What 244 New York City moving requests reveal about small moves

Getting one couch to another apartment is a different planning problem from moving a household. A study of 244 moving requests involving New York City found that 159, or 65.2%, listed just one unit. Among requests with both addresses inside the city, 57.4% stayed within the same borough.

A smaller sample of people exploring moves in the wider New York area showed a similar preference for one item. Together, the findings suggest a useful way to plan a small move: define the load, then work through access at both buildings.

These figures describe requests made through Laborhutt, a moving marketplace, rather than all New Yorkers or all completed moves. The city sample covers January through September 2026.

Most requests listed one unit

The number of units people entered was heavily concentrated at the small end.

In total, 189 requests, or 77.5%, listed three units or fewer.

"Unit" needs some care here. Someone could select a couch, a mattress, a box, or a broad category such as furniture. One listed unit does not always mean one physical possession. It measures the quantity entered in the request.

The pattern also held in a narrower group that excluded boxes, generic furniture, "other," and categories defined only by size. Among 81 requests containing only specifically named item types, 67 listed one unit. That is 82.7% of this smaller group.

Couches were a clear example: 36 of the 40 requests that included a couch listed only one couch and no additional units.

Most trips wholly within NYC stayed in one borough

Both pickup and delivery fell inside the five boroughs for 183 requests. Of those, 105 stayed in the same borough and 78 crossed a borough boundary.

The remaining 61 requests had one endpoint classified inside NYC and the other outside the borough polygons. They are included in the item analysis but excluded from this route comparison.

A borough boundary tells us where a request begins and ends. It does not tell us how long the drive takes or how much carrying is involved. The planning questions still concern the whole journey: where the item starts, how it reaches a vehicle, and how it gets into the destination.

Building access came up in more than half the notes

Customers added an extra note to 126 requests. Of those, 68, or 54.0%, mentioned stairs, a walk-up, flights of stairs, or an elevator.

Elevators appeared in 45 notes and stairs-related language in 38. Fifteen mentioned both, so these counts overlap.

These are mentions, not a building survey. A note saying "no stairs" still refers to stairs, and a missing note does not establish easy access. The finding is that access was a recurring part of what people chose to explain.

For someone arranging a furniture pickup, that makes the building details useful information to settle early. A single item can still require several turns, a staircase, and a handoff at each end. The request data do not measure how much these details change the price.

People exploring moves showed a similar pattern

Website activity provides a separate view of what people considered before a request was necessarily created.

Between July 30 and September 30, 2026, 44 people tracked in analytics submitted a positive item count for the platform's New York market. Twenty-seven, or 61.4%, selected one item in their first recorded submission during that period.

Using each person's last submission instead gave 26 of 44, or 59.1%. Three people changed their item count between their first and last submission.

This is a small supporting sample. The market covers a 45-mile radius around the platform's New York anchor, including places beyond NYC, and a tracked person is not a verified unique resident. These observations are kept separate from the city request totals.

The one-item pattern appears in both the posted requests and the earlier planning activity. Counting each tracked person once still leaves a majority selecting one item.

A practical checklist for moving one piece of furniture

The findings point toward a compact planning checklist for a couch, mattress, table, or other small load.

• Write down each item and its quantity. Specify separate pieces of a sectional and anything else traveling with it.
• Measure the item and the narrowest openings along its path, including hallway turns.
• Confirm the floor and access at both addresses. Ask about stairs, elevator dimensions, and any building arrangements needed for the move.
• Decide who will carry the item at pickup and delivery, and whether any parts need to come off first.
• Agree on where the item will be left. An apartment, a lobby, and a curb are different endpoints.

The purpose is to describe the work clearly. An item count and two addresses are a starting point; the route through each building completes the description.

How the study was conducted

The city analysis used production Convex records for requests created from January 1 through September 30, 2026, interpreted in New York local time. Pickup and delivery coordinates were matched to the NYC Department of City Planning borough boundaries. Requests qualified when at least one endpoint fell inside a borough polygon.

There were 255 qualifying records. Eleven repeated records were removed when they matched on customer account, exact pickup and delivery coordinates, requested start time, and item types and quantities. Known administrator and Laborhutt email accounts were screened out; none of the 255 requests belonged to those accounts. The resulting sample contained 244 requests from 207 customer accounts.

Item quantities were summed across each request. Counting only the first retained request from each customer account also produced a similar result: 134 of 207, or 64.7%, listed one unit.

Access mentions were identified in the extra notes using terms for stairs, walk-ups, flights, and elevators. Notes were not published, and mentions were not treated as confirmed building conditions.

The separate analysis used production website events from July 30 through September 30, 2026, for the New York market. It combined two versions of item-submission tracking and counted each person once, using their first positive item count. Known bot traffic were excluded where identifiable.

The samples were not added together or linked as a funnel. Platform users are a self-selected group, records may omit details, and the service and booking interface can influence what people request. Request status was not an inclusion criterion: these are intended moves, not a count of completed deliveries. No citywide price, savings, or causal claims are made.

Analysis completed October 9, 2026. Only aggregate findings are reported.