House clearance in Paignton is most of what this corner of the diary does — TQ3 and TQ4, the flat streets behind the seafront and the roads climbing away from the bay, and we have been doing this work since 2007. Most weeks it is a whole house, sometimes a flat, sometimes a garage that has not been opened since somebody's father died. And then there are the ones with a wrinkle in them.
The paraffin was the thing that held that job up. A booking came in for a property over on the Brixham side of the bay, and the owner had already told us the tins of paint in the garage were to go. Then she mentioned the paraffin. We had to come back to her on that one separately, because paraffin is not something that goes in the back of a Luton with the wardrobes and the carpet. Everything else was straightforward enough: three rooms and outbuildings, and the keys collected from a local estate agent on the morning and handed straight back to them at the end of the day. She was not in Devon at the time. She did not need to be. That is more common on this coast than people expect — a house in Paignton or Preston being sold by someone who now lives two hundred miles away, with an agent holding the only set of keys.
Where we work: Paignton, TQ3 and TQ4, and the rest of Torbay
We work the whole of Torbay out of the same diary: Paignton in TQ3 and TQ4, Torquay in TQ1 and TQ2, Brixham and Churston in TQ5, and then out over the boundary into Devon proper. Marldon and Kingskerswell, with Collaton St Mary and Galmpton still inside Torbay, and up the A380 to Newton Abbot in TQ12 and Ashburton and Chudleigh in TQ13.
Inside the town itself, the parts we are called to most are Preston and Higher Preston, Goodrington. With St Marychurch round the headland, Roselands, Blatchcombe, Hookhills, Clifton and Maidenway, Oldway and Primley, Blagdon, Shorton and out to Collaton St Mary and Yalberton where the houses start having land behind them again. Torbay Council is the unitary authority for all of it, which at least means one set of rules for the whole bay rather than three. The team comes in by road. If you are meeting us and travelling yourself, Paignton railway station, the end of the Riviera Line branch from Newton Abbot through Torquay, is five minutes' walk from most of the town centre addresses we get called to. The Dartmouth Steam Railway platform sits right alongside it.
If the property you are dealing with is not in Paignton, we very likely still cover it. We do house clearance in Torquay over the hill in TQ1 and TQ2, house clearance in Brixham at the far end of the bay, house clearance in Totnes inland along the Dart. house clearance in Exeter up the A38 when the day allows it. Say where the house is when you ring and we will tell you straight whether it fits in a working day from here.
A probate house clearance in Paignton, start to finish
Here is one that ran the way most probate house clearance jobs run, once everybody is talking to each other.
The instructions did not come from a family member at all. They came from a firm of solicitors handling the estate, and the person whose name was on the file lived somewhere else again. Not a rare arrangement, and honestly an easier one for us, because a solicitor tells you exactly what has been agreed and puts it in writing. The house was to be emptied completely. It went in a day, though the van went out and came back before we were finished with it, which is normal for a full house with outbuildings.
Two mattresses came out of it. Mattresses do not go in with the general load: they are bulky, they are difficult to process, and they go to a site that will take them for shredding and recovery rather than to the nearest skip. That is a legal handling requirement, not a preference of ours. Same with cold appliances, and same with upholstered furniture — more on both of those below.
The invoice went to the solicitors, not to a person, and nobody had to lay out anything of their own. That is the part executors usually want to hear first, and we will come back to it.
Fridges, freezers and the things that need a licence
Cooling appliances have to go to a treatment site that can degas them properly; you cannot leave a fridge at a household recycling centre in the back of a van and call it done. Upholstered furniture is the other one people do not expect. Persistent organic pollutants — that is sofas, armchairs and other domestic seating. Since 2023 those cannot be tipped in with general household waste; they are held back and burned in a permitted incinerator. The paperwork follows the item, every time.
Anything still usable, we try to find it a home rather than a skip — furniture in decent order, unopened kit, tools, books. Torbay has a good number of charity outlets and reuse projects between Paignton, Torquay and Brixham, and the team knows which ones will actually take a three-piece suite and which will not. What is genuinely finished with goes to a permitted transfer station and comes back to us as a weighbridge ticket. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679, and we will show it to you before we load anything if you want to see it. If you want the disposal receipt afterwards for the estate file, ask and you will get it.
Paint, aerosols, gas bottles, asbestos sheeting and liquid fuels sit outside what an ordinary clearance load can legally carry. We will tell you on the phone if something in your list falls into that bracket, and usually we can still take it — it just gets routed separately, the way the paint tins on that Brixham-side job did.
Garage and loft clearance in Paignton, and the containers
Not everything we clear in this corner of Devon is a house. Garages, lofts, sheds, greenhouses, the strip of garden behind a Paignton terrace and the self-storage units up towards Newton Abbot all count as part of the job, and a fair few bookings are nothing but a garage. The outbuildings that came with the older Marldon and Collaton St Mary properties are the ones that catch people out — a stone shed with sixty years of tins in it takes longer than the sitting room does.
