House clearance in Orpington is mostly probate work and end of tenancy work, in roughly that order, and we have been doing it since 2007. BR5 and BR6 are our own ground. We know which drives take a Luton and which ones don't, and how long the run out to the transfer station takes on a weekday morning. What follows is one of ours, written up properly, because a booking from our side of the email is a more useful thing to read than a page of promises.
A four-bedroom house with an attached garage, cleared on a Thursday in early March. The person instructing us had wanted the Friday. The Friday was full, so we offered the Thursday and held the date while the confirmation came back — that is how the diary works here: a day pencilled in, then fixed once we have the details in writing. What came back was one of the tidiest booking emails we have ever had, every answer typed in under our own question. Property: four-bed house including the garage. Any known cases of Covid: none. Hazardous or verminous contents: none. Parking restrictions: none. Cleaning not required, gardening not required, curtains staying where they were. They would be at the property themselves to let the team in and to instruct them, and anything to be left behind would be pointed out on the morning rather than listed in advance.
Two lines in that correspondence mattered more than all the rest, and both are exactly the sort of thing that gets forgotten if nobody writes it down. First, the carpets were not all going: hall, stairs, landing and bathroom to remain, the rest lifted and taken. Second, once the booking was confirmed, a short note came back with a postscript on the end — "PS: Fridge and Freezer to remain."
Small thing, that. It is also the difference between a straight day and an awkward phone call at half ten. A fridge and a freezer are not two more items on a van; they are gassed appliances that have to go to a facility licensed to draw the refrigerant off before anything is stripped, and they get booked in accordingly. Because these two were staying, they stayed plugged in and the crew worked round them all day. Same with the carpets — half a house of carpet up and out, the other half left down and clean, which means gripper rods pulled in some rooms and not in others.
The team met them at the property at nine. The rooms were walked with the team leader before a stick of furniture moved, and that walk-round is worth the twenty minutes it takes: it is where the day stops being a guess. A four-bed with the garage included is a full day's work for a crew, not a morning, and the garage is nearly always the part that runs longest, because a garage holds things nobody has made a decision about for years.
What leaves the house, and where it actually ends up
Furniture that somebody else would still use doesn't get tipped. Bromley has a decent run of charity shops and reuse projects between the High Street, Petts Wood and Beckenham, and if a sideboard or a dining set is sound the team will look for a home for it before anything else. What's left is a sorting job at our end — metal, wood, textiles, electricals and general split out, then weighed in at a permitted transfer station with the paperwork to match. We carry waste under Environment Agency registration CBDU419679, and every tipped load has a transfer note behind it that we can send you if a solicitor or a managing agent wants sight of it.
Two categories always get pulled out of the pile. Upholstered furniture — sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs, mattress toppers — falls under the POPs rules the Environment Agency tightened in 2023, so it cannot be mixed in with general waste and cannot go to landfill. It travels separately and goes for incineration. It surprises people that a tatty two-seater is more bother than a wardrobe twice its size. Fridges and freezers are the other one, for the reason given above, which is why we ask on the phone whether the white goods are going or staying rather than finding out on the day. Then there's the short list we simply won't put on the van: tins of paint, patio gas bottles, motor oil, old solvents, anything needing a hazardous consignment note. Leave those out and we'll tell you where in the borough they can go.
Getting a van to the door in BR6
Access here is easier than most of south-east London and harder than people from outside expect. The 1930s stock around Crofton, the mock-Tudor streets of Petts Wood and the bungalows out towards Chelsfield and Farnborough mostly come with a driveway or a wide verge, and a Luton drops in without fuss. The problem is elsewhere. The flats on the Ramsden estate and around St Mary Cray have bays that are permit-only in the daytime. The streets nearer Orpington station fill by half eight with commuters walking down for the Southeastern services into London Bridge and Victoria. Around the Walnuts and the High Street itself there's loading time but not parking time, which is a different thing when a crew needs six hours.
So we ask about the kerb before the date is fixed, not on the morning. If a suspension or a dispensation is needed, Bromley council wants roughly ten working days' notice and the resident has to apply — we can't lodge it for you. Where that isn't practical, a neighbour's drive or an hour's shuttle with a smaller vehicle usually solves it. Chislehurst is the one that catches us out now and again. Some of those lanes off the common are narrow enough that a big van has to sit on the main road, and the walk lengthens the day by an hour or two.
The rest of the map
Orpington sits at the far end of the London Borough of Bromley, out where Greater London stops and the Kent fields start. Plenty of old paperwork still writes the county as Kent, and half the residents do the same. Our own districts are BR5 and BR6. Chislehurst, Keston, Hayes, Beckenham and West Wickham are the neighbours, each with a page of its own. Petts Wood, Chelsfield, Farnborough village, Locksbottom, Downe and the lanes out towards Cudham all fall inside the same day's run, and so do St Mary Cray, St Paul's Cray, Poverest, Goddington, Broom Hill, Crofton and Derry Downs. Cross out of the borough and you are into the SE codes north of us, which is where a fair slice of our week goes.
