APARTMENT MOVING – EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW
Wait, what? Apartment moving is not the same as house moving? Indeed not! I was equally surprised to find it out. But yeah, there are some organizational steps that you can skip when moving a house, but unfortunately, you have to think of them before hiring your apartment movers. But hey, don’t worry, it is not that complicated at all. Those are just a couple of additional steps that will help you have a smooth and sound moving service by professional movers. Ready to start? Let’s go!
Planning Your Move
Before you even start calling local movers, you should make a proper plan for your apartment moving. This list will be much help, so make sure to grab a notebook where you will write everything down. Except for the items that you will find on this list, make sure to come up with everything that needs to be done. It will be much easier for you if you have it in writing so you can tick off task by task.
Find Experienced Apartment Movers
In hustling and bustling cities, you will find experienced apartment movers easily because there are many apartments and buildings around. This certainly doesn’t mean that the other local movers operating in the suburbs are not skilled enough, but you might need to dig deeper to find them. If you are wondering how can you even notice the difference between experienced apartment movers and regular local movers, it is quite simple! Once you are done with the list of tips I prepared for you, you will be able to spot if your local movers are asking these questions and that will help you determine if they know what are they talking about. However, local movers might not ask you all of these questions because they have already moved someone from or to your apartment building. But some things are super important for a stress-free apartment moving. So, how do you even start searching for local movers? Since you are living in an apartment building with many people who had to move there at some point, you might want to ask your neighbors if they have good local movers to recommend. If you are shy or you just don’t know anyone from your building, or if your neighbors don’t have local movers to recommend, don’t worry – you can always go online and search for apartment movers in your area. If you choose to do it this way, make sure not to rush and book the first company on the list. Whenever you are hiring local movers, you need to do a background check to learn more about them and the services they are offering. Of course, you are going to call professional movers to learn more, but before that, read a couple of reviews so you can hear someone else opinion too. After calling some local movers in your area, it will be easier for you to set the moving budget. If you think that professional movers are not affordable movers – I have to prove you wrong. Many quality local moving companies are offering affordable prices that can fit everyone’s budget. No matter how much money you are willing to spend on your upcoming move, there is no doubt you will find local movers that will be able to help you out.
Building Management
What makes apartment moving more complex than a house relocation is the building management. Hiring local movers is no longer about your wishes only, but you need to coordinate those with the rules and regulations your building management set. Firstly, you should check if there are any time restrictions when it comes to moving in or moving out policies. Sometimes building management doesn’t allow local movers to enter the building on weekdays or weekends. Or there might be a certain time window when you are allowed to move in or move out. In case you are moving from one building to another one, make sure to check policies for both so you can coordinate the whole project with your local movers. If possible, ask your building management to provide you with the written form of all rules that are set, and you can forward that to your professional movers.
A Certificate of Insurance
Moving from an apartment building means that your local movers might have to provide your building management with the Certificate of Insurance. This could also be something that you have to provide both buildings. So what is this at all? A certificate of insurance is a document that local movers are providing to the building to guarantee they will cover the expenses of any damages made to the building’s property. Don’t confuse this with the moving insurance that your local movers include for you. This is a separate document where your local movers are responsible for damages on the elevators or hallways. There might be some other requests that are protecting your local movers too. You don’t need to know a lot about this document, you just need to forward your building management’s requirements to your professional movers. After they receive that, within a couple of days, your local movers will send you a Certificate of Insurance that you have to provide to your building management. You are the middleman, which is not that bad. You are probably wondering how much this might cost? Local movers usually provide this document free of charge, unless your building has some additional requests that are out of the ordinary.
