House Clearance in Highbury Vale

House Clearance for Highbury Vale homes

Voids rather than probate, because so much of this stock is let. A former tenant's goods carry a notice procedure before anything can go, and everything leaves through a front door onto a footway with the van in a side street.

Clearance work here is mostly voids rather than probate, because a large share of these streets is let and a tenancy ending happens far more often than an estate does. That changes the first question. It is not what do you want kept, it is who is entitled to dispose of it, because goods a former tenant has left behind still belong to that tenant and there is a notice procedure to run before anything can move. The second stream is downsizing out of the interwar semis, where somebody has been in the same house for decades and the volume is in the loft and the yard rather than in the rooms. The two price completely differently, and it is worth saying which you have when you first ring.

Highbury Vale sits in NG6, under Nottingham City Council. Living on a through route decides when windows get opened, which is hardly ever. Traffic noise at the front and road grit on everything near an open window mean most households ventilate as little as they can get away with, and the moisture that would otherwise leave the house stays in it.

What we run into on Highbury Vale house clearance jobs

The volume in a let is almost never where the photographs suggest. The rooms are small and a departing tenant usually takes whatever furniture was theirs, so the inside looks manageable. The yard does not. With nowhere else to put anything between collections, a yard accumulates months of what would not fit in a bin: flattened boxes gone soft in the rain, a broken airer, split sacks. In the corner of the older yards there is often a brick store or a former outside toilet still standing, used as a shed since the day it stopped being one, and packed to the door. Neither ever appears in the pictures people send us.

How a Highbury Vale house clearance job actually runs

The loading route is what a clearance here actually costs. There is no drive to back onto and the through road is no place to stand a van with the tailboard down, so we load from a side street and every item is carried out of the front door, across a short garden and along a footway to the vehicle. That distance is priced, along with the stairs, and it is why two identical looking three bedroom houses come out at different figures. Inside, the stair has a turn in it and the landing is narrow, so wardrobes and bed frames come apart on the landing rather than being fought round the corner, and a sofa that went in before a stair rail was put back sometimes does not come out whole. Yard contents go down the shared entry where there is one, which is a great deal quicker than through the hall. Two things to sort before the day: the bin, because a full one standing at the front is in everybody's way and in every photograph, and the keys, since on a void those are usually with an agent or a solicitor rather than at the property.

Who books it here

On the practical side: Front gardens are too short for a drive, and the through road is no place to leave a van. We load from a side street. Say if there is a side gate to the back, because that decides how equipment reaches it.

We run Highbury Vale on the same round as Bulwell, Old Basford and Cinderhill.

What we check on every Highbury Vale job

Floors take longer on a void than anyone allows for. A landlord resetting one of these houses generally wants the carpet out along with the contents, and a fitted carpet that has been down through several tenancies has to be cut into strips to leave the room at all, because it will not fold once it is up. Underneath, the gripper rod is nailed either into boards or straight into a solid floor, and prising it off brings the nails up with it and leaves a line of them standing along every skirting, which is a real hazard for whoever walks in next. The stairs are the slow part, since the carpet is cut round the turn and the gripper follows every riser and tread. We lift it, pull the rod, sweep the nails and tell you what the floor underneath is actually like, which on a solid floor is usually a lot of old adhesive.

What the house clearance covers

A sample of what is included

• Everything that comes out: Loft, garage, shed, cellar and outbuildings, which are usually underestimated
• Before we leave: Photographs of every room before we start and after we finish
• Everything that comes out: Kitchen and cupboard contents, wardrobes and clothing
• Before we leave: Documents, photographs, cash and anything that looks valuable bagged and handed to you

That is a sample rather than the whole list. The full house clearance page sets out every section of the scope, what is deliberately excluded and why, how long it takes on each property size, and what tends to go wrong.