist taking the Portobello Road route to the office.  Most folks know the famed street as where shoppers come in throngs to rummage through the antiques and clothing at their Saturday afternoon leisure, yet there’s something so enchanting  and intimate about strolling down this road in the morning when it’s only just waking up from its beauty sleep.  The silence is delicious, my morning-walk soundtrack consisting of not much more than the whistling of a man painting the wrought iron fencing in front of a pastel mews (near where George Orwell used to live) and the odd shop owner beginning to unpack their wares out on the sidewalk.  A truck rested patiently at a curb, waiting to bestow its casks of Liquid Happy at one public house.

In the quiet, then, was excited anticipation of what the day would bring.  This is a street that is eager on a daily basis to welcome its people and hold them tight in its comforting embrace, bringing them cheer on so many aesthetic levels.  Most would opt for this bustle of the later day, but me, I’ll take the morning Portobello Road less traveled by, and that will make all the difference.

(Of course, it may not be convenient to experience Portobello in this way unless you, too, work or live here…why not let London Relocation Ltd. help you out with that?)

Author: Colleen

London Living's main page

Our London Living social network has shocked us in becoming a successful online community in just three weeks since its inception!  Present and future expats have already been asking relocation or other London-related questions and sharing quality responses amongst each other on our online discussion forums (topics including where to live and where to play), and some members (including myself) have already started meeting each other in person at local cafes—I’m meeting with another fabulous “Londonista” tonight, in fact, to co-plan our first London Living social outing, scheduled now for Saturday, February 20th.  The specific venue is to be determined, but Londonistas on the forum have chosen the neighborhood of Camden by popular demand–seems to be a locale everyone is curious about getting to know better, as one always hears of the active and diverse night-life to be had there.

When you join London Living, you will be able to create and maintain your own personal profile page where other Londonistas can post comments directly on the page or send private messages to your Inbox (very much like Facebook, but this profile can be specific to your London life).  You can post your lovely photos in and around London, announce local events to members, and add any number of other applications to your profile.  The main page also contains live feeds of our London Relocation Ltd. blog and Twitter tweets, so it’s like one-stop-shoppin’ for all your London curiosities!

Joining London Living in no way obligates you to use London Relocation Ltd.‘s services.  The creation and maintenance of this social network is simply another way in which we wish to help out folks moving to London from the U.S., Canada, or any other nation on the globe outside of England—as well as those already living here who are in the process of settling in, or are settled and simply want to meet new friends and find cool new stuff to do around here!  If there are any questions we at London Relocation Ltd. can’t answer, there’s surely someone on London Living who can.

Cheers to you and your new life across the pond–plan it, live it, and love it!

Author: Colleen

So I’ve been on-and-off reading the book What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew in conjunction with a hefty text entitled Inside the Victorian Home for a couple of reasons.  I’ve always been a sucker for Victorian literature and period films, even though I am by no means under the common illusion that this era was a more enchanted way of life than what we know in modern times.  The Victorians had it hard, which I think about each time I climb the 4 flights of stairs to my flat…I might be compelled to whine about the extra weight added by my Marks & Spencer bags, but then I try to imagine what it must have been like for the servant of the house to haul a basin of water up and down all these steps every day if not multiple times a day.

Which brings me to my second reason for delving into these books–on moving to London from the US, my husband and I rented (and are still living in) one of the many flats to be found here inside Victorian terraced houses.  Terraced houses are the classic residential buildings you envision when you think of London, with their walk-up entrances, uniformly columned doorways, mansard rooftops, and brick and/or stucco siding.  Living in one (as you very likely may when you move to London) has thus inspired me to want to know more about the functionality of the building itself and how family lives transpired there.  I think it all started with the gorgeous wooden double-door entrance to the 1st floor unit below us.  As I climb the steps holding on to the exquisite period banister still affixed beside them, I gawk at these doors on my way up to my flat and envision them opening to a little ballroom where high society would gather.  Okay, it probably was not anything nearly elaborate as all that, but that’s what I wanted to find out…

