Relocation Mistakes That Cost Up to $1.25 Million

Most relocation problems announce themselves. A visa deadline slips, a shipment sits at port, a lease turns out to be in the wrong neighborhood. Somebody sorts it out and the assignment carries on. The failure that costs a company six or seven figures works differently, because it was locked in months before anyone noticed it, at the point where somebody chose the destination without asking much about who was going there.

Global Citizen Solutions (GCS) recently put numbers to that idea. Its first World’s Most Livable Cities for Expats report scores 35 destinations across six continents, and the scoring was built around who actually moves abroad these days rather than who used to. Read it alongside the data on assignments that end early and the same point keeps surfacing. Overall rank is close to useless on its own. What matters is whether the place works for the particular household going there, which is the question that usually gets skipped.

Who Is Actually Moving Abroad Now

“Expat” once described a fairly narrow person: a mid-career executive, usually male, sent abroad for three years with a housing allowance and a return ticket. That person still exists. He just is not the majority anymore. The people relocating today include remote employees, retirees, founders, and couples where both adults have careers and neither one plans to give theirs up. GCS scored its 35 cities across seven categories, among them cost of living, healthcare access, and quality of life, because a city that suits one of those groups can be a poor choice for another.

Where Each City Scored Best

Nobody topped every category, so the useful thing to look at is where each one pulled ahead.

There Is No “Best” Relocation Destination

No city on the GCS list wins everywhere. If you are retiring and what you want is good doctors and an easy social life, Lisbon looks excellent. A family working through schools, safety and flight connections will probably land on Singapore instead. Neither answer helps the other household. Which is why pulling a destination off a general ranking and calling it the best available option is already a mistake, whatever the ranking says. The useful thing is a conversation before anyone books a flight. Where is this person in their life, who is coming with them, what does the job actually need. Programs that have that conversation tend to see it show up later in how assignees rate the whole thing.

The Real Cost of Getting Destination Fit Wrong

There is a number attached to all of this. A Return on Investment report by KPMG and Ipsos for International SOS, a survey of 255 client organizations, puts the cost of an assignment that does not work out somewhere between $850,000 and $1.25 million. That range covers base compensation, the move itself, housing and education allowances, and tax, then adds what nobody budgets for, which is hiring a replacement and the productivity lost while it all gets sorted out. As KPMG tax principal Katherine Avery says in the report, “striking a balance between managing cost and employee experience is vital for the success of any assignment.”

Relocation Mistakes That Send People Home Early

Industry estimates put the share of international assignments that end early at up to 40%. Almost none of them collapse in week one. They erode, usually months in, and the signals are there the whole time. Somebody has to be watching for them.
Most of the time it is the family that comes apart first. NetExpat and EY’s 2026 Relocating Family Support Survey asked more than 340 mobility leaders in 50 countries about exactly this. Sixty-nine percent said partner resistance is the top reason an employee turns a relocation down before it starts. Sixty-two percent said an unhappy partner is the top reason the ones that do start fall apart. Dual-career couples have it worst. The accompanying spouse often cannot get a work permit, or holds a license that means nothing in the new country, or spends a year hunting for something at their old level and never finds it.
So the thing that decides the outcome mostly happens outside the office. The assignment holds if the family can put together an ordinary life where they landed. Can they afford it. Do they know anyone. Does it feel like home after six months. A city can sit near the top of every index and still fail that test for one household, and when it does, the bill runs to six or seven figures.

What This Means for Relocating Employees and Families

Put the livability research next to the failure research and the two arrive at the same place from opposite directions. Destination fit is not a soft line in a policy document. It moves the numbers a mobility program gets judged on, and getting it right protects the person you sent along with the several hundred thousand dollars you spent sending them.

How CapRelo Can Help

CapRelo’s employee destination services and the pre-assignment work around it exist for exactly this part of the move. A consultant sits down with the assignee and whoever is going with them and works out what actually matters in this case, which might be a specialist within driving distance, or a school that will take a 14-year-old mid-year, or simply somewhere a spouse can build a life. Then we test the destination against that while there is still time to change the answer.
Assignees also get school and community information, help finding housing, and local resources through our relocation resource center. On the program side, CompanionFlex lets a company build the benefit package around each move rather than handing everyone the same one.
If your mobility program could use a second look at how destinations get selected, contact our global mobility team to talk through your program.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the most common relocation mistakes companies make?

The expensive ones are rarely logistical. In our experience the most common one is treating destination selection as a formality: somebody defaults to whatever city sits highest on a general livability list, and nobody asks what this assignee and this family actually need. The other one we see constantly is assuming the family will adapt. It’s family adjustment, not job performance, that gets cited when assignments fall apart.

How much can a failed international assignment cost a company?

Between $850,000 and $1.25 million, going by the KPMG, Ipsos and International SOS study of 255 organizations. That covers compensation, the relocation itself, housing and education allowances and tax, plus the indirect hits, mainly replacing the employee and the productivity lost along the way.

Why do international assignments fail?

Up to 40% end early, by industry estimates, and the reason cited most often has nothing to do with job performance. It is the family. Usually it traces back to the accompanying partner, who has lost career momentum, cannot find work, or has not managed to build any social life in the new country.

How does destination fit affect international assignment success?

It is a plain question. Can this particular household live well in this particular place? Healthcare within reach, schools that will take the kids, rent they can carry, streets they feel safe on, some realistic path to making friends. A city can score well overall and be wrong for one family anyway. Of everything you can assess before a move, fit predicts the outcome about as well as anything does.

How can companies reduce the risk of relocation failure?

Have the destination conversation before the move rather than after something has gone wrong. Ask each family what they need, including what the accompanying partner is going to do for work, then pick the destination against those answers instead of a generic best-cities list.