Carpets ARE to be cleared. Curtains ARE to be cleared. That is how the booking form came back to us for a two-bedroom third-floor flat clearance in April 2024 — capitals and all, because the man arranging it had been asked the question twice and wanted nothing left to guesswork on the morning. There was lift access, which saved the crew a good hour. No white goods going. No loft, no garage, no garden. Parking was round the back of the block. That is the level of detail a house clearance actually runs on, and it does not change whether the property is a flat over a shop or a four-bedroom place on the Wray Park side.
That job sat at the far end of our patch. Reigate is the other end of the same run, and a shorter one than people expect — down the A217 over Reigate Hill with the whole Weald opening up in front of you, or off the M25 at junction 8 and straight into the town. Reigate station sits on the North Downs line between Redhill and Dorking, and Redhill itself is a couple of miles east with the Brighton trains. RH2 runs out towards Reigate Heath, with Betchworth just beyond in RH3. RH1 takes in Redhill, Merstham and Nutfield next door. KT20 is Tadworth and Walton-on-the-Hill up over the Downs, SM7 is Banstead, RH6 runs south to Horley and on to Gatwick, which is over the border in West Sussex. Reigate, Redhill, Merstham, Horley, Tadworth and Banstead are all Reigate and Banstead Borough Council; Nutfield falls to Tandridge and Betchworth to Mole Valley.
Most weeks the van is in more than one of those towns in the same week. If the property you are dealing with is not in RH2 itself, there is a page of ours for house clearance in Redhill a couple of miles east, one for house clearance in Banstead up over the Downs. One for house clearance in Horley down towards the Sussex border. Same crews, same vans, different day of the week.
The kind of houses we walk into here
Reigate's housing does not sit in one bracket. Garage and loft clearance is half of what a day here turns out to be. There are the big Victorian and Edwardian places on the Wray Park and Doods side with cellars, box rooms and attics that have not been emptied since the seventies. There are 1930s semis in rows through Woodhatch and Meadvale, most with a garage down the side that has stopped holding a car and started holding everything else. There are flats above the shops on Bell Street and the High Street reached by one narrow staircase and no lift at all. And there are the sheltered and retirement blocks, where the practical problem is usually the bin store, the loading bay and a warden who needs telling what time we are coming.
None of that changes what the job is. It changes how long the day takes.
A house clearance that took three visits
Not every clearance finishes in a day, and not because anything has gone wrong. One of ours ran right across the Christmas fortnight. The booking was confirmed for the Wednesday, the 21st of December, with a time frame promised the day before, which is how we do it. The crew went back on the 28th, in that flat week between Christmas and the new year when the roads are empty and half the yards are shut. And still there was a tail end left — there nearly always is, a couple of boxes nobody counted when the rooms were full.
Then the phone went against us. The team tried to ring on the approach and the number we had did not connect. That is a small thing until you are fifteen minutes from the door with no way of saying so. We asked for the number again in writing, and because we had not heard back by the morning the property was not put on that day's run. The customer wrote in the same day to ask:
"Just checking if someone was still coming today (4th Jan) to remove the final items for clearance"
The honest answer was no, not that day, and we said so plainly rather than letting somebody sit in an empty house waiting on a van. We offered the next morning instead, with the driver ringing an hour before he set off. We also said the thing customers do not expect a clearance firm to say: for the two boxes that were left, it might be worth holding on until there was a bit more to shift and doing it in one go. The last of it went on the 5th of January. Two weeks, three visits, and one wrong number that caused more trouble than the boxes did.
We would rather have that than a rating out of five.
How the day actually goes
We turn up at nine and aim to have the property emptied before we leave. There is no need to bag anything up beforehand — the crew empties cupboards, wardrobes and drawers themselves, lifts carpets and underlay where you want them gone, and sweeps through at the end. The team leader photographs the rooms on arrival and again once they are clear, so there is a record of what was there and what state it was left in. If you would rather not stand about all day, we can collect a key and hand it back wherever you say.
The question we are asked before almost every booking is how long it is likely to take. Fair enough. For a standard three-bed house with a garage, a full day. Add a loft, a shed and a garden full of broken pots and it drifts into a second. A two-bedroom flat with a lift can be done by early afternoon; the same flat up three flights of Victorian stairs off Bell Street is a different day altogether, and we would rather tell you that on the phone than discover it at nine in the morning.
What a house clearance in Reigate costs
On cost this page says one thing and one thing only: ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe what is there, or send a few photographs of each room through the form on this page, and you will get a figure for your job. The estimate is free and it does not commit you to anything. What we will not do is print numbers on a page you might be reading a year after it was written and let you plan around them.
