What you share

Five things that are not only yours

This is the whole difference between moving out of a flat in a converted house and moving out of a whole one.

In a whole house the route from the furthest bedroom to the vehicle is entirely yours. Nothing on it belongs to anybody else, nobody else needs to use it while you are moving, and any damage you do is your own problem to live with.

In a conversion, almost none of that route is yours. The hall, the stair, the path and the bin store belong to the building, which means they belong to everyone in it — and the people who live there still need to get past while it is happening.

What you share

Five things that are not only yours

In a converted house the route from your door to the street runs almost entirely through other people's property. That is the whole difference from moving out of a whole house, and it is where conversion moves go wrong.

The part	Shared with	The problem	How it gets sorted
The front path and gate	Every flat in the house	The gate is frequently narrower than the front door, and the path is where the bins live. A vehicle at the kerb is fine; getting from the kerb to the door is the bit that needs looking at.	Ask us to measure the gate at survey. If the bins need moving, that is ours to do and put back.
The communal hall	Everyone above the ground floor	A Victorian hall with a meter cupboard, a radiator and somebody’s bicycle is considerably narrower than its floor plan. It is also not your paintwork, so damage there is a dispute with neighbours rather than a snag.	We protect the whole hall as standard. Ask the neighbours to move bikes and buggies the evening before — it is the single most useful thing you can do.
The main staircase	Everyone above you	It was built as a domestic stair for one family and now serves three households. The half-landing turn is almost always the binding constraint, and a later handrail makes it tighter than the original.	Measured at survey against your largest pieces, with the failures identified before anything is packed.
The bin store	Every flat, and usually the flat above resents it	It is nearly always sited exactly where a vehicle or a crew needs to stand, and it is nobody’s individual responsibility to move.	We move it and put it back. Tell your neighbours it is happening so nobody arrives home to find their bin relocated.
The parking	The street, under a controlled parking zone	Most of central Ealing sits in a CPZ with residents’ bays and no visitor space. A conversion with four flats has nowhere near four parking spaces, and a removal vehicle needs a bay formally suspended rather than hopefully empty.	We apply to the council for the suspension at both ends. It has a notice period, which is why an early date matters more than a confirmed one.

Why we protect more than we strictly need to

Damage to your own wall is a snag. Damage to a communal wall is a dispute with the people you live above, and it will still be a dispute long after we have gone.

So the hall, the stair, the banister, the newel and every flight we pass through get covered as standard rather than on request. It is unglamorous and it takes time at the start of the day, and it prevents the only kind of damage on a conversion move that is genuinely hard to put right.

The thing you can do that helps most

Ask the other flats to move bikes, buggies and anything else out of the hall the evening before. It sounds trivial. It is the highest-return thing anybody does before a conversion move.

We knock on doors too, and explain what is happening and when. But a request from a neighbour lands better than one from a stranger in a van.

The bins

They are always exactly where the crew needs to stand and they are nobody's individual responsibility. We move them and put them back — the only thing worth doing in advance is telling the other flats, so nobody comes home to find their bin somewhere else with no explanation.

Why an unmanaged conversion is harder than a managed block →

Tell us which part of the house you are

Both addresses, roughly how much there is, and which flat — ground, upper, top or garden. That one word tells us more about the job than the room count does.

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