Housing & Community — Part 3
The Celpip Plus team
Written and reviewed against the official CELPIP scoring criteria
What you'll learn: the phrasal verbs fluent speakers use for moving house and dealing with the ups and downs of settling into a new home or neighborhood.
Why these phrasal verbs matter
Housing narratives on CELPIP almost always involve a sequence of actions — moving in, fixing something up, dealing with a problem, sometimes moving out again. English speakers narrate this sequence with phrasal verbs almost exclusively; a response built only from single-word verbs like "relocate" or "install" sounds like a dictionary entry rather than a real story. Learning this set lets you narrate a full moving story fluently, from first arrival to any problems that come up along the way.
Separable vs. inseparable
As with the travel set, watch which verbs allow an object in the middle. "Move in" and "settle in" don't take a direct object in the usual sense, but "fix up" and "clear out" do — and both orders are natural ("fix up the place" or "fix the place up").
Housing phrasal verbs
| Collocation | Meaning | Example sentence |
|---|---|---|
| move in | begin living in a new home | We moved in last weekend after weeks of packing. |
| move out | leave a home permanently | My roommate moved out at the end of the lease. |
| settle in | become comfortable in a new place | It took us about a month to settle in. |
| fix up | repair or improve a property | We spent the summer fixing up the old kitchen. |
| clear out | remove unwanted items from a space | We cleared out the garage before the move. |
| look after | take care of a property or a person | My neighbor looks after my plants when I'm away. |
| put up with | tolerate an unpleasant situation | We had to put up with construction noise for months. |
| break in | (of intruders) enter illegally by force | Someone broke in through the back window last week. |
| team up with | join forces with someone for a common goal | We teamed up with our neighbors to organize a cleanup. |
| take over | assume responsibility for something | New owners took over the building last year. |
| set up | arrange or establish something | We set up a neighborhood watch group. |
| get along with | have a friendly relationship with someone | We get along with all of our neighbors. |
Worked example — CELPIP Speaking Task 1
Prompt: Describe how you settled into your current neighborhood.
"When I first moved in, the apartment needed a lot of work, so I spent the first two weekends fixing up the walls and clearing out boxes from the previous tenant. It took a little while to settle in, but the neighbors were friendly right away, and we quickly got along with each other. A few months later, someone tried to break in to a unit down the hall, which was unsettling, so a few of us teamed up with the building manager to set up a proper security system. Now our neighbors even look after each other's mail when someone travels. Honestly, having to put up with a bit of chaos at first was worth it — this is one of the friendliest places I've ever lived, and I have no plans to move out anytime soon."
Common mistakes
- Saying "move into" as a fixed unit incorrectly with an object attached elsewhere — the natural form is "move into a house" but simply "move in" when no object follows.
- Using "tolerate with" instead of the correct fixed phrase put up with.
- Writing "break into" without an object when the situation requires one — "someone broke in" is fine standing alone, but "broke into the apartment" needs the preposition.
- Confusing take over (assume control) with "take out," which has an unrelated meaning.
- Saying "set on" instead of the correct particle in set up a group or system.
Recap
These twelve phrasal verbs — move in, move out, settle in, fix up, clear out, look after, put up with, break in, team up with, take over, set up, and get along with — give you the tools to narrate any housing story from arrival to resolution. Part 4 covers the formal phrases and connectors needed for housing-related CELPIP Writing tasks.