The moving-out cleanout in San Diego

The short answer

Book the disposal pickup for the morning after the movers load and before the walkthrough. That gap is usually one day, and it is the only day the remainder is visible and the unit is still yours.

Price it per item if you can list it - sofa $126, mattress and box spring set $143, dresser $126, TV $68 - or by truck fill if it is a heap: quarter $241, three-eighths $338, half $431, three-quarters $587, full $732. Minimum per visit is $75.

A typical San Diego one-bedroom leaves behind about a quarter to a half truck. A house leaves a full one, because the garage is part of the move and nobody plans for the garage.

What movers will not load

Every moving company in the county draws roughly the same line, and people are surprised by it every time:

• Anything with liquid in it - paint, solvents, propane cylinders, motor oil, the half-bag of pool chemicals. Also the gas in the mower.
• Mattresses they judge unfit. A stained or sagging mattress gets left, because they do not want it in the truck against your other furniture.
• Particleboard furniture. Flat-pack bookcases and desks do not survive a move, and good movers will tell you it is cheaper to dispose of than to ship.
• The garage remainder. The mower, the workbench scraps, the paint, the surfboard with the delaminated nose.

So the last hour of a move is you standing in an empty unit with a pile of exactly the things nobody wanted, and a lease that ends tomorrow.

The San Diego timing problem

This metro moves in clusters, and the clusters overlap.

Beach leases in Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach and Mission Beach turn on a small number of common dates, so entire blocks empty at once and every alley in the zip code is full of furniture on the same afternoon.

Students leave the College Area in May and University City in June.

Military households move on PCS orders that cluster in summer around Coronado, Point Loma, Murphy Canyon and the Miramar corridor. Those dates are not negotiable, and the household often flies out before the unit is cleared.

If your move-out is in that June-to-August block, book the pickup the day you give notice. Not the week of. The day.

Where the deposit actually goes

Deductions in this city land on the same three things:

• Items left in the unit. Including the couch you generously left for the next tenant, which the manager will price at their disposal rate rather than yours.
• The storage locker and the tandem space. Beach and Mission Valley buildings hand out a five-by-five cage in the garage, and it is the single most forgotten square footage in San Diego.
• Anything left in the alley. This is the expensive one. A sofa in a PB alley outside a collection window can become an illegal dumping matter attached to the address, and the building passes it straight to you.

Clearing all three costs less than the deduction almost every time.

Priced examples

Ocean Beach one-bedroom, third floor, no elevator. Sofa $126 + queen mattress and box spring set $143 + standard bed frame $68 + medium junk pile $129 = $466. Compare with the half truck at $431 and book the half truck.

Clairemont house, PCS move to another duty station. Full truck $732 for house and garage, plus a hot tub the family is not taking at $322: $732 + $322 = $1,054.

North Park apartment, moving in with a partner. Sofa $126 + dresser $126 + desk $83 + office chair $61 = $396. Or the three-eighths truck at $338.

Each total is a straight sum of published prices. Check the arithmetic before you book, then check it against the ladder.

The order that works

Four steps, in this sequence:

• Two weeks out: walk the unit with a list. Include the balcony, the storage locker and the tandem space. Price the list.
• One week out: list anything sellable. Local buyers in this county move furniture fast, but give it a week and a deadline, not an open-ended hope.
• Day of the move: movers load. Whatever is left is now your disposal list, and it is always bigger than the list you made.
• Morning after: pickup crew clears it, you sweep, walkthrough happens on an empty unit.

The failure mode is doing step four on the same day as step three. Movers run late, the truck leaves at six, and now you are booking a pickup for a unit you no longer have keys to.

Getting it out of the building

The San Diego access set, all included in the price with no surcharge:

• Three-story exterior stairwells in the 1960s and 70s beach apartment buildings.
• Alley-only access in Mission Beach, where a lot of addresses front a walk street.
• Reserved freight elevators downtown, in East Village and Little Italy - book the window and tell us the time.
• Long interior corridors in Mission Valley garden complexes.
• Canyon-lot houses where the front door is two flights below the street.
• Gate access in Coronado base housing and the North County gated communities - arrange it the day before.

There is no stair charge, no walk-up fee, no long-carry fee, and no charge for waiting on an elevator.

If you have already moved out of state

It happens constantly here, especially with military moves. You are in Norfolk and the unit in Point Loma still has a sofa in it.

A pickup can run without you: building manager, lockbox, or a neighbor with a key. You get photos before and after, and one invoice. Give us the list of what goes - everything, usually - and the access arrangement, and the unit is clear before the walkthrough.

Frequently asked questions