Haute-Savoie (74) · Savoie (73) · Isère (38)
Chalets up a hairpin, apartments above a boot room, and a resort that will not let a lorry through the middle of the season. Altitude changes every assumption.
Alpine property splits cleanly in two. Valley properties around Annecy, Thonon and Cluses behave like normal French housing and move like it. Resort property does not. A chalet at altitude is reached by a road that hairpins, narrows and in places carries a weight or length restriction, and the chalet itself typically puts its living space on the top floor and its entrance at the bottom — so the heaviest items go the furthest up.
Resort apartments are the tighter job. They are compact, well used, and entered through a communal boot room and a small lift sized for skis rather than sofas. The stairwell is usually the only real option for anything large, and it turns tightly around a central core. We measure the lift car and the stair core, and we know before the day which of the two each item is using.
Chalets also carry things no other French property does: ski and boot storage, wood stores, hot tub equipment, and the accumulated kit of ten seasons. None of it is difficult in itself; all of it is easy to under-scope because it lives in a garage nobody thinks to open during a walk-round.
Access
The approach decides more of the day than the contents do. These are the three that recur here.
Many resorts restrict commercial vehicle access during the season and around lift opening hours. Moves are planned into the windows the commune actually allows, which sometimes means a shoulder-season date rather than a convenient one.
Approach roads are assessed for gradient, hairpin radius and winter surface. Where a loaded vehicle cannot safely commit, we transfer at a valley staging point and shuttle up in a smaller unit.
Apartment lifts in resort blocks are narrow and often the building manager restricts their use for removals. The stair core is measured at survey so nothing depends on a lift we may not be allowed to use.
Out to France
Outbound alpine moves are often furnishing rather than relocating — a bought apartment being fitted out from the UK, or a chalet changing from holiday let to permanent home. Loads are mixed and awkward: some furniture, a lot of equipment, and things that need to arrive undamaged in a building with no lift.
Collecting from London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol and across the UK — removals from London to the Alps & Haute-Savoie, and from every other postcode besides.
Moving to FranceBack to Britain
Return moves from the Alps tend to be clean and well organised, because owners here are used to logistics. The complication is timing — the property is frequently under a rental commitment, and the move has to fit a gap between bookings. We work to that window rather than asking for it to move.
Delivering to a UK address, into store, or split across both while a purchase completes.
The return legElsewhere in France
Tell us the commune, the kind of building and which direction you are going. We will come back with what we need to see.