Pre-survey: what your coordinator looks for at an Indian household

The pre-move survey is the single most important hour in any international moving from India. It is the moment when our coordinator walks through your home, takes the inventory, identifies the risks and decides — with the family — what travels, what stays, what gets sold and what gets stored. Done well, the survey makes everything that follows easier. Done badly, it sets up problems that surface only when the consignment is being loaded into the container at Nhava Sheva or Mundra and it is too late to fix anything.

Below is what our Seemleius International coordinators are actually looking for when they walk into an Indian household for a pre-survey. We share this not to demystify our craft but because clients who understand the survey lens get a noticeably better outcome.

Volume, not item count

The most common misunderstanding we encounter is the assumption that a survey produces a “list of items”. It does not. It produces a cubic-foot volume estimate, broken down by room, with risk flags. The container size we book — a 20-foot or 40-foot dry container, or shared groupage volume — depends on this number, and the entire move budget pivots on getting it right.

A typical four-bedroom independent house in Bengaluru produces between 1,200 and 1,800 cubic feet, but variance is enormous. A family with three generations of accumulated furniture can run to 2,400 cubic feet; a young family with modular rental furniture under 800. Our coordinator lands an accurate number, not an optimistic one.

Furniture: the high-volume, high-decision category

Furniture is where the survey conversation tends to be the longest, and rightly so. A solid teak almirah occupies the same container volume as four bedside tables, but it may be the most important emotional object in the move. Our coordinator will ask, for each significant piece, three questions: how old is it, where will it go at the destination, and is it worth the freight cost relative to replacement.

What we flag during the furniture walkthrough

• Pieces that will not fit through doorways at the destination — common with Indian apartments going to European or East Asian destinations where lift dimensions are smaller.
• Solid wood furniture that may need ISPM-15 fumigation declarations for biosecurity-strict destinations.
• Items with brass, copper or ivory inlay that may face customs scrutiny.
• Glass-fronted cabinets, marble-topped tables and stone-base lamps — high breakage risk that needs specific crating, not standard wrapping.
• Furniture in a state of repair where the move itself will likely accelerate further deterioration.

For each flagged piece, we discuss the option of shipping, selling locally, gifting to family or putting into Indian storage. The decision is the family’s; the visibility on the trade-off is ours.

Kitchen and pantry: the hidden volume

The Indian kitchen is consistently underestimated by families before the survey. The kadhais, pressure cookers, idli moulds, dosa tawas, milk pans, masala dabbas, dabbas for storage, pickle jars, the dabba for the dabba — an Indian kitchen routinely produces 80 to 120 cubic feet of household goods on its own. Our coordinator walks the kitchen carefully, opens cupboards, looks behind the cooker and inside the storage loft.

We are also looking for items that simply will not clear at the destination — opened spice packets, half-used cooking oil, the small bag of rice in the pantry. These travel in the family’s airfreight or are consumed before the move, not in the sea consignment.

Electronics: the dual-voltage check

The voltage and frequency check is one of the silent risks in any India-to-anywhere consignment. India runs 230V at 50Hz, which matches most of Europe, the Gulf, Australia, much of Africa and Southeast Asia. It does not match North America, Japan or parts of Latin America, which run 110-120V at 60Hz. Our coordinator will note every major appliance, ask about the destination, and flag anything that will not work without a step-down transformer or that has frequency-sensitive components like a microwave or a refrigerator.

The decision is then practical: ship and use a transformer, ship and sell at the destination, sell in India before the move, or keep it for the storage warehouse. We never ship a freezer to a North American destination without making sure the family understands the implications.

Heirlooms, art and the items that need a separate conversation

Most Indian households have a small set of items where the conversation needs to be slow and careful: a brass deity, a painting from the grandfather, a sari collection in a wooden trunk, jewellery the family wants to ship rather than carry, a vintage musical instrument. These items each need a dedicated packing approach, a clear declaration on the customs paperwork, and sometimes a separate insurance valuation.

For genuine antiques — broadly, items over 100 years old — there can be additional documentation requirements depending on the destination. Our coordinator will not pretend to be a customs lawyer, but we will flag the item, note the family’s understanding of its provenance, and refer to a specialist where the value justifies it.

The non-obvious things our coordinator notes silently

Beyond the inventory itself, our coordinator is forming a picture of the move that will inform every subsequent decision. We are noting:

• Access to the property — can a 32-foot loader reverse to the gate, or do we need to shuttle with smaller vehicles.
• Lift access — especially in older Mumbai and Chennai apartments where the lift may not accommodate larger pieces.
• Parking permissions — some Bengaluru and Delhi colonies require advance permission for loading vehicles.
• Pet logistics — the dog is in the survey, even if no one mentioned it.
• Family dynamics around the move — the decisions about what stays and what goes are sometimes contested, and the survey is when we learn this gently.

What a good survey delivers to the family

A good survey ends with the family having a clear volume estimate, a flagged list of decisions still to be made, a packing date proposal that works with the destination timeline, and a single named coordinator who will be the point of contact through to delivery. The quote follows within a working day, with the assumptions made transparent.

If you are planning a move from India this year and want to book a pre-survey with our coordinators in Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi or Cochin, the conversation is unhurried and free of obligation. We would rather spend an hour at the start than fix a problem at the port.