When is the best time to move? What a million moves say about timing

Lugg

When is the best time to move? What a million moves say about timing

The best time to move is mid-September through mid-October. Movers are more available, the weather is comfortable for heavy lifting, and you are not competing with half the country for the same weekend.

Most guides get there by a different route. Nearly every “best time to move” article tells you to move in January to save money. But across more than a million completed local moves over the past five years, the month barely impacts the price, according to data from Lugg, an on-demand moving and delivery service. The gap between the cheapest month of the year and the priciest is under 4%. What the calendar does decide is whether the date and the arrival window you want are still available when you go to book, and that varies a great deal.

Almost all of this is about local moving. Roughly three in four Americans who move each year stay within the same state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The everyday American move is a few rooms of furniture carried a few miles across town, which is the kind this data covers.

Is there a cheapest month to move?

Not in any way worth planning around. Month by month the median price moves within a couple of percent of itself all year, with no real seasonal shape to it.

Whether that holds for you depends on your moving company. Some add a peak-season surcharge in the busy months and some do not, so it is worth asking how yours prices before treating the calendar as neutral. Interstate movers are explicit about it: the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s own moving glossary defines peak season rates as higher line haul charges applicable during the summer months. Hourly moving companies work differently again, generally billing $105 to $165 an hour for two movers, with minimums that keep even a short job from being cheap.

What is the busiest month for movers?

August, and it has been every year Lugg has measured. According to the data, August runs about 23% above an average month and roughly half again as busy as December at the other end of the year. The industry’s own calendar agrees on the shape: The American Trucking Associations calls May National Moving Month and describes peak season as running from May through the summer. May is the ramp, and August is the peak. Ask for a specific date and arrival window in February and you will usually get it. Ask in August and you are picking from what is left. How hard that bites depends on where you live: In Boston, August runs at twice an average month, while Los Angeles and Seattle barely have a season at all.

The best season to move

Fall, September through November, is the sweet spot. Demand falls off sharply after Labor Day. Families are settled into the school year, and summer leases have turned over. There is more crew capacity around, so you are more likely to get the date and arrival window you asked for.

The first days of September are their own rush, though. In cities built around a Sept. 1 lease turn, the turnover is dense enough to have earned a name. Boston calls it Allston Christmas. If your lease dates are flexible at all, aiming for the second half of the month puts you past it.

Winter, December through February, is the quietest stretch. December and February are the two quietest months, so this is when you have the widest choice of dates. But weather can be a factor. A storm can delay a move by days, and shorter daylight leaves less room if the job runs long, so a holiday-season move needs more slack in the plan than a September one. If you are somewhere without hard winters, like Phoenix, Los Angeles or Miami, winter is the easiest time of year to move and carries little of that risk.

Spring is the ramp. Volume climbs steadily out of the February trough as end-of-lease season begins, and keeps climbing through the summer. If you are selling a home, spring is prime time. If you are renting, the deeper into the season you go the more you are competing for the same weekends.

Summer is the peak. Most people move in summer, because of school schedules, graduations, and the simple fact that nobody wants to move in a snowstorm. That does not mean you pay more, but it does mean tighter scheduling and less give on your arrival window. College move-out and move-in compress into a few days on either side of the academic calendar, so a dorm move is worth booking as far ahead as the school will confirm the date.

Does the day of the week matter?

For the price, no. For getting the slot you want, more than you would think. Across more than 250,000 completed Lugg moves in the past year, Saturday and Friday are the two busiest days by a clear margin and Thursday is the quietest, with a little over 20% between them. Sunday sits in the middle.

So the old advice to move midweek is right, for the wrong reason. It will not cut your bill, because the price does not depend on the day. What it buys is an emptier day: more crews free, lighter traffic, and less competition for a parking spot, a loading zone or a freight elevator. If your lease dates give you a choice between a Saturday and a Wednesday, take the Wednesday.

When the date is not up to you

Most people do not get to pick a month. A lease ends, a closing date lands, a job starts, and the calendar is decided for you. Four smaller levers usually stay open.

Where your date falls inside the month is the first, and it matters more than the month itself. Leases cluster at the edges, and the last three days of a month run about 16% busier than a mid-month day according to Lugg data. If your lease gives you any latitude at all, the 12th is a much easier day than the 31st.

The building is the second, and it is usually the real bottleneck rather than the movers. Freight elevator reservations and loading dock windows go first come, first served, and in a large building the good ones are gone weeks out. Reserve that window as soon as your lease is signed, then book the move to fit it.

Lead time is the third, and it is where the season shows up most clearly. August is the one month of the year when the typical mover plans ahead, and planning ahead of them is the whole advantage.

Time of day is the fourth lever, and the one almost nobody uses. The earliest arrival window your building allows is the best one: The crew is fresh rather than coming off another job, you beat afternoon traffic, and in summer you avoid the worst of the heat. Early windows are also the easiest to book, since most people default to mid-morning or afternoon.

Is it cheaper to move in winter?

The move itself, no. The apartment, yes. The national median rent falls by about 1.6% from its summer peak to its low point in November, according to Apartment List, and landlords are more willing to offer move-in incentives when fewer people want to sign a lease in the cold. The trade-off is a smaller selection of units, which matters most if it is your first apartment.

An apartment move also carries a cost the calendar cannot help with, which is paying two rents at once. If your dates are negotiable, closing the gap between leases is the first thing to fix. On timing, September through November is the easiest window: Summer is peak turnover season, especially in college towns and dense cities, and by September the rush is over, so there is more negotiating room on the apartment itself and an easier time booking a cross-town move into it.

What actually reduces the bill

The month, the weekday and the time of day barely move the price. The following factors do, and they are worth more of your planning than any date.

• Reduce the volume. Every item carried costs time, so sell, donate or clear out anything not making the trip. If a good pile of it is going nowhere, finding the dump or donation center before moving day is cheaper than carrying it twice.
• Be packed before the crew arrives. Boxed, labeled and staged near the door. This is the single largest controllable factor in how long a job takes, and it starts with having the right supplies on hand a few days early.
• Disassemble ahead of time. Bed frames apart, table legs off, hardware in labeled bags taped to the piece.
• Get the vehicle right the first time. A second trip costs more than the next size up, so size the truck to the load before you book.
• Book with enough runway. A week out puts you ahead of the great majority of August bookings and gives you the widest choice of arrival windows. Off season, a few days is usually plenty.

How to pick your moving date

If you have a choice, move in late September or October, mid-month rather than at either end, and midweek if your lease will allow it. Volume is off its peak, the weather is workable, and the dates are still open. If scheduling freedom matters more than the weather, December and February are the quietest months of the year.

What you should not do is reorganize your life around the calendar expecting a discount. How much you are moving, and how ready you are when the crew arrives, is the bill.

This story was produced by Lugg and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.