You can book a crew for tomorrow. You usually can't book the elevator for tomorrow. In most of Miami-Dade the turnover clock is set by paperwork and lift availability, not by how fast anyone works — which makes vacancy a scheduling problem rather than a labour one.
Quarter truck $241 · three-quarter $587 · full $732 · COI at no charge
Upload Photos & Get Quote →It won't tell you what Florida requires of you, how deposits work, what notice is owed to whom, how belongings left behind must be handled, or whether a removal cost can be charged to a departing tenant.
All of that is legal territory, and we haul furniture. Your lease governs it and a Florida attorney interprets it. We would only be guessing, and guessing costs you rather than us.
We also won't tell you what your association or management office may require of you as an owner. That's in the association documents, and it differs building to building.
One structural fact drives the whole page.
Most rental stock in Miami-Dade sits inside buildings. Not houses with a driveway and a kerb, but condo and apartment towers with a management office, a service elevator and rules about when things may be carried through shared space.
In a house market a turnover clear-out is a labour question: how much is there, how fast can it be carried out. Get a crew, get it done.
In a building market it's an access question first and a labour question second. The physical work is a few hours. Getting permission to do those few hours is the part with a lead time — and it's the part that determines how many days the unit sits empty.
Laid out in order, because the sequence is the whole thing.
1. Management requirements. What the office needs before a contractor works on site — commonly a certificate of insurance naming the building or association.
2. Acceptance. Not just producing the certificate but management reviewing and accepting it, on their schedule.
3. The elevator or dock slot. Frequently the scarcest item, and in a busy building genuinely contested.
4. The removal itself. A few hours.
5. Everything downstream — cleaning, paint, carpet, the incoming tenant.
Steps one to three are days. Step four is hours. Compressing step four buys you almost nothing; starting step one earlier buys you the whole difference.
The single highest-leverage action available to a Miami landlord, and it costs nothing.
The moment you know a unit is coming back, ask management two questions: what do you need from a contractor, and how do I reserve the elevator. Not when the tenant leaves — when you learn they're leaving.
That request can sit in a queue for days without costing you anything, because the unit is still occupied. Started after handover, the identical wait is vacancy.
Tell us the building at the same time and we'll produce the certificate straight away. The full COI and elevator sequence is here.
Two minutes of work that becomes worthless the moment the rooms are empty.
Walk the unit with the camera before the first item is lifted. One wide shot per room, plus the closets, the balcony, inside the cupboards and the storage locker if there is one. Your phone stamps the time for you.
Do it on the tidy handovers too. A folder of pictures nobody ever opens has cost you four minutes; a handover with no pictures at all is a disagreement you have already lost.
Our crew will wait while you do it, or take them for you if you're not there.
The one instruction nobody can work out from context — and the only thing here you can't undo afterwards.
Anything staying has to be named before we start. Appliances that came with the unit, blinds, a mounted television, light fittings, the shelving that was there before the tenant arrived — to a crew clearing a vacant unit, all of it reads as contents.
That default is deliberate. The alternative is people you've never met deciding what belongs to your unit.
A five-line message before the visit is enough. If anything has been left that you've been told to preserve rather than dispose of, name it and the crew will photograph it where it stands and leave it exactly there. We do what the note says; we don't interpret it.
One paragraph on the paperwork side, because it's the part landlords most often ask about.
An invoice is evidence because someone other than you produced it. A company, a date, an address, a total — verifiable without taking your word for anything. A number you worked out yourself might be scrupulously fair and still rests entirely on your own say-so.
So if a removal is happening anyway, let it happen as a transaction and keep the invoice. Our Boston guide works through that logic properly. Whether the resulting figure can be used for anything is, as above, between you, your lease and your attorney.
Recognisable enough to plan around.
The heavy and the awkward. A sofa that wouldn't fit the lift on the way out, a mattress set nobody wanted to move again, a dining table, a wardrobe assembled in the room.
The balcony. Consistently the most forgotten space in a Miami turnover — patio furniture, a grill, planters, a bicycle. It's outside the visual sweep people do when they check a unit, and it's real volume.
Storage lockers. If the unit came with one, check it. They're frequently still full after the apartment is empty.
And whatever the humidity got to. A unit shut up between tenancies in a warm month is unkind to soft furnishings, which affects what can be donated rather than what removal costs.
Individually unpredictable, collectively very predictable.
South Florida's population moves with the season, and leases cluster behind it. Demand for lifts, cleaners, painters and trucks therefore arrives in the same compressed stretches rather than spread across the year.
The scarce thing in those weeks isn't trucks — it's the building's own slots. Booking against a provisional date and moving it once costs nothing; waiting for certainty means joining the back of a queue you can't jump.
Clear first, then clean, then paint, then carpet.
