You are selling or leaving a French property and moving back to the UK.
One house, three inventories
A return move that is planned as a single shipment almost always runs into trouble, because a long-occupied French house contains three quite different categories of thing and they need three different decisions.
Splitting them at survey rather than on loading morning is the single most useful thing you can do. It turns a frantic week into a sequence, and it means the vehicle that arrives is the right size.
- Ships: the pieces that have a definite place in the UK property.
- Sells or goes locally: furniture bought for French rooms that will not suit British ones, plus garden and outbuilding contents.
- Clears: what is genuinely finished, disposed of lawfully rather than left for the buyer.
Being honest about French furniture
The armoire is the recurring conversation. French case furniture is superb and it is built for rooms with height — an armoire that looks stately in a longère with a three-metre ceiling is oppressive in a UK bungalow, and frequently will not clear the ceiling at all once it is upright.
The same applies to farmhouse tables sized for a kitchen that was also the dining room, and to shuttered beds. We will measure your pieces against the UK property if you have the dimensions, and say plainly where something will not work. Shipping furniture that then has to be sold at the other end is the most avoidable expense in a return move.
The paperwork side, briefly
Bringing your own used household effects back into the UK after living abroad is a well-established route, but it is evidence-based: you need to be able to show where you were living, for how long, and that the goods are yours and used.
Assemble that evidence before collection rather than after. Utility bills, the tax notice, the property deed or lease, and proof of the UK address you are returning to. We will tell you precisely what the current requirement is for your circumstances at survey, and prepare the declaration — but the underlying documents have to come from you and they are far easier to find while you are still in the house.
When the dates do not meet
Return moves rarely line up neatly. The French sale completes on one date and the UK purchase on another, and the gap between them is not yours to choose.
Storage on either side of the Channel closes that gap. Loading out of France on the date the sale requires and holding the shipment until the UK property is ready is routine, and it is a far better answer than trying to force two conveyancing chains in two countries to agree with each other.