House Clearance Nottingham | Probate & Voids

A house clearance empties a property of its contents: furniture, beds, white goods, carpets, the loft, the garage and the shed, down to bare rooms. Almost all of the work comes from three situations. A family dealing with a house after a death, usually while an estate is going through probate. A move into residential care, where a lifetime of possessions has to reduce to what fits one room. And a landlord taking back a property with a former tenant's goods still in it, which carries a legal problem the other two do not.

Clearance is not cleaning, and the order matters. We take the contents out; the clean comes after, once the rooms are empty and every surface can actually be reached. If the property is being handed back or relet, book the clearance first and the end of tenancy clean for the following day. Doing it the other way round means paying to clean around wardrobes and then paying again once they have gone. The price is set by volume and access, not by how many bedrooms are on the deeds.

What is included

Everything that comes out

Furniture, beds and bedroom contents, including flat pack that has to be broken down
Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating
Fridges, freezers, cookers, washing machines and small appliances
Carpets, underlay, curtains, blinds and light fittings if you want them gone
Kitchen and cupboard contents, wardrobes and clothing
Loft, garage, shed, cellar and outbuildings, which are usually underestimated
Garden furniture, pots, bagged rubbish and accumulated boxes

Where it goes

Anything you want kept set aside first, in a room you nominate
Reusable furniture, clothing, books and bric-a-brac offered to reuse and charity outlets
Electricals separated for WEEE recycling rather than crushed into a general load
Metal, wood, textiles and card segregated at the transfer station
Residual waste last, because it is the most expensive stream to move
A written note of what left the property and roughly where it went

Before we leave

Documents, photographs, cash and anything that looks valuable bagged and handed to you
Photographs of every room before we start and after we finish
Floors swept through and fixings taken out of walls where asked
Meter readings taken and photographed
Bins emptied and left kerbside or back in place
Keys back to you, the agent or the solicitor, with the handover recorded

What is not included

Asbestos in any form: garage and shed roof sheets, artex, old vinyl floor tiles and the bitumen bedding under them
Gas cylinders, fire extinguishers, fireworks, flares and ammunition
Clinical waste, sharps and unused prescription medicines
Fuel, solvents, oils and unlabelled containers of anything
Anything where nobody can establish a right to dispose of it, which is the usual position with a tenant's belongings
The clean itself, which is a separate booking on a separate day
Probate valuation of the contents for HMRC, which is a valuer's job and not ours

Those are separately regulated waste streams with their own licensed routes, and putting them into a general van load is an offence rather than a favour. Asbestos is the common one in houses of a certain age, and corrugated garage sheets are the usual find. Medicines go back to a pharmacy, sharps to the council, cylinders to the supplier. Tell us what you suspect is there and we will say who to call.

How long it takes

Property	Our team	On your own
Part load: one room, garage or shed	1 to 2 hours, two people	A Saturday and two or three tip runs
1 bed flat	2 to 4 hours	A weekend, five or six car loads
2 bed house	4 to 6 hours	Two weekends with a hired van
3 bed house with loft and garage	A full day, sometimes two	Three weekends, longer if there is a fridge
4 bed or a heavily filled property	Two days or more, staged	A skip, a road permit and a fortnight

The right-hand column is repeated trips rather than one long day, and the tip sets the pace. Nottingham's recycling centre takes one fridge or freezer per visit, one visit a week, and refuses trade waste, which rules it out entirely for a landlord clearing a void.

What house clearance costs in Nottingham

UK market ranges for a full house clearance, priced by volume and access rather than by room count. Our own cost research puts the Midlands at around the UK average to 10% below it, so Nottingham sits in the lower half of every range on this page.

Your property

£400 to £900

Typical per clearance in Nottingham. A written fixed price for your property takes about a minute: ask for one.

Property	Typical per clearance
Part load: one room, garage or shed	£100 to £250
1 bed flat	£150 to £400
2 bed house	£250 to £600
3 bed house	£400 to £900
4 bed house	£700 to £1,400
Heavily filled property	£1,000 and up, after a visit

Access moves a clearance quote more than property size does. The same contents cost 15% to 30% more to shift from a second floor flat with no lift and no parking, which is why photographs of the stairs and the street get you a firmer number than a bedroom count ever will.

Priced separately

Extra	Typical cost
Fridge or freezer, per unit	£20 to £95
Mattress, per item	£15 to £40
TVs, monitors and electricals, per item	£5 to £45
Difficult access, no parking or upper floors with no lift	Adds 15% to 30%

These are typical Nottingham market ranges, not our price list. We quote a fixed price in writing for your property before anything starts, because a number produced from a bedroom count alone has priced an average property rather than yours. The figures above come from our own UK cost research, set out in full in this guide.

How a house clearance runs

Volume and access, before a price

A walk round, or photographs of every room plus the loft, garage and shed. The estimate is van loads, not bedrooms. Access is priced alongside it: where the van can stand, how far the carry is, how many flights of stairs, whether there is a lift and whether it takes a wardrobe. A quote given without either is a guess that gets revised on the day.

Check the carrier before anything is loaded

Anyone transporting other people's waste in England must be registered as a waste carrier with the Environment Agency, and as the person handing waste over you have a duty of care to check. Ask any contractor, including us, for the registration number, which begins CBDU, check it on the Environment Agency's public register, and ask for a waste transfer note for the load. It takes two minutes and it is the only thing standing between you and a fly-tip with your address in it.

