1. A certificate of insurance
Most high-rise buildings want a certificate of insurance from the moving company before the service elevator is released, and the management office will usually want it worded to name the building and its managing agent. It is an ordinary document rather than a hurdle: your mover's insurer issues it, and a mover who does this work regularly will have handled the same request many times.
The one thing worth doing early is asking your building for the exact wording and the exact names they want on it. Buildings are specific, they are specific in different ways, and the wording is the only part that ever causes a delay. Ask for it when you give notice, pass it to your mover, and the document takes care of itself.
2. A service elevator reservation
Moves in and out of a managed building go on the service elevator, and the slot is booked through the management office rather than by the mover. Most buildings give a window rather than the whole day, and most have hours they will and will not release — often avoiding the start and end of the working day, and often excluding weekends entirely.
Two numbers decide everything else about the day: when the window opens and how long it runs. Tell your mover both as soon as the office confirms them, because crew size is what turns a fixed window into enough time. A tight window is not a problem; a tight window nobody was told about is.
3. A written estimate, once someone has seen what is moving
A price is only worth having if it was built from your actual belongings. We put a written estimate in your hands after someone has seen what is moving — either in person, or on a video walkthrough you can do from your phone in about ten minutes. The walkthrough is genuinely enough for most apartments, and it is why a studio or a one-bedroom rarely needs anyone to visit.
Worth knowing which rules apply to you, because the two are often confused. New Jersey's written-estimate requirement, including the survey that has to come before it, governs moves that begin and end inside New Jersey. A move from New York City into New Jersey crosses a state line, so it sits under the federal rules for interstate moves instead. We work the same way under both: someone sees the goods, then you get the estimate in writing, and nothing is loaded before you have it.
4. Proof the mover is licensed
Buildings check, and tenants are entitled to check too. Both New Jersey and the federal register let you confirm that a moving company is licensed to do the work it is quoting for, and a building's management office will sometimes do it before releasing the elevator. Asking is normal and no reputable mover minds it.
University Van Lines Moving and Storage is fully licensed, accredited and insured for the work we do in New Jersey and across state lines. We are a carrier rather than a broker: the crew that arrives is our own employees, in our shirts, in our trucks, out of our own New Jersey warehouse. Nobody sells your job on to a company you have never spoken to.
Putting the four together
Certificate of insurance, elevator window, written estimate, licence. Four questions, four answers, all of them obtainable in a couple of phone calls in the weeks before you move. Buildings ask them because they have seen moves go badly when nobody did. Answer them early and the day itself turns into what it should be: furniture going down in a lift on a schedule somebody already agreed.
