Our largest group of customers
Storage while you move abroad,from PKR 5,000 a month.
The flight is booked, the house has to be empty before it, and nobody has decided what happens to the furniture. We collect it, wrap it, list every item and lock it in your own unit, at PKR 200 to 250 per sq ft per month with a 1 month minimum. You can arrange the whole thing from another country.
Why this is hard
Three dates, and they never line up
Moving abroad from Pakistan runs on three dates that are set by three different people. Your flight is fixed by a visa or a job. The date the house has to be handed back is fixed by a landlord or a buyer. And the shipping date, if you're shipping at all, is fixed by a freight company who won't confirm it as early as you'd like.
Those three almost never land in the same week, and the gap between them is the problem. It's why people end up selling a dining set worth six figures for whatever the first buyer offers on a Thursday, or leaving a packed house standing empty for a month and hoping, or paying rent on a property they've already left just to have somewhere to put things.
Storage is the boring answer to all three. A unit costs less than a month of the rent you're bridging, it doesn't require you to decide anything permanent in the fortnight before a flight, and it doesn't care whether your container date moves twice.
The real decision
Ship it, store it, sell it, or deal with it now
Almost nobody calls us asking which unit size they need. They call because they're standing in a house trying to sort everything they own into four piles under time pressure. This is the version of those piles that holds up.
Ship it
Things you'll want in the first month and can't easily buy again where you're going. Documents, a laptop, the children's things, anything with sentimental weight. Freight is priced by volume, so this list should be short and chosen rather than whatever happened to be packed first.
Store it
Furniture and appliances you'd have to replace at full price if you came back, and anything you cannot decide about under time pressure. This is almost always the biggest group, and it's the one people regret selling. A year of storage costs a fraction of refurnishing a house.
Sell it
Things that cost more to keep than to replace. Old appliances near the end of their life, mattresses, anything bulky and cheap. Be honest about this list, because storing it is paying rent on something you'll throw away in two years anyway.
Deal with it now
Anything perishable, anything that needs to be kept cold, gas cylinders, paint, fuel and the rest. None of it can go into storage, and discovering that on collection day costs you an hour you won't have.
We don't ship, so nothing on this page is us steering you toward the expensive pile. Freight is priced by volume and destination and you should get it quoted properly by somebody who does it. What we can tell you exactly is what the storing pile costs, because that number is on this page and it doesn't change with the postcode.
What it costs
Storage priced over the length people actually store
A monthly figure is hard to judge against a decision you're making for two years. So here is the same rate card totalled over the horizons people leaving the country actually use, for a 10 x 15 holding a 150 square foot household.
| How long | Unit | Per month | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 months | 10 x 15, 150 sq ft | PKR 30,000 to 37,500 | PKR 180,000 to 225,000 |
| 12 months | 10 x 15, 150 sq ft | PKR 30,000 to 37,500 | PKR 360,000 to 450,000 |
| 24 months | 10 x 15, 150 sq ft | PKR 30,000 to 37,500 | PKR 720,000 to 900,000 |
Rent only. Collection and delivery are quoted separately, once each, and don't recur. Hold those totals against what it would cost to furnish a house again from nothing, and against the price you'd get selling a houseful of furniture in the last fortnight before a flight. That comparison is the whole decision, and it usually isn't close.
Units, pay for the floor area you take
| Unit | Floor area | What it holds | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 x 5 | 25 sq ft | A studio or a single room. Cartons, a bed, a couple of appliances. | PKR 5,000 to 6,250 |
| 10 x 10 | 100 sq ft | A 1 or 2 bedroom flat, furniture and appliances included. | PKR 20,000 to 25,000 |
| 10 x 15 | 150 sq ft | A 2 to 3 bedroom house with its white goods. | PKR 30,000 to 37,500 |
| 10 x 20 | 200 sq ft | A 3 to 4 bedroom house, everything in it. | PKR 40,000 to 50,000 |
Units are billed at PKR 200 to 250 per square foot per month. Where you land in that band depends on the floor the unit is on and how often you need access. 1 month minimum. Collection and delivery are quoted separately.
Containers, a flat rate for the whole sealed box
| Container | Usable space | What it holds | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 ft container | 149 sq ft1,170 cu ft | A 2 to 3 bedroom house. Sealed, and nobody else's things share it. | PKR 30,000≈ PKR 201/sq ft |
| 40 ft container | 304 sq ft2,390 cu ft | A 4 to 5 bedroom house, or a shop's full stock and fittings. | PKR 50,000≈ PKR 164/sq ft |
Containers are a flat monthly rate for the whole sealed box. The bigger the box, the less you pay per square foot. Compare the per-foot figures above against the PKR 200 to 250 unit band. Internal dimensions shown, not the external size the box is named after.
Not sure which row is you? The size calculator works it out from the furniture you actually have, room by room, and gives you the monthly figure at the end.
From abroad
You don't have to be in the country
A large share of the households we collect belong to somebody who has already left, or who leaves before the collection date. It's a normal booking, not a special case.
- Nominate whoever will be at the house: a relative, a property manager or the guard. We deal with them on the day and they don't need to know anything about the booking.
- You get the itemised inventory and photographs of the unit sealed, by WhatsApp, wherever you are. That's the record you check against when it comes back out.
- Ask for anything back with 48 hours' notice, and name who's allowed to collect it. We won't release anything to anybody you haven't named.
- Tell us where your freight forwarder is taking it and when, and we'll open the unit, check the contents against the list and release the shipment to them.
What you get on the day
An itemised inventory, wrapping done before anything is carried rather than after it's loaded, and photographs of your unit sealed. Those three things are what let somebody check a storage booking from four thousand miles away, which is why they're standard rather than an extra.
We photograph the seal again at retrieval, so the gap between the two is documented rather than remembered.
The full processWhere we collect
Our own buildings in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi
Not a booking platform reselling somebody else's warehouse. We hold the lease and set the rate, which is why it's the same rate in all three cities.
Lahore
Our first and largest facility, and the one we've run the longest. Units from a single room up to a 40ft container, with the whole range available.
Storage in LahoreIslamabad
Serving Islamabad and Rawalpindi from one site. Collection across the twin cities is treated as a single service area, so a Bahria Town Rawalpindi pickup isn't charged as an intercity job.
Storage in IslamabadKarachi
Karachi is the city where most of our customers are leaving the country from, so it sees the longest stays and the most seafreight handovers.
Storage in KarachiOne thing we do not do: cold storage
We do not offer refrigerated or temperature-controlled storage. Our units are dry, ventilated and pest-controlled, which is right for furniture, appliances, documents and household goods, and wrong for anything that needs to be kept cold. If you need cold storage, we would rather tell you now than take a booking we cannot honour.
Questions
9 questions people ask before they fly
The ones that come up on the phone, answered the way we'd answer them on the phone.
How long can I leave my things in storage while I'm abroad?
As long as you need. The minimum is 1 month and after that it runs month by month, so there's no contract length to commit to and no penalty for ending it. In practice most people leaving the country store for between six months and two years, and a fair number keep going well past that because the cost of storing turns out to be smaller than the cost of deciding.
I don't know yet whether I'm coming back. Should I store or sell?
That uncertainty is the argument for storing rather than against it. Selling a house full of furniture in the three weeks before a flight is how good pieces go for a fraction of what they're worth, and the decision is irreversible. Storage buys you the option to decide later, from somewhere calmer. Work out what a 10 x 15 costs you for a year against what refurnishing would cost, and the answer is usually obvious.
Can you ship my things to me once they're in storage?
We store, we don't ship. What we do is hand over cleanly: tell us who your freight forwarder is and when they're coming, and we'll have your unit opened, the contents checked against the inventory and the shipment released to them. Plenty of people store with us precisely because their container date hadn't been confirmed when the house had to be empty.
I've already left the country. Can I still arrange this?
Yes, and it's an ordinary booking for us. Nominate somebody to be at the house on the day, a relative, a property manager or the guard, and we'll deal with them. Everything after that reaches you rather than them: the itemised inventory, the photographs of the unit sealed, and the monthly arrangement. You can run the whole thing over WhatsApp from another time zone.
Who can get into my unit while I'm away?
Nobody you haven't named. Units are separate, lockable and sealed, and nobody else's goods share your space. If you want a relative to be able to collect something, tell us who and we'll deal with them with 48 hours' notice, the same as we would with you.
Is my furniture insured while it's in storage?
Please arrange your own insurance for goods in storage, and tell us if you're storing anything of unusual value so we can agree how it's handled. We take the security measures described on this site, 24-hour CCTV, an overnight guard and sealed individual units, but security isn't the same thing as insurance, and we would much rather be clear about that in advance than after an event.
Should I take a unit or a container?
It depends on volume, and the honest answer is that a container is not automatically cheaper. Compare the per square foot figures against the unit band before you decide. The 40 ft container works out below the unit floor per square foot, so at that size bulk genuinely is cheaper. The smaller container sits inside the unit band rather than under it, so take it because you want a sealed box nobody else shares, not because you assume it saves money.
What can't go into storage?
We do not offer refrigerated or temperature-controlled storage. Our units are dry, ventilated and pest-controlled, which is right for furniture, appliances, documents and household goods, and wrong for anything that needs to be kept cold. If you need cold storage, we would rather tell you now than take a booking we cannot honour. Beyond that, nothing perishable, nothing hazardous, no fuel, gas cylinders or paint, and no living things. If you're unsure about something, ask before collection day rather than on it.
How do I pay from abroad?
Billing is monthly. Tell us who's paying and where the invoice should go when you book, and we'll set it up before you leave rather than after, which saves a conversation across a time difference in your first fortnight in a new country.
More on how storage works day to day is on the full FAQ, and what we commit to is set out in our terms.
Tell us your dates
The flight, the day the house has to be empty, and roughly what's in it. We'll come back with the unit size, the monthly rent and a separate collection figure.