A house clearance in the UK typically costs £100 to £250 for a part load such as one room, a garage or a shed, £150 to £400 for a one bedroom flat, £250 to £600 for a two bedroom house, £400 to £900 for a three bedroom house and £700 to £1,400 for a four bedroom. A heavily filled property is quoted after a visit and normally starts around £1,000. Fridges, freezers, sofas, mattresses and electricals carry a separate charge on top, and difficult access commonly adds 15% to 30%.
Those are UK market ranges drawn from published cost guides rather than any one company's price list, and the spread inside them is real: the Checkatrade cost guide starts a quarter van load at £175, while MyJobQuote puts the same tier at £100 to £150. The Midlands sits at or below the national average, so a Nottingham clearance normally lands in the lower half of every band.
What it costs, by property size
| Property | Typical UK range | Time on site |
|---|---|---|
| Part load: one room, garage or shed | £100 to £250 | 1 to 2 hours |
| 1 bed flat | £150 to £400 | 2 to 4 hours |
| 2 bed house | £250 to £600 | 4 to 6 hours |
| 3 bed house | £400 to £900 | A full day |
| 4 bed house | £700 to £1,400 | One to two days |
| Heavily filled property | £1,000 and up | Staged over days |
MyJobQuote gives £400 to £700 for a three bedroom house; Nottingham firms publishing their own list prices tend to sit higher. The bands above span both, because a national guide is built from quotes and a company page is built from what that company wants to charge.
Why it is priced by volume, not by bedrooms
Almost nobody in the trade prices by room count. They price the volume the contents make once furniture is broken down, as van loads or cubic yards, then adjust for how hard that volume is to move to the van.
| Load | Checkatrade | MyJobQuote | HomeHow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarter van, up to 250kg | From £175 | £100 to £150 | Around £175 |
| Half van, up to 500kg | From £325 | £175 to £275 | £200 to £350 |
| Three-quarter van, up to 750kg | From £400 | £275 to £425 | £300 to £450 |
| Full van, up to 1,000kg | From £595 | £400 to £600 | £500 to £700 |
Two identical three bedroom houses can differ by hundreds of pounds. One has a bare loft and a driveway. The other has a full loft, a garage stacked to the door and forty years of accumulation in the cupboards. The deeds say the same thing about both.
What moves the number
Access, more than anything else. Trade guides put the uplift for narrow stairs, no lift, restricted doorways and loft items at 15% to 30%. A second floor flat with a long carry to a permit bay is a different job from a bungalow with the van on the drive.
How much is reusable. Contents that go to reuse and charity outlets cost nothing to divert. Contents that go straight to a transfer station are charged by weight.
Labour. Man and van rates run around £25 to £40 per person per hour nationally, with a crew of two or three standard, and most whole-property jobs run six to twelve hours of crew time.
Urgency and region. Same day work carries a supplement, typically 10% to 20%. London and the South East add roughly 20% to 50%. The Midlands does not.
Items that cost extra because they are regulated
| Item | Typical extra |
|---|---|
| Fridge or freezer, per unit | £20 to £95 |
| Sofa or armchair, per item | £25 to £50 |
| Mattress, per item | £15 to £40 |
| TVs, monitors and electricals | £5 to £45 per item |
| Tyres | £4 to £15 each |
| Piano | £100 to £400 |
| Paint, solvents and liquids | Often refused outright |
Fridges and freezers are where sources disagree most, from £15 at a local Nottingham firm to £120 at the top of the Checkatrade range. There is a charge at all because the refrigerant and the foam blowing agents have to be extracted before the shell can be recycled. Paint and solvents are the opposite case: several national operators refuse them rather than pricing them.
Upholstered seating is the one most people have not heard of, and it is wider than sofas: sofa beds, armchairs, recliners, dining chairs, futons, bean bags and garden furniture all count where any part is fabric, foam or leather. The Environment Agency treats them as waste containing persistent organic pollutants, to be kept separate and incinerated rather than landfilled. Published operator tariffs run about £25 for a small item and £50 for a multi-seat sofa. A firm that quietly mixes three sofas into a general load is not saving you money.
