Apartment and condo pricing in Chicago, floor by floor
An apartment quote is built on a different set of variables than a house. We weigh which level your unit sits on, how steep and tight the stairwell is, whether a service elevator has to be reserved, and any paperwork your management office insists on before the date. Forrester Moving books apartment and condo work all over Chicago seven days a week, and your belongings get the same padding and itemized list we’d give a single-family job. Choose the unit and the floor below and you’ll see a fast estimate.
Estimate the Cost of Your Apartment Move
Based on what apartment moves around Indianapolis usually run. Pull your precise flat-rate figure — no charge, and no one leaning on you.
Why the floor changes what you pay
The math behind a third-floor walk-up costing more is plain: each load has to be carried up and down those flights, and the landing turns in a vintage Chicago building eat time on top of that. A unit served by an elevator usually prices close to a second-floor walk-up, since we still have to book the lift window and shield the building’s shared corridors as the crew moves through.
Set-price bands by unit size and floor
Here are the flat-rate brackets we use for local apartment work in and around Chicago. Each bracket already includes the vehicle, the movers, moving blankets, dollies, runners for the floors, and stairwell protection. There is nothing added on at the end.
| Apartment | Ground floor | 2nd-floor walk-up | 3rd-floor walk-up | Elevator bldg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | $450 – $470 | $410 – $530 | $475 – $620 | $410 – $530 |
| 1 Bedroom | $475 – $640 | $530 – $700 | $585 – $820 | $530 – $700 |
| 2 Bedrooms | $640 – $880 | $700 – $995 | $820 – $1,110 | $700 – $995 |
| 3 Bedrooms | $880 – $1,240 | $995 – $1,410 | $1,110 – $1,580 | $995 – $1,410 |
Charges that only show up on apartment jobs
A condo or rental brings a few cost items you would never see on a detached-house move. Set aside a little for these beyond the crew itself:
- Proof of insurance, or a COI. Managed properties and most downtown high-rises won’t let the crew start until they have your mover’s Certificate of Insurance in hand. Ours goes out the same day for free. Should the building tack on its own move-in or move-out charge, count on $135–$450 going directly to the property, not to us.
- Service-elevator slot. Towers in the Loop and along the lakefront frequently want the freight lift reserved ahead of time, occasionally tied to a refundable deposit ($245–$620). We handle reserving the slot; that deposit is purely an arrangement between you and management.
- Distance from truck to door. We don’t itemize a long-carry charge, yet when there’s no spot to park the truck closer than about 75 feet from your entrance, the work naturally takes longer — and your flat rate is already built with that in mind.
- Street parking on the block. A handful of dense Chicago streets call for a temporary bagged meter or a held no-parking span arranged with the city, roughly $40 daily. Hand us about three days’ notice and we’ll handle that filing.
- Cartons and packing labor. If you want materials, we sell them with no markup; a typical one-bedroom carton set lands near $100. Prefer to hand off the packing entirely? Having our crew pack a one-bedroom starts in the neighborhood of $450.
Chicago buildings our movers handle constantly
By this point the crew has the access details, the parking situation, and the elevator drill memorized for the sorts of properties Chicago renters call home:
- Downtown towers and converted lofts. The Loop, River North, and Printers Row high-rises and old warehouse conversions — the ones with freight docks, mandatory COIs, and reserved lifts. Runners for the floors and guards for the door frames are on the truck every time.
- Classic North and West Side flats. The Lakeview, Logan Square, and Pilsen two- and three-units with their narrow rear staircases and street-only parking. Stairway runners and edge guards are part of the standard kit.
- Garden-style suburban complexes. The communities stretching out to Naperville, Schaumburg, and Oak Brook, where a truck can pull right in past a gate code. These tend to be the quickest apartment jobs on the board.
- Units near the universities. Around UIC, Loyola, and DePaul, parking is scarce and half the building turns over on the same date. We get those on the calendar well ahead of the wave.
Apartment-cost questions we get a lot
Do you tack on a fee for each staircase?
We don’t. There’s no per-flight charge anywhere on the invoice. Living higher up does nudge the overall flat rate upward, because the carrying eats more clock — but that’s baked into the single price, never itemized.
The building is asking for an insurance certificate — now what?
We carry $1M in liability and full workers’ comp on every job, and we’ll send a Certificate of Insurance to your leasing office or HOA that same day at no cost. Hand us their contact details when you reserve the date.
Can both the move-out and move-in happen in one day?
Absolutely. A same-day, two-address job is ordinary for us — the one crew empties the current place and sets you up at the new one without passing the work to anyone else. List both addresses in your request so we can sharpen the price.
What’s involved in getting the truck a parking spot?
For a tight downtown block, the city charges in the area of $40 per day to hold a temporary no-parking span. Give us roughly three days’ lead time and we’ll file it. Not sure whether your street even needs one? Call (888) 711-4778.