How much does house clearance cost in 2026?

A full house clearance starts at £450 as a fixed price. Anything smaller is priced on the volume that actually leaves the property, starting at £65 for a single item and running to £310 for a full 12-yard van load. Those are our own published rates, not a market average.

Clearance is charged by volume because that is what drives the cost: transfer stations charge us by weight and type, so the load determines the price far more than the clock does. It also means two quotes can be compared honestly — ask both for the van size, not the hourly rate.

A whole-property job is quoted as one fixed number rather than by the van, because part-loads and second trips are our problem to plan, not yours to pay for twice. What we need to set it is simple: room count, what is in the loft and garage, floor level, and whether a van can park within carrying distance.

• Volume, first and last. Everything else is a modifier on how much leaves the building.
• Access and floor level. A third-floor flat with no lift can add an hour a room. Van parking within 20 metres is worth more to the price than most people expect.
• Weight and material type. Rubble, soil and tiles are charged by weight at the transfer station and are the single most common reason a quote is higher than a customer expected.
• Regulated items. Fridges, freezers and air-conditioning units carry a per-unit gas disposal charge. Paint, oils and gas bottles need separate routing.
• Dismantling. Fitted wardrobes, sheds and garden furniture are labour, not volume, and are quoted as their own line.
• Reuse potential. Genuinely resaleable furniture and working white goods reduce our disposal tonnage, and that is reflected in the quote.

This is the part of a clearance price that is invisible until it goes wrong. In England and Wales, a householder has a duty of care over their own waste: you must take reasonable steps to check that whoever takes it away is authorised to carry it. If your belongings are later fly-tipped, the council can trace them back and fine the householder for failing that duty — the fly-tipper being gone is not a defence.

• Ask for the waste carrier registration number and check it on the Environment Agency public register before the van is loaded
• Get a waste transfer note — it records what was taken, by whom and where it went, and you should keep it
• Be suspicious of cash-only, no-paperwork quotes well below the bands above; the saving is the disposal fee they are not paying
• For commercial or trade waste, the same duty applies with stricter record-keeping

Hello Services holds an upper-tier waste carrier registration, issues a transfer note on every job, and routes reusable goods to reuse and charity partners before anything is treated as waste. The rules in full are in our waste duty of care guide.

Honest answer: if you have three items you can get to the kerb and time to wait, use the council. Past that point a volume price is both cheaper and faster.

Two clearance types have their own rhythm. A probate clearance usually needs a search phase first — documents, jewellery, photographs set aside and handed over before anything is loaded — and we work room by room with the family's list rather than at speed.

An end-of-tenancy clearance is the opposite: it is a deadline job, and it should always be booked before the cleaners, never the same morning. A crew cannot clean inside a wardrobe that is still full. The sequence that works is clearance one day, clean the next, check-out the day after — set out in our end of tenancy cleaning checklist.

• Sell or donate the resaleable pieces yourself before quote stage — smaller load, smaller price
• Take the small, light waste to the recycling centre yourself and let the crew handle the bulk
• Separate rubble and soil out of the mixed load; it is charged by weight and inflates everything around it
• Clear a parking space for the van — carrying distance is real money on a big job
• Book clearance and end-of-tenancy cleaning together so one visit sets up the other
• Get the price fixed in writing against a photo survey, so the day itself holds no surprises