The patio was the part that stuck with me. A house down the coast in DD11, on the Arbroath side of old Tayside, cleared last July: two full loads in the one day, a Luton van filled, tipped and brought back for a second run. Out of it came a small fridge freezer, which has to be degassed properly rather than slung on a heap, an upholstered three-piece that falls under the POP rules. The contents of a garage that had been emptied once already about a decade earlier and had quietly filled itself back up. The man who owned it had built that patio himself.
He'd been standing looking at the whole lot for months without being able to start. Afterwards he wrote to the office: "to say I've been close to tears is not an exaggeration". Then he tried to leave us a Google review, couldn't get the link to open, and went and put it on Trustpilot instead. While the team were there he also asked about hacking the weeds and the overgrown beds back, so we sorted that the week after.
Montrose is twelve miles up the same coast road, so that job and this page are the same van, the same crew and the same tip run. We've been clearing houses across Angus since 2007, and the DD10 postcode district — the town itself, Ferryden across the water, Hillside, Borrowfield, Charleton — is a regular fixture in the diary rather than a special trip.
What actually comes out of a Montrose house
The housing here is not one thing, which is why nobody can quote a Montrose clearance honestly without asking questions. The tall Victorian and Edwardian terraces off the High Street have narrow closes running back to long gardens, a stair with a turn in it and, more often than not, an attic that has never been properly emptied since the house was built. The sandstone villas out towards the links are roomier but come with cellars. Borrowfield and the post-war semis give you a loft hatch, a shed and a garage. The newer estates out by Hillside are the quickest — everything on one or two floors, a driveway to back the van onto, no stairs to fight.
Beds and mattresses, wardrobes that were built in the room and have to come apart in it, chest freezers still full of food, garden furniture that has gone green, half a workshop's worth of tools, paperwork by the crate. Carpets and underlay too, if you want them up — the team will lift them and sweep the floors through before they lock up.
Whatever still works or still sells gets offered on before it goes near a tip run. The charity shops in the town will take furniture if it's clean, and someone locally always wants a working washing machine. What's left is weighed in at a permitted transfer station and the paperwork comes back with the driver, which is how it should work. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679. Worth asking any firm for, because if a load off a Montrose house turns up in a lay-by on the Brechin road it comes back to the householder, not to the man who took it.
The kinds of house clearance Montrose asks for
Most of the diary is the same handful of jobs under different names, and it helps to say which one you have when you ring, because the van, the crew size and the day are planned around it.
Probate house clearance in Montrose
More than half of what we do here is estate work. In Scotland the grant is called confirmation rather than probate, but probate is the word almost everyone types into a search, so here it is plainly. A probate house clearance in Montrose is a house emptied on behalf of an executor, and it is the job we do most often. Usually the person instructing us is not in the town. Sons and daughters in Aberdeen, Dundee, further south, sometimes abroad, holding a set of keys and a solicitor's letter and a house they cannot get to on a weekday.
That changes how the day is run rather than what comes out of the house. We photograph the property as found, room by room, before anything moves, and again when it is empty, and both sets go over by email the same evening. Anything that looks like it matters. Photographs, medals, papers, jewellery, a christening mug at the back of a cupboard — is set aside rather than binned, and posted on or held at the yard until somebody can look at it. Executors ask us to leave the loft until last, or to keep a particular chair, and that is written down before we start. Our page on probate house clearance goes through the paperwork side in more detail.
Flat clearance in Montrose
Plenty of the town lives above shop level. A flat clearance on the High Street usually means a common stair, a turn at the half-landing that a three-seater will not go round. No lift, which is why we ask about the stair before the number of rooms. Sheltered housing schemes are their own thing again — a warden to arrange access with, a lift that everybody else in the block needs during the day, and a hand-back deadline that the housing association will not move. Tell us the deadline when you ring and we will book to fit it.
Garage and loft clearance in Montrose
Sometimes nothing indoors needs doing at all. A garage and loft clearance in Montrose. The garage that has not opened in years, the loft nobody has been up since the ladder went soft, the shed at the bottom of the garden. Is a job on its own and we are happy to come out just for that. It is also the part people forget when they describe a house on the phone, and then the van is full by two o'clock. Say what is up there and out there, honestly, and the day is planned around it.
Rubbish removal and single items
If it is one wardrobe, one bed frame or the leftovers of a kitchen fit-out, that is house rubbish removal rather than a full clearance, and it does not need a whole day booked. End of tenancy work sits in the same bracket — a landlord or agent with a property to hand back and a week to do it in.
Two days on a mothballed estate
Not everything we do is a family home. One of the larger jobs this crew has been on was a shut-up country-house hotel with a golf course attached, closed up for years and instructed from overseas by owners who had never walked the site. Everything went back and forth by email and photograph: a 40-yard roll-on roll-off skip on the drive, and a list that read like the inventory of a small village.
The top half of the building had been half tidied by somebody before us and then left at that. Items still scattered through the rooms, floors to sweep, the whole place to be swept out again at the end. Headboards, dressers, pictures off the walls. Fridges and televisions dotted about the accommodation blocks and outside them. Carpets to be lifted room by room, in the outbuildings as well as the main house, and a cellar underneath it all. Metal structures in one of the sheds were left where they stood, because that had been agreed at the start and there is no sense taking away what somebody still wants. And there was a car under a cover in one of the garages, which we were told about plainly enough: "The only thing that should not be touched is the Bentley."
So we didn't touch it. It took repeated visits and a lot of photographs sent back and forth before the last of it was off the ground. Big, awkward, and not a house clearance in any normal sense — but it is the kind of work this crew has done, and it is the reason nothing in an ordinary Montrose house clearance rattles anybody.