Tell us about them beforehand rather than letting us find them. And if you want to go through boxes with the team as we work rather than have them tipped straight into the van, say so when you book. Plenty of people do, especially where there are papers, photographs or anything collectable in there, and it is no trouble at all when it is agreed in advance. It is only a problem when it is sprung on us at four o'clock. Straightforward junk with no sorting involved is house rubbish removal rather than a full clearance, and that is a different sort of booking again.
What a house clearance in Paignton costs, and who we invoice
On cost, the page will only tell you one thing, and that is how to get a real figure: ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs and a description through the form on this page. You will get a figure back from that. It is free and it does not commit you to anything. We do not do doorstep pricing, and if the property turns out to hold a great deal more than you described, we tell you the revised position before we carry on rather than after.
Who pays is a separate question, and one worth answering plainly. Where the house clearance follows a death, we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the administrator of the estate directly — the invoice goes to the firm or to the person holding the role, not to whichever relative happened to phone us. The bill can be settled from the estate account rather than out of anybody's own pocket, which matters when three siblings are watching each other and nobody wants to be the one who paid. There is no deposit. Nothing is due before the work; we invoice once the clearance is finished and you have seen the property empty.
We will also tell you when not to spend. We have talked people out of paying us for a deep clean before now — if you are redecorating afterwards, a local cleaner going in once the painting is done gives you a better result. One customer wrote afterwards: "everything went much more straightforwardly than I ever imagined possible."
Access, parking and the shape of the town
Paignton is a mix. There are the big Victorian and Edwardian houses on the roads behind the seafront, often long since split into flats, with a shared hallway and a staircase you cannot get a wardrobe down in one piece. There are the interwar semis up towards Preston and Goodrington with a driveway and a garage. And there is everything on the hills climbing away from the bay, where the road is narrow, the parking is residents-only, and a Luton van needs somewhere to sit for six hours.
Tell us what the parking is like when you book. If we need a bay suspension from Torbay Council, that takes lead time and it is far better arranged a fortnight out than discovered on the morning. If the property is a flat with no lift, tell us that too, and how many floors up — it changes how many of us come. In the summer, add the seafront traffic to your thinking: an August Saturday in central Paignton is not the day to be reversing a van into a side street.
The day itself is simple enough. We meet you, or the agent, at nine. There is no need to box or bag anything up first — the team clears cupboards, wardrobes and drawers, lifts carpets and underlay where that is wanted, and sweeps through at the end. Most houses of an ordinary size are done that day.
Flat clearance in Paignton
Flat clearance is a steady part of the seafront work — the converted floors in the big old houses off the Esplanade and the blocks behind the harbour. Shared front door, a stair that turns, rarely a lift, and a bay outside that fills by nine in season. A flat clearance is planned around the carry rather than the contents.
Properties that have got out of hand
Some of the houses we are called to have been filling up for years, and the person who owns them has stopped being able to see a way through. Hoarder house clearance is not a problem for us and it is not a conversation we make anyone have. The team turns up, works room by room, sets aside anything that looks like documents or photographs for you to look at, and gets on with it. Nobody comments. Nobody takes pictures for anything other than the before-and-after record we keep for quality checks. If that is the situation you are dealing with, there is more detail on our hoarder house clearance page, and on probate house clearance if it is an estate.
Common questions about probate house clearance in Paignton
How much does a house clearance in Paignton cost? Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs and a room-by-room description through the form on this page, and we will come back with a figure. Free, and no obligation. We do not price on the doorstep.
Can you invoice the solicitor or the executor? Yes. We invoice solicitors, executors, administrators and powers of attorney directly, and the invoice can be settled from the estate account rather than by a family member personally. There is no deposit and nothing is payable before the work.
Do I need to be there on the day? No. A great many of our Paignton clearances are done with keys collected from an estate agent or a neighbour and handed back the same evening. Executors living the other end of the country are the normal case here, not the exception.
How long does a house clearance take? The team arrives at nine and most ordinary houses are cleared that day. Outbuildings, lofts and garages full of tins add time, which is why we ask about them when you book.
What will you not take? Paint, aerosols, gas bottles, liquid fuels and asbestos sheeting cannot travel in a normal clearance load. Tell us on the phone and we will usually still deal with them, routed separately and legally.
Which areas around Paignton do you cover? TQ3 and TQ4 in full, and the rest of the bay and its hinterland: Torquay, Brixham and Churston, Marldon, Kingskerswell, Collaton St Mary, Galmpton, Newton Abbot and out towards Totnes and Exeter.
If you have a house, a flat, a garage or a container in Paignton, Preston, Goodrington or anywhere across TQ3 and TQ4 that needs emptying, ring 0800 046 5555 or send the details through the form on this page and we will give you a real figure and a date. Devon jobs are booked the same way as everything else: description, date, and the team meets you at nine.