Sort in the property, not at the tip

Keep, reuse, recycle, dispose, decided room by room with the contents still in front of you. Anything you are keeping goes into a nominated room first and is not touched again. Loading everything and sorting later is how items that mattered end up gone, and it is the single biggest difference between a clearance company and a man with a van.

Regulated items are handled separately

Fridges and freezers contain refrigerant gases and go through a separate degassing route. Mattresses, tyres, paint and liquids, and electricals all have their own streams. Upholstered domestic seating is treated as containing persistent organic pollutants and cannot be mixed into a general load. Each of those carries a per item charge, which is why they are quoted as extras rather than hidden in the total.

Documents and valuables set aside as we go

Pockets, drawers, book shelves, the backs of wardrobes and under mattresses are checked rather than tipped. Anything that looks like a document, a photograph or money is bagged and listed, and handed over at the end. On a bereavement clearance this is the part families care about most, and it is worth the hour it costs.

Empty first, then clean

Rooms swept through, fixings out, photographs taken, meter readings recorded. The clean is booked for the following day, when every surface can actually be reached.

When to book it

For probate, after the contents have been valued for the estate and after anyone entitled to a keepsake has had the chance to take one, because neither can be done once the house is empty. For a move into care, once the room in the home is furnished, so nothing needed is cleared by mistake. For a void, as soon as the property is legally clear to empty, with the clean the day after and the check-out or the relet viewing after that.

Whoever turns up is directly employed by us, DBS-checked and reference-verified, which is not the same arrangement as most companies quoting against this. More on how we work on the about page, and the common pre-booking questions are on the FAQ page.

Where we do this

House Clearance runs across all 69 areas we cover, at the same price with no travel supplement. Each link goes to what this job involves in that particular place.

If you want everything we do in one place rather than this service on its own, the area pages cover that: Arnold, Aspley, Attenborough, Bakersfield and every other area. The services hub compares this service against the other 13.

What goes wrong, and how to avoid it

The mistakes below account for most of the disappointment in this kind of work, ours included. Several of them will save you money whether you hire us or not.

Clearing before the contents are valued

Household goods form part of an estate and have to be valued for probate. Once the house is empty there is nothing left to value and no way to reconstruct it. Photograph every room before anything moves, and get anything that might carry real value looked at by a valuer rather than guessed at. Jewellery, watches, tools and older furniture are the usual surprises.

Taking the cheapest quote without checking the carrier

If your waste is fly-tipped and traced back to you, the fact that you paid someone to take it away is not on its own a defence. Ask for the waste carrier registration number, check it against the Environment Agency's public register, and ask for a waste transfer note. A firm that cannot produce a number is not cheaper, it has simply moved a cost onto you.

Assuming a landlord can dispose of what a tenant left

Goods left behind still belong to the former tenant. Disposal in England and Wales is governed by the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977, which requires notice to the owner before anything is sold or disposed of. Get advice on the notice and the timing before booking a clearance, and check whether anything carries a rental or hire purchase label, because goods the tenant never owned cannot be sold on at all.

Booking the clean for the same day as the clearance

Two crews in one property get in each other's way, and half the surfaces the cleaners need are still under furniture. Clearance one day, clean the next. On a tenancy, leave a further day before the check-out appointment so anything flagged can be fixed before the keys go back.

What Customers Say

Rated 5.0 out of 5on Google

GHCS is a highly professional and world-class cleaning establishment. I highly recommend.

Martin Okonkwo via Google

Amazing service. They went over and beyond my expectations.

chijioke okobi via Google

Punctual, thoroughly trustworthy, and respectful of client spaces.

Elehibiri lawson via Google

Questions

House ClearanceQuestions

Anything not covered here, ring us on 07438 843980.

How is a house clearance priced?

By volume and access, not by room count. The estimate is the number of van loads the contents make once broken down, adjusted for how far each item has to travel to the van and how many stairs are involved. That is why two identical three bedroom houses can price differently, and why a photograph of every room, including the loft and the garage, gets you a far more accurate figure than a description does.

What happens to everything you take away?

Reuse first, then recycling, then disposal. Furniture, clothing, books and household goods in usable condition go to reuse and charity outlets; electricals are separated for WEEE recycling; metal, wood, card and textiles are segregated at the transfer station. Only what is genuinely finished goes as residual waste, because that is the most expensive stream to move. A firm that only tips is worse for the contents and usually dearer for you.

Do you clean the property afterwards?

Not in the same booking. Clearance and cleaning are different jobs with different kit, and a clean is only worth paying for once the rooms are empty. Book the clearance first and the clean the day after. If the property is a tenancy coming to an end, leave another clear day before the check-out appointment, so anything the inventory clerk flags can be put right before the keys change hands.

A tenant has left their belongings behind. Can you just clear them?

Not on your say-so alone. Goods left by a former tenant still belong to that tenant, and disposal of them in England and Wales is governed by the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977, which sets out a notice procedure the landlord has to follow before anything can be sold or disposed of. Take your own advice, or your letting agent's, on the notice and the timing. We will store, inventory and photograph rather than dispose while that runs.

What happens if you find money, documents or something valuable?

It comes back to you. Bank statements, deeds, share certificates, passports, photographs, jewellery and cash turn up in clearances constantly, usually in coat pockets, inside books, taped under drawers and at the back of the airing cupboard. Anything of that kind is bagged, listed and handed over at the end of the day rather than put in the van, and we would rather hand you a bag of rubbish than lose one certificate in it.