What cannot be taken at all
Asbestos in any form, which in an older house usually means corrugated garage roof sheets, artex, and old vinyl floor tiles with the bitumen under them. Gas cylinders, fire extinguishers, fireworks and ammunition. Clinical waste, sharps and unused medicines, which go back to a pharmacy. Fuel, solvents and unlabelled containers of anything. Each has a licensed route of its own, so say what is in the garage when you ask for a price rather than on the day.
Where the contents go, and why a firm that only tips is often dearer
The order that keeps a price down is reuse, then recycling, then disposal. Usable furniture, clothing, books and tools go to reuse and charity outlets at no disposal cost. Metal, wood, card, textiles and electricals are segregated and recycled. Only what is genuinely finished goes as residual waste.
That last stream is the expensive one and it is getting worse. The standard rate of landfill tax rose to £130.75 a tonne on 1 April 2026, and clearance firms report paying roughly £180 to £200 a tonne at licensed transfer stations once gate fees are included. A company that sorts nothing pays that on every kilo, and it is in your price whether the quote says so or not.
Check the carrier before the van loads
Anyone transporting other people's waste in England must be registered as a waste carrier with the Environment Agency, at upper tier, because the waste is not their own. Registration costs £191.02 and £130.25 to renew every three years, so a firm that has not bothered has told you something.
As the person handing waste over, you have a duty of care, and two things discharge most of it. Ask for the registration number, which begins CBDU, and check it on the Environment Agency's public register. It takes two minutes. Then ask for a waste transfer note describing the waste and naming who took it. If your contents are later fly-tipped and traced back to you, having paid someone is not on its own an answer; naming a registered carrier and producing the note is.
Nottingham has a further wrinkle. The city's recycling centre takes household waste from residents but not trade waste, and a landlord bringing a former tenant's belongings is bringing trade waste. The council's bulky waste collection is £26 for up to six items with upholstered seating booked separately; Broxtowe charges a £13 order fee plus £11 an item. Both are cheap, and both mean waiting a week or two and carrying everything to the kerb yourself. Neither is a route out of a void clearance.
If a tenant left it behind
Goods left in a property by a former tenant still belong to that tenant. Disposal of them in England and Wales is governed by the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977, which sets out a notice procedure a landlord has to follow before anything can be sold or disposed of. A landlord who skips the contents without following it can be liable to the tenant for their value.
Check as well whether anything left carries a rental or hire purchase label, because goods the tenant did not own cannot pass good title to a buyer however careful the notice was. Take your own advice, or your letting agent's, on the notice and the timing, because the detail depends on your tenancy agreement and the circumstances. The NRLA guidance and the Act itself are the places to start. In the meantime, have the items inventoried, photographed and stored rather than disposed of.
If it is a probate clearance
Household contents form part of an estate and have to be valued for probate. Once the house is empty there is nothing left to value, so the clearance goes after the valuation and after anyone entitled to a keepsake has had the chance to take one. Photograph every room before anything moves. The clearance is normally an administration expense of the estate rather than something the executor pays personally.
Published figures span a few hundred pounds to several thousand, because the phrase covers one van load at one end and a fully sorted clearance at the other.
Clearance first, clean second
Different jobs, different days. The clearance takes the contents out; the end of tenancy clean comes after, when every surface can be reached. On a tenancy, leave a further clear day before the check-out appointment so anything the inventory clerk flags can be fixed before the keys go back.
Frequently asked questions
Is a clearance cheaper than hiring a skip? It depends on who is doing the carrying. A small skip is around £90 to £130 and a twelve yarder £250 to £440, plus £20 to £65 for a road permit, and none of that moves a single item into it. A clearance price includes the labour, the sorting and the regulated items.
What happens if you find money or documents? They come back to you, listed and handed over rather than loaded. Deeds, certificates, passports, photographs and cash turn up constantly, usually in coat pockets, inside books and taped under drawers.
Can I sell the contents to reduce the bill? Occasionally. Some firms offset genuinely saleable items, but most household contents have little resale value once collection costs are counted. Treat an offer to buy the contents unseen with caution on a probate clearance.
How far ahead should I book? One to two weeks, longer for a void with a relet date, because the clean follows the clearance and the viewing follows the clean.
Does the price include cleaning the property? No, and it should not. A clearance quote that claims to include a full clean has usually included a sweep through.
