We have been doing house clearance in Halesowen since 2007, right across B62 and B63 and the villages hanging off them, the Black Country end of the borough. Most calls come from someone sorting out a parent's house, a landlord between tenants, or a solicitor holding keys with nobody local to hand them to. Here is one of ours, then the practical part.
December 2021. A house at the far western edge of B62, up where the lanes climb out of town and the postcode runs into open country. The person dealing with it was in Scotland, a few hundred miles off, so there was no popping over for a look. The whole thing was arranged by phone and email before the day, and the crew worked to written instructions. Full clearance, the lot. The van filled, went out to the transfer station and came back for the rest the same day, which is what a whole house looks like when nothing has been taken out beforehand. Two mattresses came off that one, and mattresses cannot travel in with general household waste — they go into a separate stream and are dealt with apart. It was December, so the light was gone by four. Keys went back the way they had come.
That is the ordinary run of things for us in Halesowen and the rest of the Dudley borough, rather than the exception.
Where Halesowen sits, and how we get to you
Halesowen is in the West Midlands, in the metropolitan borough of Dudley, with its own B62 and B63 postcodes and the DY numbers picking up almost immediately once you head west. DY9 through Lye and Hagley, DY8 at Stourbridge, DY5 at Brierley Hill, DY6 at Kingswinford. We cover all of those on the same terms.
The thing about Halesowen that catches out firms coming in from outside is that the town has no railway station of its own. The line went years ago. So the nearest is Cradley Heath on the Stourbridge line, with Rowley Regis a bit further along and Stourbridge Junction if you are coming down from the south. Handy to know if you are an executor travelling in for the day to let us into a house and then travelling back out again. You will need a lift or a taxi from the station either way, and we would rather you knew that in advance than found out standing on a platform.
Our vans reach the town off the Manor Way and the Hagley Road. The streets themselves range from the terraces near the town centre to the post-war semis running up towards Hasbury, Hayley Green and Illey, then the newer estates towards Frankley, and the lanes out to Romsley over the Worcestershire line. Quinton, Blackheath, Cradley, Old Hill and Lye all sit within a few minutes of each other. Mucklow Hill and the climbs around it mean some driveways are steep enough that a loaded barrow is a bad idea; the crew will carry instead and it takes a little longer.
We work the neighbouring towns on the same days and the same terms, so if the house you are dealing with is not in Halesowen itself, try house clearance in Stourbridge or house clearance in Dudley for the bigger towns either side. house clearance in Kingswinford or house clearance in Brierley Hill for the places out past the Merry Hill side. Same crews, same vans, same licence.
Parking, access and the bits that slow a day down
Tell us about parking before the day, not on the day. A Luton or a caged tipper needs a length of kerb, and on the tighter Halesowen terraces that is not always sitting there waiting. On one job the customer offered to shift their own car off the drive so the van could get on it — that five-second offer probably saved the team half an hour of walking. Little things.
Same with stairs, locked garages, a loft you can only reach off a landing ladder, no electricity in the house, a gate that will not take a fridge freezer sideways. None of it stops us. It just changes how many hours the job needs, and if we know beforehand the van turns up carrying the right kit and the diary has the right number of days against your name.
Halesowen housing being what it is, the awkward part is rarely the furniture. It is the flight of stairs in a 1930s semi with a turn at the bottom, or a back garden you can only reach through the house, or a shared entry between two terraces that is exactly narrower than a three-seater settee. We would sooner hear about it on the phone than discover it at eight in the morning.
What comes out, and where it actually goes
Anything still fit for use gets offered on — reuse schemes and charity shops around the borough take a fair amount of furniture, and neighbours sometimes beat us to it. On one clearance both fridges went to people on the street before we arrived, which suited everybody. What cannot be reused is sorted at a permitted transfer station and you get the paperwork for it. Our waste carrier licence is CBDU419679, and the waste transfer note follows once the recycling centre issues it — occasionally that takes a fortnight, and we will chase it rather than let it drift.
Some categories are handled apart from the main load by law. Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating containing foam fall under the POP rules and go into a separate regulated stream for incineration. Fridges and freezers need their gas taken out under controlled conditions. Fluorescent tubes are a hazardous category in their own right, and a garage full of them is not unusual in a house where somebody was handy. Tins of paint, gas cylinders and chemicals cannot ride in with the household stuff at all — flag them and we will tell you honestly which we can take and which need a trip to a Dudley household waste site.
