Apartment Moving near you

Start with the strata manager or building manager, not the removalist. Ask in writing what the building requires for a move: whether a moving window applies, how much notice is needed, whether the lift has to be booked and blanketed, whether a loading dock or a nominated bay must be used, and whether anything has to be paid or lodged before the day. Get the answer in an email you can forward, because the person who lets your crew in at seven in the morning is usually not the person who approved the booking.

Only then go to removalists, and give them the building's answer as part of the brief. A crew that knows it has a two-hour lift window and a dock two levels below the lobby will quote and staff the job differently from one that assumes a driveway and a front door. If the building will not release a lift outside certain hours, say so before you take a quote, not on the morning.

Damage inside your own lot is between you and the removalist. Damage to the lift, the lobby, the garage door or the corridor is damage to property the owners corporation is responsible for maintaining, and its first move is to recover the cost from the lot the move was for. If you are renting, that means it reaches you through the owner or the agent. Either way you are in the middle of it.

The protection that actually works here is the removalist's public liability cover, which is the cover that responds to damage done to someone else's property during the work. The NSW consumer protection guidance notes that removalists accredited by the Australian Furniture Removers Association hold public liability insurance, and that accredited businesses must meet standards for equipment, vehicles, premises and staff training. That is a useful signal rather than a licence, because there is no removalist licence in any Australian state or territory, and it says nothing about the level of cover.

So ask for the certificate of currency, check the business name on it matches the business you are hiring, and photograph the lift car, the lobby and the corridor before the first load and again after the last one. A dated photograph settles arguments that a written condition report never quite does.

Apartment moves concentrate exactly the things WHS law treats as hazardous. SafeWork NSW describes manual tasks as using your body to lift, lower, push, pull, carry, move, hold or restrain something, and says a task becomes hazardous when it involves repetitive or sustained force, high or sudden force, repetitive movement, sustained or awkward posture, or vibration. Carrying a lounge down four flights of a walk-up, or holding a mattress at an angle in a lift for two minutes while it is manoeuvred, is all five at once.

The duty sits with the removalist as the business, not with you, and it runs to eliminating the risk where that is reasonably practicable and otherwise minimising it with control measures. In practice that looks like trolleys and shoulder straps rather than bare hands, more crew on a stair job than on a lift job, and a refusal to take a safe or a full filing cabinet down a fire stair. If a crew arrives short-handed for a building you told them about, the honest response is to reschedule, not to watch two people improvise.

The classic apartment failure is a piece of furniture that fits the room but not the route to it. Lift cars in older Australian walk-up conversions and in compact newer blocks are sized for people, not for a three-seat modular lounge, and the constraint is usually the diagonal of the car and the height of the door opening rather than the floor area. Corridors with a dogleg near the lift, and stairwells with a tight half-landing, do the same thing to anything long and rigid.

Measure before you commit to the move, not on the day. The numbers that matter are the lift door opening, the internal depth and height of the car, the narrowest point of the corridor, and the width of your own entry door with the door leaf removed. Send them to the removalist with the quote request. If something genuinely will not go, the options are dismantling, a stair carry or specialist handling, and all three are cheaper to arrange in advance than to discover with a truck double-parked.

The NSW consumer protection guidance is direct about the basics: always ask for a written quote before hiring a removalist, and make sure the quote is itemised so the removalist can account for every charge. It also sets out what the contract should contain, namely the complete details of the service being provided, a household inventory of the goods being moved, the pick-up and delivery addresses, the dates and times of the move, and how payment is to be made.

For an apartment, add the building's constraints to that document. If the lift window is two hours, the contract should say what happens if the job runs past it. If a dock height limits the vehicle, the contract should name the vehicle. Queensland's consumer guidance suggests preparing an inventory of everything the movers will be moving, noting any scratches or dents, and taking photos of your items and boxes, which is worth doing in a building where two different sets of damage claims can appear at once.