A painter working around a sofa does a worse job slowly. A carpet fitter can't work around a wardrobe at all. A cleaner charges you to move things they should never have had to move.
Removal is also the first thing possible once access exists, and clearing early means the cleaner, the painter and the fitter all price a room they can actually see.
One reserved elevator window, used for the clear-out, unblocks everything behind it.
For anyone running more than one unit, three unglamorous things.
Budgeting. Published flat pricing means a removal line goes into a turnover budget before anyone walks the property.
Paperwork that matches itself. When every unit's invoice arrives in the same shape, a portfolio becomes something you can actually read at year end instead of a folder of differently-formatted PDFs.
Building familiarity. The biggest one in this market: a company that already knows what each of your management offices wants on a certificate removes the slowest step from every future booking. Ask whether a building will keep a COI on file for a term rather than per job.
Flat, quoted from photographs, identical on any floor.
| What leaves | Price |
|---|---|
| Minimum job | $75 |
| Bookshelf | $72 |
| Sofa | $126 |
| Dresser | $126 |
| Dining table (large) | $129 |
| Mattress + box spring, as a set | $143 |
| Refrigerator | $164 |
| Loose pile — small / medium / large | $82 / $129 / $208 |
| Quarter truck (4 cu yd) | $241 |
| Half truck (8 cu yd) | $431 |
| Three-quarter truck (12 cu yd) | $587 |
| Full truck (16 cu yd) | $732 |
No elevator fee, no stair charge, no long carry from the dock, no fuel surcharge, and no charge for the certificate of insurance. We quote itemised and by volume and charge whichever is lower.
A furnished one-bedroom in Edgewater, handed back partly emptied. What remained:
Itemised that's $675. By volume it's about twelve cubic yards — the three-quarter tier at $587 — so the truck rate wins by $88 and that's what was quoted.
The COI went in on the Tuesday the notice arrived, the unit came back on the Friday, and the elevator window was already booked for the Monday. Three vacant days, none of them spent waiting for paperwork.
Paperwork first, always. Ask management the day notice arrives. Assume several days, not same-day.
None of the building layer applies. Same-day is realistic and the price is identical.
Ask whether the office will hold a COI on file for a term. It removes the slow step permanently.
Photograph first, then re-quote from pictures. Volume changes the price; it doesn't change the elevator booking you already hold.
Works the same way — management or an agent gives access and you get before-and-after photos. The remote guide has the detail.
Reserve against a provisional date and move it once. The slot is the scarce thing, not the truck.
Start with the building, not the truck. Most rental stock here is in condo or apartment buildings, where management usually needs a certificate of insurance on file and a service elevator or dock slot reserved inside permitted hours. That can't be arranged the same morning, so it sits on the critical path. Start it the day you know the unit is coming back. Removal is quick and flat-priced from photographs — a furnished one-bedroom is commonly three-quarters of a truck at $587, with a $75 minimum.
The removal is one reserved elevator window — a few hours. The calendar is set by what's in front of it: getting the COI accepted and getting a slot, which in a busy building can be several days, and some buildings restrict move-out activity to particular days. Your vacancy is limited by building scheduling, not crew speed — shorten it by starting paperwork earlier, not by booking a faster crew.
That's a question for your lease and an attorney, and we won't answer it — we're a removal company with no standing to say what may be withheld or charged. What we can give you is an itemised invoice showing date, address, what was removed and what it cost, from a third party. A documented cost is a fact in a way an estimated round number isn't. Whether it can be used is between you, the lease and your attorney.
Photograph every room as you found it, before anything moves — closets, balcony, storage locker included. The pictures are worthless five minutes later. Then send a written list of anything that stays: appliances that came with the unit, blinds, a mounted TV. To a crew clearing a vacant unit everything reads as contents, so a set-aside only exists if you've said it in writing.
For more than one unit, yes. Published flat pricing lets a removal line go into a budget before anyone walks the property. The same invoice format makes records comparable across units and years. And in this market the biggest gain is that a company already familiar with your buildings knows what each office needs on the certificate — which removes the slowest step from every future booking.
No, and most owners aren't. Management holds a key or an agent lets the crew in, and you get before-and-after photographs plus an itemised receipt. Out of state works the same way — the constraint isn't your location but whether someone can photograph the unit once, and whether the building's requirements were met in advance.
Book the building the day you get notice, not the day you get the keys.
Everything expensive about a Miami turnover is measured in vacant days, and almost none of those days are spent carrying furniture. They're spent waiting for a certificate to be accepted and a lift to be free — both of which can be started while the unit is still occupied and costing you nothing.
Move that one step earlier and the rest of the turnover collapses into a single morning. The removal was never the slow part.
COI produced at no charge · flat price from photos · itemised invoice every time
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