Family of 5 moving to Toronto - do we take our furniture or not?
 

Hello, Seeking some help please on whether or not we should ship all or just some of our belongings over to Canada. We are a family of 5, with 3 children aged 9.5, 7 and 4.5 and we are moving out from London to Toronto in May 2021. We are coming out with my husband’s company on the basis of at least 1 year, if not 2, and if we really like it we may stay on a permanent basis.

We have a house here in London which we intend to rent out and apparently most families would prefer to our house to be unfurnished so we will probably have to move our furniture out of the house anyway. We plan to come out to Toronto, stay somewhere quite central for a month or so whilst we search for a house to rent for a minimum of a year in an area of town with good schools and green space!

Looking online it seems that most rental houses in Toronto are unfurnished. Is this true? Is it worth shipping all of our belongings over if it just for a year? I know its a lot of money but I also don’t want to have to spend a fortune in say IKEA to furnish a 3 or 4 bedroom house in Toronto.

Wondering what other people have done in the past and would really appreciate any advice that you can give me. Thank you!

Re: Family of 5 moving to Toronto - do we take our furniture or not?
 

Hi, and welcome to BE.

If it's a company transfer then presumably the company are paying for shipping (both ways)? So you may as well ship it, as you say not many furnished places to choose from anyway, and if you've got kids I always think it's better to have familiar things around them in a new place. Whether it's worth the hassle for a year is another matter, it'll usually take longer than that to settle in and find your feet, so uprooting a family for just 12 months doesn't make sense to me in all honesty - I'd plan for 2 years at least.

Also, if you think you might want to stay permanently then do double check you'd be eligible for Permanent Residency. It would be awful to move and then not be able to stay, so if that's a factor in your decision, do double check that before signing anything!

Best of luck with the move.

Re: Family of 5 moving to Toronto - do we take our furniture or not?
 

As Christmasoompa says, your decision is likely impacted by whether or not the shipping is paid for as part of the company move, if it is paid for then why not? Most rentals here are unfurnished - the furnished ones tend to be set up for shorter term rentals and are therefore considerably more expensive (and it is pricey enough). We moved, many years ago now, on a similar basis to you, kids were 9 and 5, company transfer with a 3 year work permit, intending to make permanent if we liked it. We shipped everything and having our stuff around us really did help to make it feel like home. The day the van arrived was like several Christmases and birthdays rolled into one - the kids were so excited to see their toys and bikes again.

Re: Family of 5 moving to Toronto - do we take our furniture or not?
 

It does seem faintly bizarre to ask an employee to move to Canada but not either pay for their furniture to be shipped over, pay for them to buy furniture once they arrive or pay for a furnished rental. Furnishing a house for five from scratch is an easy $10k of outlay & you wouldn't recover more than 50% of it if you sold it all after a couple of years when you returned to UK.