If you would rather strip the cushions off a suite yourself before we arrive, that is entirely allowed, and one or two customers do. Teams report back what they actually loaded, so the record of the job matches what left the property and nothing else. Where it is only a few bulky items rather than a whole house, that is rubbish removal instead of a full clearance — say so when you ring and we will book the right thing.
Probate house clearance in Halesowen, executors and estates
A good share of what we do in the Dudley area is probate work, and Halesowen more than most — a lot of these houses have been in one family since they were built. Sometimes the executor is local; often they are not. We have run clearances instructed from London, from Cambridgeshire, and from a good deal further north than that. None of it is a problem: we can collect keys from a solicitor's office, meet a neighbour, or work from a key safe.
November 2021, in B63, a few streets from the middle of Halesowen. The person settling it lived on the Essex coast and had done the sensible thing of ringing well before the completion date rather than the week of it. A one-day clearance, house emptied, and off the back of it two mattresses and a small fridge freezer. All three of those are categories the law treats separately, so they were booked in and handled that way rather than tipped in with everything else. The rest went for sorting at a permitted station and the transfer note followed. Instructed from more than a hundred and fifty miles away, and the customer never had to set foot in the West Midlands.
That is a common enough shape for a probate house clearance here. Somebody a long way off, a house that has to be empty by a date, and a chain of estate agents, solicitors and relatives who all want telling when it is done.
On the paperwork side: we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, whichever suits you, and payment can come out of the estate rather than out of your own pocket. There is no deposit. The invoice goes out after the work is finished, not before it starts, and it goes to whoever you tell us at booking. If the estate is waiting on a property sale or a policy to pay out, say so at the point of booking — we have waited for completion before on that basis. What we ask is that it is agreed up front rather than discovered afterwards. If money, documents or jewellery turn up in a drawer, it is put to one side for whoever is dealing with the estate. That happens more often than you would think, usually in a wardrobe.
More on how we handle estate work is on our probate house clearance page.
Other kinds of house clearance in Halesowen
Hoarder house clearance in Halesowen
Where a house has been left full for years, we get on with it. A hoarder house clearance is a different day's work — protective kit, more of it, often more than one day, and sometimes a pest treatment before anybody starts lifting. Rooms you cannot open the door of, floors you cannot see, a kitchen nobody has cooked in for a long while. Nobody on the crew passes comment, and nobody takes photographs for anything other than the record we send you. If you are arranging it on behalf of a relative or a tenant, we will keep you told at each stage. There is a fuller explanation on our hoarder house clearance page.
End of tenancy clearance in Halesowen
Landlords and letting agents in B62 and B63 use us for end of tenancy work — a tenant gone, a flat clearance or a terrace left part-furnished, and a date by which it has to be back on the market. End of tenancy jobs tend to be quicker than a full house clearance and are usually one visit. What is left goes, the place gets swept through, and we can add a clean at the end if you want the property back to a lettable state in one go rather than booking two firms.
Garage and loft clearance in Halesowen
Plenty of Halesowen calls are not the whole house at all. Garage and loft clearance is its own thing — the garage that has not had a car in it since the 1990s, the loft above a Hasbury semi that was filled through a hatch and never emptied. Lofts are slow: everything comes down a ladder by hand, one item at a time, and the volume is always more than people expect once it is standing in the hall. Sheds and outbuildings the same. Tell us on the phone whether the loft, the garage and the shed are included, because it changes the day.
Wallpaper, cleaning and the jobs that are not clearances
Not every call is about emptying a house. We strip wallpaper back to bare plaster, room by room, in occupied houses as well as empty ones — protector sheets go down first, furniture moves to the middle of the room and then moves again as the team works round. We also do end of tenancy and post-clearance cleans, garden cutbacks and shed emptying, and single heavy items where nothing else needs doing. Ask when you ring — usually we can, yes.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Halesowen
Do you cover the whole of Halesowen? Yes — B62 and B63, so Hasbury, Hayley Green, Illey, Lapal, Cradley, