1. Home
  2. Blogs

How Rental Crates Can Add Value to Your Estate Agency

Moving home is an exciting time. Estate agents have the (un)enviable task of guiding customers through the moving process with a front-row seat to watch families, couples and independent homeowners or tenants realise their dream homes. You also get to witness some of the challenges involved in the process – listings, fees, negotiating, re-negotiating and contracts.

Luckily, there’s plenty that you can do to ensure that the moving experience goes as smoothly as possible with satisfied customers more likely to recommend your services to friends and family, or return to you if they move in the future. According to estate agent gurus, preparation is one of the keys to a successful estate agent business, which includes building a good relationship with your customers so that they (and you) are ready for anything. Rental or sale, once the moving process has been put in motion, packing has to be the next biggest job for your customers to tackle.

Give your customers a helping hand by pointing them in the right direction when it comes to hassle-free crate hire or home move packages. phs Teacrate’s heavy-duty plastic crates will arrive clean and ready for action in good time to allow your customers to pack up all of their belongings before moving on to pastures new.

Once they arrive at their new home, crates can remain in their possession for as long as they need, before being collected and returned to one of our nationwide depots for another happy home mover to use. One call or message to the phs Teacrate customer support team does it all.

How Can Rental Crates Help?

Moving might be an everyday occurrence for you as an estate agent, but your customers will more than likely feel daunted at the prospect. With the average house move in the UK occurring an average of once every 23 years, there’s likely to be lots of furniture and possessions accumulated, most of which will need to be carefully packed and transported to their new residence. The considerable length of time between moving also means that your out-of-practice customers will appreciate any advice that you can give them.

Here are some of the reasons why using rental crates and packaging from phs Teacrate could make the difference between a good and really great service provided by their estate agent.

Hassle-Free Moving

Finding the right boxes to pack up all of their household belongings could be tricky for many of your customers. Cardboard boxes are sometimes flimsy, especially if home movers are trying to do the right thing for the environment by re-using them. Cardboard boxes can get soggy when wet, and are easily ripped or pierced. Overload them and there’s always the worry that the bottom will fall out if they aren’t put together properly. Speaking of which, most cardboard boxes are transported and stored flat, requiring fiddly and time-consuming construction by your customers, involving tape and scissors.    

Choose re-usable rental crates from phs Teacrate and not only will your customers be doing the planet an environmental favour, they’ll also be ensuring that anything they pack into the rigid, lidded crates will be safe and sound from sharp objects, and unfavourable weather or storage conditions. Take a look at why crates may be a better option than cardboard boxes for your customers.

 

Crate rental also means no large capital outlay since all of phs Teacrate’s products and bundles are available to rent by the week. They can simply keep the crates for as long or as short a time as they need. In fact, we’re so confident that your customers will love our secure, solid crates that we can also provide crates to buy outright for long-term storage. Their rigid construction makes them safe and sturdy to stack when full and easy to nest for space-saving storage when empty.

With phs Teacrate, home movers won’t need to worry about shopping around for all of the different items they need for a successful packing project. They’ll find everything they require for packing up and moving out at our online shop, including crates, packaging and handling equipment. And when they no longer need the crates, we’ll collect them from anywhere – it doesn’t have to be the same address to which they were delivered.

Crate and Packaging Bundles

To help your customers decide which crates and packaging they need, phs Teacrate has put together a few useful Home Move crate rental bundles for properties of different sizes, from extra small for a one-bedroomed house or flat, to extra large for a three or four-bedroomed property.

Each bundle contains a suitable number of our standard, lidded, 80L rental crates, and sufficient seals, labels and bubble wrap to get their packing well underway. Larger packages also include a sack barrow for easy moving of crates around their property, and into their new residence.

phs Teacrate also offers Packaging Deals for items that are either too small, too large or too precious to place in one of our standard-sized crates. These packages consist of small cardboard boxes, tape, bubble wrap, packing paper, mattress bags and furniture covers. Using a combination of phs Teacrate Home Move bundles, Packaging Deals, and specialist crates and packaging, your customers should have the confidence to execute a seamless transit from one property to the next.