There is no deposit. Nothing is asked for before the work, and the invoice follows afterwards, once the property is empty and you have seen the photographs of it.
Probate, executors and clearances arranged from far away
A good share of our work is probate work, and a good share of that is booked by somebody who does not live anywhere near the house. Where a death is behind the clearance and probate is in hand, we invoice the estate's solicitor, whoever is administering the estate, or the executors directly. The bill does not have to land on a family member at all, and it can be settled out of the estate rather than out of anybody's own pocket while the property is still on the market. No deposit is asked for on probate jobs either. There is more on how we handle probate house clearance on its own page, including waste transfer notes for the estate file, which solicitors ask for more often than they used to.
In June 2025 we did a collection for a customer based up in Cumbria who had never seen the van. Everything was arranged on photographs — she confirmed access herself, and one detail from her email settled the whole logistics question: "you can load onto your van via our off street parking driveway". Job done, keys sorted, no travelling three hundred miles to watch a van being filled.
Managing agents book us as well. One September we did a small job instructed by a lettings office on a works order — access arranged with the sitting tenant, the invoice raised to the office and pushed through their internal system rather than to the person living there. Not every call is a whole house.
The tip run, and what avoids it
Furniture and household goods still fit to use get offered on before anything else happens to them — Surrey has plenty of charity shops and reuse schemes that will take a decent sofa, a wardrobe or boxes of crockery, and we would rather they had them. What is genuinely finished is sorted and taken to a permitted transfer station, weighed in and recorded, and we can forward the waste transfer notes if you want them for the estate file. Customers do ask, and they should. Be warned they sometimes take a week or two to reach us from the site.
We hold waste carrier licence CBDU419679 with the Environment Agency, and the company is insured for the work and the property while we are in it. We have been doing this since 2007, which in Reigate means we have been in and out of most of the housing stock the town has.
The things that need their own route
Tins of paint, gas bottles and anything else classed as hazardous cannot travel in a general load — they go down a separate disposal route entirely, so flag them when you book and they will be handled properly rather than quietly left in the garage. Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating count as POP items: upholstered furniture is now kept apart from ordinary bulky waste and destroyed under the persistent organic pollutant rules, which is why the crew loads it separately and records it separately. Fridges and freezers are degassed at a licensed site.
Houses that have filled up over decades are routine work for us, not a problem. They simply need more days, more hands and more loads planned in, and the crew gets on with it without remarking on anything; there is a page on hoarder house clearance if that is what you are dealing with. Where a property is verminous or worse, it is handled as a specialist clearance with the right kit and the right team.
We also strip wallpaper, cut a garden back and clean through after a clearance, if you want the place ready for an agent's photographs rather than just empty. Odd single items and a garage full of bags rather than furniture come under house rubbish removal, and we will do those too.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Reigate
Do you do probate house clearance in Reigate?
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do here. Probate clearances tend to be slower jobs with more searching in them. Paperwork, jewellery, photographs and the odd share certificate turn up in wardrobes — so tell the crew what you are hoping is still in the house and they will set it aside rather than load it.
Can you invoice the solicitor or the executor?
We can, and we regularly do. The invoice goes to the estate's solicitor, the administrator or the executors directly, it can be paid from the estate, and there is no deposit to find beforehand. If the house is being sold to settle things, nobody in the family needs to be out of pocket in the meantime.
How much notice do you need for house clearance Reigate side?
Usually a few days. Reigate is close enough to base that we can often fit a job in sooner than people expect, though the week either side of a completion date is always the busiest. Ring 0800 046 5555 and we will tell you honestly what we have free.
Do you clear flats above the shops in the town centre?
Yes. Bell Street and the High Street flats are the awkward ones — one narrow staircase, no lift, and loading has to be done without blocking the road for an hour. We bring a smaller van where the access needs it and we sort the parking out beforehand rather than on the morning.
What happens to anything still usable?
It gets offered to charity shops and reuse schemes first. Only what nobody will take goes to the transfer station, and that part is weighed, recorded and covered by our carrier licence. If you want the paperwork for the estate file, ask and we will send it on when it reaches us.
Booking a clearance in Reigate
Send a few photographs from your phone of each room, the garage and the loft hatch, or ring 0800 046 5555 and describe what is there — either gets you a proper figure. We work right across Reigate and Redhill, out to Tadworth and Banstead in the north and down to Horley in the south, and across the rest of Surrey from there.