Overfilled houses, and the ones nobody wants to open
Not every job is a tidy three-bed with a loft. Properties packed floor to ceiling, hoarded over years, rooms you can only open the door of six inches, a kitchen that has not been usable in a long time. That is ordinary work here, not an exception, and there is no sighing at the doorstep. Whoever is dealing with a property like that is usually dreading the phone call more than the clearance itself. Nobody on the team passes comment on the state of a house. Whatever is behind that door, the crew have seen its equal, and they get on with the job.
What we do ask is that you tell us straight beforehand. A hoarder house clearance in Montrose needs more hands, more capacity and sometimes a different order to the day, and the one thing that goes wrong is a crew turning up sized for a normal three-bed. Verminous properties are the same — say so, and the team come prepared, in the right kit, with the right route for what comes out. Nothing about that conversation gets repeated to anyone. There is more on how those jobs are run on our hoarder house clearance page.
Access gets bent to fit as well. If the only time you can hand keys over is at half six in the morning before your own work starts, say so. The team will set off early from the yard and take them at the gate.
Getting a quote for a house clearance in Montrose
There is no charge for a quote and nothing to sign at the end of it. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 with the postcode, the number of bedrooms and an honest account of the loft, the shed and the garage, or send photographs through the form on this page. Photographs are worth ten minutes of description, and a video walk-through on your phone is better again. You will know where you stand before anyone gets in a van.
Some things have to be handled on their own route because the law says so, not because of anything we decide. Fridges and freezers need degassing by a licensed handler. Mattresses go through their own recycling stream. Sofas, armchairs and anything else with treated foam are POP items, and since 2023 the rules require them to be kept apart from general waste and incinerated rather than landfilled — no firm can dodge that one. Televisions and monitors are WEEE. Garden chemicals, gas bottles and half-used tins from the shed are a separate matter again. They cannot travel mixed in with the rest. Tell us what is out there and we will either arrange a route for it or point you at Angus Council's household waste recycling centre on the industrial ground at the north end of town.
Nothing is paid up front — there is no deposit. The invoice follows the work, once the property is empty and you are happy with it. Where a solicitor, an executor or the estate is settling, we invoice them directly and wait. The bill can be paid out of the estate rather than out of anybody's own pocket, which is the normal arrangement on an estate clearance and matters when confirmation is still going through.
Getting there, and what else we cover
The team comes in off the A92 and the A935. Montrose station sits on the Aberdeen to Dundee main line, so an executor coming up from Dundee or down from Aberdeen for a key handover can do it by train inside an hour either way. Arbroath station is the next one down if you're meeting us there instead. Parking in the town is mostly fine — the High Street is wide, the side streets off it less so, and the Ferryden side needs the van thinking about. If a suspension or a permit is required for a Luton outside your door, say so early and we'll arrange it rather than discovering it on the morning.
From Montrose we run out to Brechin and DD9, Arbroath and Inverkeilor in DD11, Forfar and Kirriemuir in DD8, Carnoustie in DD7, and down through DD5 and DD1 into Broughty Ferry and Dundee. North of Montrose we run up past St Cyrus into the Laurencekirk end of the Mearns. Angus Council is the authority for the town, and their rules on what can be tipped where are what we work to.
Four of those towns have pages of their own, written the same way, off the same diary: house clearance in Arbroath, the biggest of them and twenty minutes down the coast. house clearance in Brechin up the South Esk; house clearance in Forfar inland; and house clearance in St Andrews at the far end of the run. A Montrose booking and a Brechin one often end up on the same day, which is worth knowing if you are dealing with two properties at once.
Booking one
The team arrives at nine, does a walk-round with you before anything moves, photographs the property as found and again when it's empty, and sends the pictures over. Nothing needs boxing or bagging first — cupboards, wardrobes and drawers get emptied by the crew. If you're not local, keys can come from a neighbour, a solicitor or a key safe, and anything of sentimental value can be set aside and posted on. Ring 0800 046 5555, or fill in the form on this page, and a house clearance in Montrose can usually be priced and booked in the one call.
Common questions about house clearance in Montrose
Which parts of Montrose do you cover? All of DD10 — the town itself, Ferryden, Hillside, Borrowfield, Charleton and the farms and cottages out around them. We are not a firm that covers a postcode on paper and then finds reasons not to come; the DD10 run is a standing part of the week.
Can you invoice a solicitor or an executor for a probate clearance? Yes, and it is how most estate jobs here are settled. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, the bill can be paid from the estate rather than by the executor personally, and there is no deposit to find at the start. The invoice follows the work, not the booking, so a probate house clearance in Montrose can go ahead while confirmation is still with the sheriff court.
How long does a house clearance in Montrose take? Most three-bed houses are a single day, start to finish, including sweeping through afterwards. A house with a full loft, a full garage and a shed can run into a second day, and a hoarded property usually does. We will tell you which we think it is before we come, and if it changes on the day you will hear it from the crew that morning rather than afterwards.
Do we need to empty cupboards or bag anything up first? No. Leave it exactly as it is. The crew empty wardrobes, drawers, cupboards and the loft themselves — that is the job. The only thing worth doing beforehand is walking round and telling us what is to be kept. If you cannot get to the house, that can be done over the phone or marked on the photographs we send.
Is there anything you can't take away? A few things. Asbestos, which needs a licensed contractor. Gas bottles, and garden or workshop chemicals, which cannot travel mixed with a household load, though we can usually arrange a route for them. Anything a landlord or an executor has told us to leave stays where it is, and if we are in doubt about an item we will ring and ask rather than guess.
Can you clear a flat with no lift? Yes. A flat clearance up a common stair is routine here, and it is why we ask about the stair, the turn at the half-landing and where the van can sit before we ask about the rooms. Where nothing will go round the turn, it comes apart in the flat and goes down in pieces.
