Apartment Moving

Overview

About This Service

Apartment moving in Toronto is a sport of its own. The city has one of the most diverse rental housing stocks in North America, from pre-war walk-up buildings along Eglinton Avenue and Danforth Avenue to glass-tower rental high-rises at Yonge and Bloor, and every building type in between comes with its own set of logistical puzzles. Fast Track Move has worked in all of them, and our apartment movers in Toronto know exactly how to navigate the quirks that make a Toronto apartment move genuinely challenging. The walk-up building problem is one of the first things people underestimate. A 2-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a 1960s building near St. Clair West has no elevator. The staircase is 28 inches wide, has a landing turn that cuts the usable width in half, and the front door to the building often requires propping open with one person holding it the whole day. Our crews are built for this. We keep a minimum of two movers on every apartment booking, and for walk-ups above the second floor we recommend a 3-mover crew. The third person is not wasted time, they are the person holding the door, staging items on the landing, and keeping the carry rhythm steady so nothing gets dropped and nothing gets scraped. Pre-1970 buildings along Eglinton, the Annex, Parkdale, and Leslieville all share similar characteristics: original hardwood floors that show every scuff mark, narrow front hallways with radiator covers that stick out, and plaster walls that dent at the slightest impact. Protecting the apartment from the moving crew is as important as protecting the furniture. We lay rubber-backed runners on the hardwood the moment we walk in. We pad every door frame before a single piece of furniture moves. We wrap stair railings on walk-ups. The apartment should look the same when we leave as it did when we arrived. On the high-rise rental side, the experience is similar to a condo but with some key differences. Rental apartment buildings, particularly older ones managed by large property companies, often do not have the same formal elevator booking system as a condo corporation. Sometimes it is a simple call to the superintendent the day before. Sometimes there is no booking at all and you arrive to find three other residents also using the elevator. Our crew adapts. We build a time buffer into every high-rise rental move and our truck staging approach minimizes elevator trips. The Toronto end-of-month crunch is real. Leases in Toronto typically start and end on the first of the month, and August 31 to September 1 is the single busiest 48-hour window for apartment moves in the entire city. Moving trucks are double-parked on residential streets in the Annex, Parkdale, Bloor West Village, and Leslieville every year without fail. We pre-stage parking on your street the morning of, either securing a loading zone permit through the City of Toronto's moving permit system or arriving early enough to hold the spot. The 1st of each month and the 15th (for mid-month leases) are predictably busy and we staff up accordingly. Budget is a real consideration in apartment moves. Many rental tenants are moving from one smaller place to another, without the packing buffers that homeowners typically have. Our 2-mover crew at $179 per hour with a 3-hour minimum starting at $537 is designed for exactly this situation. A 1-bedroom apartment with no elevator typically wraps up in 3 to 4 hours. A 2-bedroom walk-up on a third floor might run 4 to 5 hours for the same crew. We give you a realistic estimate before you commit so there are no surprises on bill day. Fast Track Move serves all Toronto apartment neighbourhoods including the Annex, Parkdale, Little Portugal, Leslieville, Riverside, Roncesvalles, Bloor West Village, Seaton Village, and the full North York rental corridor from Lawrence to Finch. We are also regular movers in the dense rental buildings of Scarborough and Etobicoke. With 926 Google reviews at a 5.0 average rating, our apartment-moving reputation is built move by move.