House clearance in Edinburgh — the Lothians, if you are describing the wider patch — usually starts as an email rather than a phone call. Somebody describing a property they have been left with, asking whether we can take it on and how soon. One of those came in about a property here in the city, and the answer went back the same day: "Thank you for your inquiry. We can clear the property no problem." Then the part people actually want, in the office's own words: "we turn up at the property at 9 O'clock in the morning and usually get the property fully cleared on that day." Three men, a Luton van, a day set aside. The same reply carried on into verminous cleaning, because that question comes up more often than you would think.
What no email can tell you is how many loads a place is going to take. A flat that looks half empty from the hall usually isn't. The weight sits in the cupboards, the hall press and whatever has been stacked in the box room since the nineties. Where a property is cluttered or part-cluttered we still clear it on the day if we possibly can. That can mean extra runs and, once in a while, a second day. The van has a legal weight allowance of 1,400kg and no amount of good will gets round it. We have been at this since 2007, and an honest answer after the walk round is worth more than a confident one given in advance.
The kinds of house clearance Edinburgh asks for
Most of it falls into a handful of shapes. It helps to know which one you are ringing about.
Probate house clearance Edinburgh
A fair share of every week is probate work. In Scotland the grant is called confirmation, and the timing of it decides when a lot of these clearances actually happen. Probate house clearance in Edinburgh usually means a flat that has been shut up for a few months, a family living somewhere else entirely. A solicitor holding a set of keys. We are used to working to that pace — the property sits until the paperwork moves, then everything happens in a day. There is more on how probate clearances run on the probate house clearance page.
Flat clearance in Leith, EH6
Flat clearance is the everyday job in this city. Tenement flats in EH6 and EH7, main-door flats in EH3 and EH9, four-in-a-blocks out at EH11 and EH16, sheltered housing in EH13 and EH17. The furniture is the same everywhere; the difference is always the stair, the door width and where the van can legally sit while it is being loaded.
End of tenancy house clearance Edinburgh
Landlords and letting agents ring at the end of a lease, often at short notice. Usually with a fixed date they cannot move. That work is straightforward: everything left behind goes, the rooms are swept. Photographs are sent over so the agent has a record of the state the place was left in. Student flats in EH8 and EH9 empty out in the same fortnight every summer. The diary gets tight around then.
Hoarder house clearance Edinburgh
Properties packed to the ceiling turn up in every district and the crew does not raise an eyebrow at one. Hoarder house clearance takes more loads, more care and sometimes a second day, and where there is an infestation or heavy soiling it needs the cleaning side handling first — see hoarder house clearance and pest control. Nobody in the van passes comment on what they find. That matters more to families than anything else we could say.
Garage and loft clearance in Edinburgh, and the shed with it
Plenty of jobs are not the whole house. A garage that has not been opened in years, a loft emptied through the hatch, a shed at the bottom of a Corstorphine garden with a lawnmower and forty paint tins in it. Same for a single heavy item or a van load of general junk — that side of it lives on the house rubbish removal page.
Wallpaper stripping and single items
Not every booking is a clearance at all. A team can come in for a day with the tools, take the walls back to plaster and carry every scrap of wet paper out with them; wallpaper removal covers that on its own. Stripping is honest work and impossible to plan to the minute. You don't know what is under the paper until you start. Woodchip that has been painted over four times comes off in postage stamps. A single layer of vinyl comes off in sheets.
What comes out of an older Edinburgh house
Houses of that vintage in this part of the world turn up much the same run of things. A camphor chest that smells of the inside of a wardrobe, a Welsh dresser too wide for the door it has to come back through, a twin-tub still sitting under a sheet, a Baby Belling, a Goblin Teasmade on the bedside table with the flex perished. A Hoover Junior upright in the cupboard under the stair. A Breville sandwich toaster nobody had used since it stopped closing properly. Boxes of records too — Dave Edmunds, Clive Dunn, Mungo Jerry, that whole 1970 to 1971 stretch of the charts, all in their sleeves. Records like that go to a dealer or a charity shop, never in the load.
Where we work in and around the city
Across the city itself that means the Old Town and the Royal Mile in EH1, the New Town in EH2 and EH3 with Stockbridge, Canonmills and Tollcross alongside them. Leith, Bonnington and the Shore in EH6. EH7 takes in Abbeyhill, Meadowbank, Lochend, Restalrig and Craigentinny; EH8 the Southside, St Leonard's, Willowbrae and Duddingston; EH9 Marchmont, Sciennes, Newington, the Grange and Blackford. EH10 is Bruntsfield, Morningside, Merchiston, Greenbank, Comiston and Fairmilehead, EH13 is Colinton, Oxgangs and Bonaly. EH11 covers Gorgie, Dalry, Saughton, Stenhouse, Broomhouse and Sighthill. EH12 runs west through Murrayfield, Corstorphine, Clermiston, East Craigs and the Gyle. On the coast, EH15 is Portobello and Joppa; inland, EH16 takes Liberton, Prestonfield, Craigmillar and Niddrie. EH17 Gilmerton, Moredun, Gracemount and Burdiehouse. A few of the EH numbers — EH77, EH91, EH95 and EH99 — are not residential districts at all but large-user codes tied to single organisations. Nobody is booking a house clearance in one of them.
