Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Move In Procedures?

[Stuart Pettygrove (gspettygrove]

Katie,
I'm a little mixed up. You are describing Moshav, but looks like you live
in Heartwood. Can you forward this to the Berkeley Moshav people?  I'm
copying to our Washington Commons move-in coordinator, Cathy Lieb. She
might have other comments or corrections to what I've said here.

Substitute 35 for their 36 units, and nearly every word of the Moshav
situation would accurately describe Washington Commons when we were getting
ready to move in two years ago. I don't recall how many of our households
moved in the first week after we got our temporary occupancy permit, but it
was a pretty good percentage. Some of us had already moved out of our
previous digs and were staying in temporary rentals or motels with storage
units full of furniture and cardboard boxes.
The good news: No big bottlenecks arose. One interesting situation was that
we had scheduled a Grand Opening, attended by a big crowd of outsiders plus
the Mayor of West Sacramento, and on the very day, several households
including mine &my spouse's were busy hauling furniture and boxes into our
units.
The elevator can, in concept, be challenging. Moving companies might all
want to arrive in the afternoon (as they spent the morning loading up), and
they may not like to be constrained to a specific 2-hr time block for the
elevator use.  Some of our movers hauled stuff up the stairs rather than
wait for the elevator to become available. These are strong people who are
very efficient at this and are accustomed to moving people into buildings
that lack elevators.  Also some movers have experience moving people into
apartment buildings all on the same day (e.g. college student move-in
day).  So...talk to your movers ahead of time and explain the situation.
Hopefully on move-in day/week you won't be moving in too many pianos,
refrigerators, three piece sectionals, etc.
Stu Pettygrove
Washington Commons
West Sacramento

On Fri, Oct 2, 2026 at 8:09 PM Katie Henry via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> To clarify my previous post ... Berkeley Moshav is a 36-unit condo
> community in a single four-story building in a dense urban area, probably
> with limited parking/truck access.
>
> I'm guessing they have a large construction loan that needs to be paid off
> ASAP, so there's pressure to close on the units. In an expensive area like
> Berkeley, there probably aren't a lot of people who can carry two homes
> indefinitely to allow for a leisurely move-in.
>
> I'm also guessing there will be one inspection (fire? elevator?) that will
> delay occupancy. Once that inspection is passed, there will be a stampede
> of people wanting to move in immediately. Elevator scheduling is indeed
> part of it.
>
> There will probably still be lots of construction going on in the common
> areas and the exterior during initial move-in.
>
> Maybe I'm being melodramatic, but I've lived through this twice.
> Multi-family move-in is much more challenging than single-family homes.
> It's better to be prepared.
>
> Katie Henry
> ---------------------------
>
> Katie Henry wrote:
> Hi Ann,
>
> Community move-in is a one-time event. It's unlikely that anyone will have
> written procedures. You realize what you did wrong when it's over, but
> you'll never do it again, so why bother documenting it?
>
> You need people who understand the buyer priority for closing (financial
> or other reasons) and people who know construction status and move-in
> logistics. For example, in my current community, we needed the cash buyers
> to close first so we could have comps for the buyers who were getting
> mortgages, so we had to prioritize the certificates of occupancy for the
> cash units.
>
> This will be the most stressful and chaotic time in the life of your
> community, even if it's managed well. If you don't have members who can
> coordinate this effort while dealing with their own personal move, I
> encourage you to hire someone for that role.
>
> Katie Henry
> Heartwood Commons - Tulsa (Oklahoma)
> https://www.heartwoodcommonstulsa.com/
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