Executive relocation, Indianapolis to Greater Lafayette.
A corporate move arrives with a start date attached, and that date is the only fixed point in it. The house, the schools, the sale of the home you are leaving, and however many weeks in a hotel all get built backwards from it.
You know your household better than anyone. What you do not have yet is the map. Sorting the map, in the right order, is the part that is mine.
Almost every relocation that goes badly went badly because two of these ran in the wrong order, not because anyone made a bad decision.
Start at the desk and work outward.
The corridor runs Indianapolis to Greater Lafayette, and there are nine towns on it that a relocating household regularly ends up choosing between. They answer different questions. None of them is the best one, and anyone who tells you otherwise is telling you about themselves rather than about the towns.
The useful question is which one answers yours, and that starts with where you will physically be on a Tuesday. A campus in West Lafayette, a plant in Lebanon and an office downtown produce three different maps out of the same nine towns.
Commute assumptions are where relocating households lose the most time, usually by trusting a drive time they read somewhere instead of one they have driven. The note on whether you can live in Lafayette and work in Indianapolis is the honest version of that particular question. The areas page has the rest of the corridor.
Built around your week. Not around a list of addresses.
Most relocation tours are a list of houses, which is the wrong order. You cannot evaluate a house in a town you have not seen, and you will not remember the fourth one anyway.
So we start at the office or the campus or the plant, and we drive the commute at the hour you would actually drive it. Then the towns, in the order the map makes sense in. Houses last, and fewer of them than you expect, because by then you know what you are looking at.
If your household includes someone who is not on the plane, the scan and floor plan work on the listing marketing page runs in both directions. A house here can be walked through from your current kitchen table before anyone books a second flight.
And what it usually does not.
Relocation benefits vary by company and by level, and the only version that matters is the one in your document. What follows is the shape of the thing, so you know what to ask for by name.
Commonly included. Household goods shipment and storage. Temporary housing for a defined stretch. One or two house hunting trips. Some assistance toward closing costs, or a lump sum that you allocate yourself.
Sometimes included, at senior levels. A home sale benefit on the property you are leaving, which can come with real conditions about who lists it and at what price. Read that section before you promise anything to anyone, including me.
Usually not included. The second move. Which is why the whole plan is built to avoid needing one.
Whether any part of what you receive is taxable to you belongs to your CPA and to your company's tax provider. I am not going to guess at it, and you should be careful with anyone who does.
Two transactions, one calendar.
If the home you are leaving is in another state, I am not listing it, and I will say so plainly. What I can do is make the two calendars talk to each other, and tell you which order carries the risk your household can absorb.
That decision has its own note: sell first or buy first, and which risk you would rather carry. When the move is on a start date, the order is often forced, which simplifies it.
If the home you are leaving is on this corridor, then it is a listing conversation, and that starts on the sellers page.
It is often the cheapest available insurance against buying in the wrong town.
A household that rents for six months and buys the right house has spent a known amount of money. A household that buys in month one and moves again in year two has spent a much larger unknown one. If the town is genuinely still in question when the start date arrives, renting is the correct answer and I will tell you so.
Most agents are paid only when the answer is buy now. I will tell you when it is not.
And who it belongs to instead.
What your benefits document actually obligates the company to do belongs to your HR contact or the relocation management company. What you qualify for, and what a rate lock or a bridge product would cost, belongs to a lender. The tax treatment of anything reimbursed belongs to your CPA. Anything about the contract itself belongs to an attorney.
What belongs to me is the map, the towns, the houses, the order, and telling you when the plan in front of you does not work.
Earlier is cheaper. It costs nothing to start before you have decided.