The districts we're in most often are EH4 and EH5 on the north side. Blackhall, Davidson's Mains, Barnton, Cramond, Comely Bank, then Trinity, Newhaven and Granton down by the water. EH14 covers Balerno, Currie, Juniper Green, Slateford, Longstone and Wester Hailes, out along the Water of Leith, and out west we are regularly in Kirkliston and Newbridge. EH21 is Musselburgh, Inveresk and Wallyford, over the boundary into East Lothian. EH39 takes us right out to North Berwick. South of the bypass we cross into Midlothian, where house clearance in Dalkeith has a page of its own, and over the Forth crossings there is house clearance in Dunfermline as well.
For the crew it's a question of trains and roads more than council boundaries. Waverley and Haymarket for anyone travelling in; Curriehill or Kingsknowe if the job's at the Balerno end, since Balerno itself lost its station long before any of us were driving; Musselburgh station sitting out at Monktonhall a good walk from the High Street; Drem and North Berwick if the property is out that way. The city side sits with the City of Edinburgh Council, Musselburgh and North Berwick with East Lothian, and the villages just south of the bypass with Midlothian. Worth knowing when it comes to permits and tip access.
Stairs, permits and where the van sits
Edinburgh is a tenement city, and a common stair with no lift changes a day's work completely. Everything is carried, one flight at a time, past somebody else's front door. We plan for it rather than complain about it. Narrower items first, wardrobes broken down on the landing where they won't mark the wall.
Parking is the other half of it. In the controlled zones you can't simply pull a Luton up outside and start. Either a bay gets suspended in advance through the council or the team works from the nearest legal spot and walks it. Tell us which when you book. Out at Balerno and Currie the streets are quieter but the lanes are tight and some of the driveways won't take a long wheelbase. Musselburgh High Street on a market-busy morning is its own puzzle. None of this is a problem if we know beforehand. It's only a problem when the van arrives blind.
Fridges, mattresses and the awkward items
Fridges and freezers are classed as hazardous waste and have to go off separately for degassing, so they never simply disappear into the general load. An under-counter one, a tall upright and a chest freezer each go the same controlled route. Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating carry their own rule: the foam inside them falls under the POP regulations and has to travel down its own route to be burned rather than shredded. Is why they are kept apart from everything else on the van. Solvents, half-used gloss, gas canisters and the like can't ride in an ordinary van load either. Mention them and we'll tell you what we can and can't lift on the day.
Carpets, underlay and gripper rods come up as part of the clearance. The one exception is rods that have been fixed down over tiles, because pulling those wrecks the floor underneath.
What house clearance in Edinburgh costs
There is one answer to that and it isn't printed on this page, because the property decides it. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe the place room by room, or send photographs through the form on this page. One from the door of each room, plus the loft hatch and the garage if there is one. You'll get a figure back for the property in front of us. A guess made on a doorstep is no use to anybody. A number typed on a website before anyone has seen the box room is worse.
Estates, executors and solicitors
A good share of the clearances here follow a bereavement. Where confirmation is being handled by a solicitor, an attorney or the executors, we deal with them directly and send the paperwork to their office. Spares the family in the middle of it one more errand. Nothing needs boxing or bagging beforehand. Take out what you're keeping, and the team empties cupboards, wardrobes and drawers themselves.
If you'd rather not be in the house while it happens, keys can be collected from a neighbour, a managing agent or a local solicitor's office. Photographs of the emptied rooms are emailed over afterwards. Anything of sentimental value that turns up in a drawer gets set aside and posted on. Executors living in England, or further away than that, are the norm rather than the exception on probate work here.
Full houses, and getting a date
Properties packed to the ceiling are part of the ordinary run of the work here and nobody in the crew raises an eyebrow at one. They take more loads and sometimes a second day. We'll say so honestly after the walk round rather than halfway through the afternoon.
Usable furniture and household goods are offered on to charity shops and reuse projects around the city before anything else happens to them. The remainder is tipped at permitted stations — the council's centres at Sighthill and Seafield among them — and a waste transfer note can be produced for any load you want to see one for. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679, and the firm is fully insured for the work.
One or two working days' notice is usually plenty for a date. It can be sooner if the diary allows. Ring 0800 046 5555 or use the form on this page with the postcode district, the property type and roughly what's in it. You'll get a straight answer back the same day where we can manage it.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Edinburgh
How much notice do you need for a house clearance in Edinburgh?
A couple of working days is usually enough, and we can often be quicker than that if the diary is kind. The tight weeks are the end of the summer term, when the student flats in EH8 and EH9 all empty at once.
Can you deal with the solicitor handling the estate?
Yes. On a probate house clearance we correspond with the solicitor, the attorney or the executors directly. We invoice them or the estate rather than pushing it at the family. Payment can come out of the estate, there is no deposit, and the invoice follows the work.
Do I have to be there on the day?
No. Keys can come from a neighbour, a managing agent or a solicitor's office. You get photographs of the emptied rooms afterwards. Plenty of our Edinburgh clearances are arranged by someone who never sets foot in the property.
What happens to everything you take away?
Usable furniture and household goods are offered on to charity shops and reuse projects first. What's left goes to permitted transfer stations, and a waste transfer note can be issued for any load. Our carrier registration is CBDU419679.
Do you take fridges, freezers and sofas?
Yes, but they travel their own separate routes — fridges and freezers for degassing, upholstered furniture under the POP rules. Tell us how many there are when you ring so the day is planned around them.
How do I get a figure for my property?
Ring 0800 046 5555 and talk it through room by room, or send photographs through the form on this page. That is the only way to get a proper figure for house clearance Edinburgh side. There is no obligation either way.