What I did find out was this.  The typical Victorian terraced house comprised 4-5 floors.  With respect to a 5-storied house, the lower floor (today’s “garden” apartment) would house the kitchen, the ground floor would be the morning room with the dining room in the back, and the 1st floor (or, in America, the 2nd floor) would have been the drawing room where the master and lady of the house would receive guests–okay, so maybe not a ballroom, but it was important to social gatherings.  Moving upward from there, the 2nd floor (the American 3rd floor) was for the master bedroom and perhaps one other smaller bedroom and/or dressing room, and the top floor was for the children’s rooms (perhaps servants’ quarters as well, though some slept on the lower level by the kitchen).  This would mean, then, that the entirety of my London living space–my kitchen, my living area, my bedrooms, and my bathroom–would have been merely for the master bedroom.  Our living room would have been the master room, and what we consider our master bedroom would have been a secondary bedroom, perhaps for a child, and then the room where our guests sleep that we otherwise use for an office was, well, not necessarily a real room at all, but more of a walk-in closet.  Yeesh!  And this was just a middle-class house…maybe the Victorians didn’t have it so bad after all…well, the servants sure did.  Can you even imagine keeping an entire household like that clean and dusted and laundered all by hand?  I’ll think of this next time I’m feeling too lazy to vacuum, empty the dishwasher, or load up the washing machine.

In any case, I’d like to begin a new series of intermittent blog posts on Victorian housing and life as I learn it myself, if I may, just to introduce you to a period in history very readily prevalent to the eye on these London streets.  London is certainly layered in history, so I don’t want to neglect its other key episodes throughout time–however, this is a little kick I’m on, so I’ll indulge it.  In the meantime, if you’re keen to live in a quaint Victorian terraced house in London, let London Relocation Ltd. find one for you!

Author: Colleen

Recently received this lovely unsolicited testimonial through a discussion forum on our new social network, London Living (www.londonrelocation.ning.com):

“I also highly recommend using London Re

location–and no, I do not work for them!

If you are not coming from NYC, then the idea of paying someone 1 month’s rent to find an apartment may seem excessive. And it usually is. But for a major overseas relocation (especially for someone who either doesn’t travel extensively or has not lived overseas before) the service was invaluable.

Even picking neighborhoods in London is tough, as it’s like New York–many amazing neighborhoods, all with different cultures and sets of pros and cons. My firm paid for me to come over for a week to look for a flat. Most people I know took multiple weeks to find a place.

I went with London Relocation (which the firm did NOT pay for) and true to the adverts I saw somewhere between 20 and 25 flats in one day. You get coverage you simply won’t get on your own dealing with letting agencies in London which have different offices and contacts for every neighborhood.

The biggest value-add, however, was the negotiation piece. Unlike in New York, in London one is expected to negotiate on price. AJ worked to find something in my budget and then got my landlord to drop the rent by about 12% off the asking price, and by almost 20% off what the previous tenant was paying.

So I basically spent 1 day (15 hours) looking for flats and had a lease signed that night. So the rest of the week was essentially a paid vacation.”

–Nathan Mackey

Thank you, Nathan!  We’re so happy you had a positive experience and can attest that what we promise really is what we deliver!

* * * View more client feedback on our website’s Testimonials page. * * *

Author: Colleen

London Living, the latest social network for Londoners!

I’ll keep this brief and let the site speak for itself.  London Relocation Ltd. is proud to present its new social networking site, London Living, for existing or soon-to-be Londoners like you looking to interact with like-minded individuals.  In its first week, we already have great conversations initiated by our pioneer members, so come join and throw in your two pence, too!  Everyone’s insights are valued, whether you want to share your own expertise on all-things-London or have questions to pose others–if you’re planning to move to the UK, you may seek assistance with logistical and cultural concerns, or if you’ve already relocated to London, you may simply want to know the best place to go to dinner tonight or, just as helpful, where NOT to go.  Of course, London Relocation Ltd. will continue sharing its own perspectives of London right here in our blog, but our hope is that London Living will provide you with a more interactive forum where you can share, learn, and hopefully make some new London friends!

Participate in the dialogue now at http://www.londonrelocation.ning.com.  Your new life across the pond–plan it, live it, love it!