Elevator Restrictions
This one is a physical difference between apartment moving and house moving. Houses are usually one story or a maximum of three stories, which means there are no many flights of stairs that local movers have to use. And of course, there are no elevators. But when you are moving from an apartment building is either-or. In case there are many flights of stairs, you should be prepared to hire more apartment movers than usual because they will get tired faster. Just think about it, they will have to carry every single piece of your furniture down or up to many flights of stairs. And if there is an elevator, you should check with your building management if you need to reserve it for your upcoming move. If you are living in a building where many people are moving in or moving out, elevator restrictions are a way for the building management to keep things organized. Once you find out what is the time when you can use the elevator, make sure to coordinate the arrival window for your local movers. The last thing that you want is to pay professional movers that are not able to work because they cannot use the elevator. Maybe an even worse scenario is that your local movers don’t have enough time to move all of your belongings. Many things can go wrong if your communication is not open. A big NO is to try to hide that there are stairs at your location from your local movers. They will eventually see it, of course. But local movers can refuse to do the moving job if they think it is not safe. That is why you should always be honest with your local movers. The same goes for long hallways. Those are not that unusual for buildings. Why you should mention this? Because your move will take much longer if there are long carries, so your local movers might recommend adding one more mover to make things faster. And overall advice is: whenever you are not sure whether to hire two or three professional movers, go with the higher number. The more the merrier. When it comes to local movers, you always want to have enough number of them so your move can be done safely.
Parking
No matter if you are moving from a house or an apartment, you are the one responsible to provide local movers with parking. When moving from a house, you probably have a driveway, so you don’t even have to think about this. But apartment moving might bring some challenges. If there is a garage, check if you can use it and also check with your local movers what is the height of the moving truck, to see if they can even use it. That is not an option? Don’t worry, there are a couple of others. If you can block the parking spot with your car and move it once your local movers arrive, that might be a good solution. And for those who don’t even want to think about this – apply for a parking permit. Just ask your local movers for the truck size, so you can apply for the right permit. And do this in time, because issuing the parking permit might take up to 5 business days. What will happen if you don’t manage to find the parking spot? Nothing too bad, but it might lead to additional expenses. Since your local movers have the rule in their agreement that the customer is responsible for parking, in case they are issued with the parking ticket – you will be responsible to pay it. Why would you have those expenses when you can plan the move properly and get a parking permit.
Narrow Streets
When there is a block of apartment buildings, the chance that your street is narrow grows higher. If that is the case with your building too, you should inform your local movers that your street is narrow. This will help them determine the size of the truck that can fit all of your belongings (or at least most of them) and be able to park in your street. If you don’t tell them this and they have to park a street far from you there will be long carry and the move will be more expensive than needed.
Notify your landlord
Don’t forget to notify your landlord in time so you don’t get any penalties for moving out early or whatever the case might be. Also, be sure to ask them to inspect the apartment to determine that everything is all right, so you don’t face any surprises on a moving day.
Start packing in time
This is the advice for any type of move, but apartments might seem small and you might think that you don’t have that many items. That might lead you to start packing too late and your local movers might arrive when you are not even half pack. This will certainly lead to much more stress than needed. Try to make a plan when it comes to packing so you can determine how much time and energy you will have to spend on your packing. Moving is a great opportunity for you to get rid of the items that you don’t need anymore. What to do with them? Organize an online sale where you will get the chance to earn some money too. If you don’t want to bother with that, you can always donate your items to the Goodwille. Or even throw them away. Anything but bringing the old energy into your new place. And if you don’t want to spend days packing you can ask your professional movers to pack up for you. This will save you a lot of time and energy that you can invest in something else, like spending it with your friends or family.
Are you looking for experienced local movers who can help you relocate your apartment safely and efficiently? Reach out to El Dorado Hills Moving Company! We are in business for quite some time and we can guarantee that your apartment relocation will be done in the most quality way. Our team is skilled to navigate the long hallways, carry heavy furniture up or down some stairs, and similar. Getting a quote is simple – you just need to give us a call and our customer support team will guide you through the process. If it’s more convenient, you can always request a quote over our website and we will send you all the details over email. We are looking forward to talking to you!