Four of the neighbours have pages of their own, and they are worth a look if the property you are dealing with is a mile or two the wrong side of a boundary. House clearance in Bromley is the bigger town up the road and takes the largest share of our borough diary. House clearance in Chislehurst covers BR7 and those awkward lanes. House clearance in Beckenham covers BR3, and house clearance in Keston the BR2 side towards the commons. Same crews, same vans, same week.
A word on how a day runs, because people ask. The van is loaded from the top of the house down where there is a loft, and from the back of the garage forwards where there isn't. Nothing goes out of the front door until the walk-round is done and the items staying are marked. Photographs of every emptied room go over the same day, which matters when the person instructing us is nowhere near Orpington — and often they aren't. Executors two counties away are normal for us, and a house clearance in Orpington run entirely by email and photograph is a routine week, not a special arrangement.
Flat clearance in Orpington
Flat clearance is a steady part of the week here — the blocks around the station and the maisonettes on the Cray estates. Shared front door, a stair that turns, rarely a lift, and a bay outside that fills early. A flat clearance is planned around the carry and the parking rather than the contents, so tell us the floor and whether there is an entry code.
Probate, landlords and the very full houses
A lot of the Orpington work arrives through executors rather than the people who lived there.
Probate house clearance Orpington
Probate house clearance Orpington solicitors instruct us for is nearly always slower to start and quicker to finish than the family expects: months of waiting for the grant, then one day with a crew. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate direct, whichever suits the file. Payment can come out of the estate rather than anybody's own pocket, and there is no deposit, so nothing is paid up front before the work is done. Estate files often need the paper trail as much as the clearance: before-and-after photographs, the waste transfer notes, an itemised invoice for the estate accounts. Ask and it goes over the same week. Our full probate house clearance page has the detail if you are dealing with this for the first time.
End of tenancy house clearance Orpington
End of tenancy work is the other half of the diary. Landlords and managing agents around the Ramsden estate, St Mary Cray and the flats behind the High Street get the same treatment as the estates do — photographs, itemised invoice, transfer notes if the file needs them. An end of tenancy clearance is usually booked tight against a check-out date, so tell us the deadline when you first ring and we will tell you honestly whether we can hold it.
Garage and loft clearance Orpington
Plenty of jobs here are not a whole house at all. Garage and loft clearance in Orpington is its own species of work: 1930s lofts with the boards still down, garages that have not held a car since the seventies, a side return stacked with paint tins that we will have to leave. If it is only the garage and loft you need doing, say so. It is a shorter booking, but it wants the same walk-round, because a loft hatch that only takes a small ladder changes the day more than the volume does.
Houses that have filled up over decades are not a problem and never get commented on. We've done rooms where the door only opened eighteen inches, and rooms with a path worn through waist-high stacks, and the crew treats the second exactly like the first. If it has got to that stage, tell us honestly what is behind the door and send a few photographs, because it changes the number of days rather than whether we will come.
What it costs and how to book
There is one honest answer to what a clearance comes to, and it is that we need to see it. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs through the form on this page. Every room, the loft, the garage, and a word about the parking — and you will get a figure back before anyone sets off, free and with nothing to sign. If the team finds something on the day that changes the picture, they ring before carrying on rather than after. We are licensed, fully insured, and have been doing house clearance in Orpington and across BR5 and BR6 since 2007.
Questions we get asked before a house clearance in Orpington
Can you invoice our solicitor? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate direct, payment can come from the estate, and there is no deposit — the invoice follows the work.
How long does a house clearance in Orpington take? A four-bed with a garage is a day for a crew. A one-bed flat is a morning. A house that has been filling up for thirty years is booked as a block of days, and we will say so at the quote rather than on day two.
Do we have to be there? No. Somebody has to get us in, and a neighbour or an agent with a key is fine. If you want to walk the rooms and mark what stays, come for the first half hour and leave us to it.
Can you leave some things behind? Yes, and most jobs do. Carpets in some rooms and not others, curtains staying, white goods staying — tell us in writing and it goes on the sheet the crew works from.
Which areas do you cover from here? BR5 and BR6 in full, and the rest of the borough — Chislehurst, Beckenham, Keston, Hayes, West Wickham — on the same run.
What won't you take? Paint, gas bottles, oils, solvents, asbestos and anything else needing a hazardous consignment note. Everything else, including the awkward upholstered items, we handle under our carrier registration.
