What an Austin apartment move costs and how long it takes
Apartment movers in the Austin area generally run $120 to $180 an hour for two movers and a truck. A one-bedroom is usually a 3 to 4 hour job. A two-bedroom is 4 to 6. That puts most apartment moves somewhere between $400 and $900, and you get the number in writing before you book. No deposit is required to get a quote.
What actually moves that price is not a mystery. It is the floor you live on, whether the elevator works and can be reserved, how far the truck can legally park from the door, and how much of it is packed when we walk in. Those four things decide your bill more than anything else on this page.
Can you hire movers for just an apartment
Yes, and it is a large share of what we do. Some crews price small jobs so high that a studio is not worth booking. We do not. Titan Moving & Delivery is a seven-person family operation based at 4200 Burch Dr in Del Valle, and a two-hour studio move is a normal booking on our schedule. Owner Lee Lucio quotes the jobs himself. He has been in the trade since the late 1990s, starting out working with his father.
If you want the truck and the crew together, that is a standard local move, priced by the hour. If you already rented a truck or a container and only need the lifting, we do that too, and we price it the same way with no truck attached.
The certificate of insurance your building will ask for
This is the step that catches people two days before the move. Most managed apartment communities in Austin, especially mid-rise and high-rise buildings downtown, along the Domain, and in East Riverside, will not let a moving crew past the loading dock without a certificate of insurance on file. The building wants proof of general liability and workers compensation, and it usually wants itself named as certificate holder.
We issue those. Send us the property name, the management company, the exact certificate holder wording they gave you, and any coverage minimums, and we get the COI to the leasing office ahead of move day. Do this as soon as you book, not the night before. Some management companies take several business days to approve a vendor, and a crew turned away at the dock is a wasted deposit on your truck elevator reservation.
Elevators, stairs, and loading docks
Ask your leasing office two questions the day you give notice: is there a service elevator, and does it have to be reserved. In most Austin high-rises the answer is yes to both, and the reservation comes in a window, often two or four hours, often not on a Sunday. That window is a hard clock. If it starts at 9 and you have not begun packing, you are paying our crew to wait.
Walk-ups change the math the other way. A third-floor unit with no elevator adds real time per trip, and there is no way around it. What we can do is cut the number of trips: everything that can be boxed goes in a box, furniture gets broken down and padded downstairs, and the crew runs a chain instead of everyone climbing at once.
Parking is the other quiet cost. If the closest place a 26-foot truck can sit is around the corner in a fire lane you cannot use, every load-out gets longer. Tell us where the dock is, or where you think the truck can park, and we will plan around it.
Not every apartment job is a tower. The garden-style complexes in Pflugerville trade the elevator problem for a stairs problem: three floors, an exterior staircase, and a parking lot between your door and the truck. There is no certificate of insurance to chase and no window to beat, but the carry is longer than anything downtown, and that is what the hours go to.
What is the best way to move apartments
Do it in this order and the move day gets short.
- Box everything small before we arrive: loose items in laundry baskets and open drawers are the single biggest time sink on an apartment move. Boxes stack. Loose stuff does not.
- Reserve the elevator and confirm the COI: two calls to the leasing office, done a week out.
- Empty the closets and the pantry: those two rooms are always underestimated.
- Keep one box for the first night: sheets, chargers, meds, coffee. Load it last so it comes off first.
If packing is the part you dread, we do it. Our packing and unpacking service can handle the whole apartment or just the kitchen, which is usually the room that eats a Saturday.
What is the cheapest day to hire movers
Midweek, mid-month. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the middle of the month are the softest days on almost any Austin mover’s calendar, including ours, because leases turn over on the first and the last day of the month. Those two windows plus Saturdays are when demand spikes. Spring and summer are our busy season, so a July Saturday on the first of the month is the single hardest day to book cheaply anywhere in this city.
You will not always be able to pick. If your lease ends on the 31st, it ends on the 31st. But if you have a few days of overlap between leases, using one of them on a Wednesday is worth real money.
Is it cheaper to rent a truck yourself
For a studio with a friend who owns a pickup, yes. For most one and two bedroom apartments, the gap is smaller than people expect once the rental truck, the mileage, the fuel, the pads, the dolly and your entire Saturday are added up. And you are the one carrying a box spring down three flights, and you are the one liable if the truck clips a garage beam.
The honest answer is that it depends on your stairs and your back. If you want to split the difference, rent the truck and hire the crew for the loading only. We will tell you which way is cheaper for your specific job when you call, even when the answer costs us the booking.
Red flags when hiring movers
A few are worth knowing, because Austin gets a wave of unlicensed crews every spring.
Ask for the license numbers and then actually check them. Every legitimate Texas mover has a TxDMV number, and anyone crossing state lines needs a USDOT and interstate authority. Ours are on public record. Look them up on the FMCSA and TxDMV databases before you hire us or anyone else. A company that will not give you the numbers is telling you something.
Be careful with a quote given without a single question about your floor, your parking, or your heaviest item, because that quote will change on move day. Be careful with a large cash deposit before anyone has seen the job. And read the reviews, all of them, not just the top three. We are at 4.7 stars across 47 Google reviews, 44 of them five stars, and the ones that are not five stars are there too.
Getting a quote for your apartment move
Tell us the unit, the floor, whether there is an elevator, and roughly how much is going. You will get an hourly rate and an honest hour range in writing. If the job runs short, you pay for the hours you used.
The same crew that quotes your move is the crew that shows up. Book a week or two out in spring and summer if you can. If you want to see the full range of what we handle, from packing to specialty pieces, start with our moving services.