Rental Crate Delivery Where and When It Suits You

Time is precious, especially when there’s a big project ahead. The last thing any of your customers want to do is to be standing around waiting for a delivery of packing boxes so that they can get stuck in. Equally, they probably don’t want to be tripping up over crates long before they are needed.

Luckily at phs Teacrate, we can provide a balance, delivering rental crates exactly where and when they are needed. Delivery on the next working day is standard for all UK mainland orders placed before 4pm. Or your customers can plan ahead and book a date that fits into their moving schedule. If they need things in a hurry, we can even offer same day delivery at an additional cost.

Deliveries usually occur in the morning (8.30am to 12.30pm) while collections take place in the afternoon (12.30pm to 5pm). If time really is of the essence, we also offer one-hour timed delivery slots. Our range of different-sized delivery vehicles mean that no road is too narrow, and we won’t block access to or from your customers’ homes when delivering to the front door of their address. If the need arises for an order to be delivered to an exact location within a building – Flat 6, Floor 12, for example – phs Teacrate can also handle that with our friendly, convenient porter service.

If you’re on a budget (and who isn’t?), your customers can avoid delivery charges by simply popping into one of our conveniently located phs Teacrate depots where their crates will be ready and waiting as soon as 30 minutes after they’ve ordered and paid for them. With locations in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Livingston and Durham, there’s bound to be a collection centre nearby. All they need to do is simply let us know when they order that this is their preferred option. With a wide range of crates and accessories in stock at all of our depots, we’ll always be able to fulfil their request.

Protecting Valuables

When you’ve helped your customers to get so far along in the moving process, the last thing you want to happen is for them to experience a loss or breakage of a valuable or sentimental belonging. phs Teacrate is able to offer a range of consumable protective packaging and specialist crates that will help to avoid smashing, cracking or splintering of furniture or precious items during the move.

From keyboards bags, flat screen crates and large computer crates for all their IT accessories, to lidded metre crates that will keep books at their best during transit, your customers will be able to rent items individually or find a package that suits their needs.

They can use the security seals included in the phs Teacrate moving bundles to ensure that the lidded crates are secure and thanks to their stackable properties, your customers can be assured that the crates won’t topple causing injury or damage to property. We even throw in handling equipment, like a sack barrow or skate, to help with the loading and unloading of our crates when moving day comes. If your customers need additional peace of mind, they can make use of our barcoding system which will allow them to track each crate (issued with a unique barcode) throughout transit.

Also included in our moving bundles is some useful protective packaging, such as bubble wrap, which will help your customers wrap and pack their precious items in preparation of their move.

If your customers thank that they might still struggle to transport some of their possessions safely, phs Teacrate offers specialist packaging, such as wardrobe boxes, hanging rails, mattress bags and transit blankets to keep everything in pristine condition.

Reliable, experienced crate supplier

We know that you’d never risk your estate agency business by recommending anything less than the most reliable suppliers to your customers. As a member of the British Association of Removers (BAR) phs Teacrate has a solid history with the removals industry, having acted as supplier to many household names. We supply nine million crates every year to domestic and commercial users – no job is too big or too small – and fully utilise our decades-worth of experience to ensure every customer is happy, every time they use our services.

As a leader in our industry, phs Teacrate is constantly looking at ways to improve our products and service.

We don’t just supply crates for the removals and storage industries. Our crates are regularly used in the retail, refurbishment, education, automotive, pharmaceutical and food industries. Just take a look at our many five-star reviews on Trust Pilot to discover what a difference our service makes to our customers. At phs Teacrate, we pride ourselves on being a national service with a friendly local attitude.

Remember that word of mouth counts for a lot in the estate agency business, so make sure that your customers can share positive feedback with their family and friends about your service. We know that helping your customers to a successful move using phs Teacrate rental crates and packaging, is just a fraction of what you can do for the homeowners and tenants that use your estate agency but everything helps when it comes to making a positive impression.