Can I ask you a question?

Have you ever spent millions of dollars on something and then tried to save $3,000?

David and Sarah had been talking about leaving New York for years. Miami was always somewhere they visited, usually during the part of winter when New York made the decision seem particularly easy, but eventually the conversation changed from whether they would move to where they wanted to live.

They ended up buying at Rivage Bal Harbour.

Sarah loved the ocean, David liked being close enough to Miami without feeling like they were in the middle of it, and the residence gave them enough space that leaving New York actually felt like an upgrade. They spent months looking at properties, comparing residences, going through paperwork and figuring out which pieces of their life in New York were coming with them.

By the time moving day arrived, the difficult part seemed to be over. The movers packed everything on Wednesday, David and Sarah flew to Miami on Thursday, and they spent their first night in an almost completely empty residence before waking up Friday morning looking at the ocean. Their furniture was scheduled to arrive around 9:00.

At 9:15, David’s phone rang. The truck was downstairs, but the building wouldn’t let them in.

Apparently, there was a problem with the moving company’s certificate of insurance. The mover said they had sent it. The building said it didn’t meet its requirements. David spent the next hour talking to people about insurance paperwork he didn’t know existed two hours earlier.

Eventually, they got the insurance worked out, which would have been great news if somebody hadn’t then asked about the service elevator. Nobody had reserved it. The truck had arrived at nine, and the next available elevator window was noon.

When Sarah asked what happened, David told her they had a small delay. Technically, I guess that was true.

Once the movers finally started bringing everything upstairs, things actually went pretty well for a while. Boxes arrived, the sofa made it into the residence, bedroom furniture went where it was supposed to go and Sarah started seeing the home she had spent months imagining.

Then they unloaded the dining table. Sarah loved this table. It had been custom made for their place in New York, and there had never really been a conversation about whether it was coming to Miami.

Unfortunately, nobody had asked the service elevator.

Four men tried two different angles before somebody finally pulled out a tape measure, which seemed like something that might have been useful about 1,300 miles earlier. The table didn’t fit, and Sarah reminded David that she had asked him about this before they left New York. David reminded Sarah that people move dining tables every day. Neither observation made the elevator any larger, so the table went back downstairs.

A couple of hours later, Sarah noticed one of the boxes from their bedroom was missing. That wasn’t particularly alarming until David remembered what was supposed to be inside it.

His watches.

David had been collecting watches for years, including a few Rolexes, an Audemars Piguet and one his father had given him. Suddenly, nobody cared about the dining table. The movers checked the truck while David and Sarah went through boxes and luggage upstairs, and then came the questions. Who packed the watches? Were they listed separately? Had David declared the value? Was the box on the inventory?

David had excellent answers to none of these questions.

While they were still trying to figure that out, one of Sarah’s favorite pieces of furniture came upstairs with a deep scratch down the side.

Now there was another conversation. When did the damage happen? Was it documented before the move? What coverage did they have? Who handled the claim?

By late afternoon, the missing box had finally been located. Somehow, it was still in New York, with the watches safely inside. David probably aged three years while they figured that out, but at least the watches were safe. The dining table was still downstairs, the damaged furniture needed to be dealt with and the building’s moving window was about to end. The rest would have to wait.

A few weeks later, nobody would know any of this happened. The boxes would be gone, the artwork would be hung, the dining table would eventually find somewhere to live, and if David and Sarah posted a picture from their terrace, all anybody would see was the ocean.

That’s usually the part of luxury real estate we get to see. The residence, the view, maybe the closing photo with the keys. Nobody posts the truck sitting downstairs at 9:15 in the morning because somebody’s certificate of insurance isn’t right.

The funny thing is that a move into a building like Rivage can start weeks before anybody touches a box. There are insurance requirements, approved moving hours, loading procedures and elevator schedules, and furniture that worked perfectly in a New York home may not make it through a Miami service elevator. If the truck arrives late and misses the building’s moving window, now you may need somewhere to store everything until the building can take you.

And then there’s everything inside the truck. Artwork, furniture, electronics, clothing and years of personal possessions are being handed to people you’ve probably met once, if at all. Some things need special handling, some need to be carefully inventoried and some things, as David can now tell you, probably shouldn’t be on the truck at all.

Of course, you can plan all of this perfectly and still have a truck show up late, a closing move or a piece of furniture arrive with a scratch down the side. Funny enough, that’s probably when you really find out which moving company you hired.

It’s one thing to get a good quote and have a truck show up. It’s another to have somebody who answers the phone when the building won’t let that truck inside, can find somewhere secure for your furniture when the schedule changes and doesn’t suddenly become impossible to reach when Sarah wants to know who’s fixing her chair. Those things aren’t nearly as interesting when you’re comparing moving quotes, but they become considerably more interesting when you’re staring at a scratch across a piece of furniture you love.

Somewhere between the missing watches, the homeless dining table and Sarah’s scratched furniture, buying the condo had started to look like the easy part.

Moving to Miami from somewhere else has a funny way of introducing you to people you didn’t know you needed. There’s the agent, attorneys and lender, but then come the movers, storage company, insurance people, designers, contractors and whoever else gets added to the phone somewhere between New York and somebody downstairs asking David for a COI.

If you’re trying to coordinate all of that from New York, Chicago, London or wherever you’re coming from, the last thing you need is another list of random companies from Google. You need people you can trust, and I think helping buyers find those people is part of helping them make the move.

By Friday night, they were sitting at the kitchen island eating Italian food out of takeout containers. The dining table was headed to storage, the damaged furniture would have to be dealt with later, and most of the residence was still covered in boxes.

At least David knew where his watches were. Sarah took another bite of pasta and looked around their beautiful new home.

“How much did we save on the movers again?”

David kept eating.

Moving to Miami?

If you’re considering a move to Miami, Miami Deal Flow can help you find the right property and connect you with the right people to help you get here. Call Brian at 786-330-8948 or start here.