Senior Movers
Del Mar

Which Community, And Why It Changes The Day

Four buildings are listed above, and none receives furniture the same way. Westmont of Carmel Valley and La Vida Del Mar are full communities. One offers independent, assisted and memory care; the other pairs independent and assisted living with on-site therapy. For both, our office reserves a move-in window through the desk. Pacific Regent La Jolla is a 148-home condominium high-rise. There, the date follows escrow and the homeowners association, not a move-in desk. Coastal Breeze Assisted Living and Memory Care is a six-bed residential care home in a residential coastal setting. That means a driveway, a front door, and a truck parked so neighbors can pass.

When the caller names the community, the questions follow from the type. For a large community: which entrance takes move-ins, whether a service elevator is reserved, and where the truck stands. For the condominium: the escrow date, and what the homeowners association asks of movers. For the six-bed home: whether the driveway takes a full-size truck or a smaller shuttle, and which room is being furnished. Our office calls the building and asks before the estimate is written, rather than working it out at the curb.

The Arithmetic Nobody Does Until Move Week

A Del Mar hillside house has closets, a garage and decades of shelves. An assisted living or memory care room takes a bed, one chair, a dresser, a lamp and a wall of photographs. More fits in an independent living apartment, but not a whole house. The communities on this page cover that range, from care rooms at Coastal Breeze to independent living at La Vida Del Mar. The gap between the lists is the real work of the move, and it is counting before it is feeling. Every piece with no room at the other end needs a decision, and the family makes it, not the crew.

Families who have an easy day settled those decisions two weeks earlier, at the kitchen table with the community's floor plan. Ask for a walk-through during the free in-home estimate. The estimator says plainly which pieces fit the new room and which do not, because the crew has carried them before. The stairs from a Del Mar front door down to the street are worth walking on that same visit. A piece that will not turn on the landing is a piece to decide about now, in a quiet room. Deciding it on the day, with the truck idling on a narrow lane, is the hard way.

Two Addresses, Two Dates

A Del Mar senior move usually runs on two calendars. The house closes escrow on one date, or the lease runs out. The room at the community, or the condominium at Pacific Regent La Jolla, opens on another. Sometimes a hospital discharge adds a third date that nobody controls. Where the dates do not line up, the household goes into our own storage, from $205 a month. There it waits, rather than being sold off in a hurry by a family with no time to think. Storage is booked on the same call as the move, so nothing has to be decided twice.

On the first call, say which date is fixed and which can slide, because that answer shapes the plan. A discharge date can move, and when it does the booking moves with it. No deposit is held against the date, so moving it is a phone call. If the community window is the firm one, the house is packed early and the load waits. If the house sale is firm, the truck goes out that day and the goods rest in storage. Either way the crew takes its pace from the person moving, not from the escrow paperwork.

Narrow Streets And Bluff-Top Lots

Del Mar is the opposite problem. It is a small coastal city of bluff-top and hillside lots on streets that were laid out long before anyone needed to park a moving truck on them, and a good number of the houses people are moving out of have a staircase between the front door and the street. The community at the other end is usually straightforward; the house is not.

Where the street will not take a full-size truck we shuttle with a smaller vehicle rather than blocking a lane, and we say so in the estimate rather than discovering it on the day. If the move runs in summer, the beach traffic on Camino del Mar is a scheduling fact worth planning around, so we start early.

Related: Senior Movers Carmel Valley · Senior Movers La Jolla · Senior Movers Encinitas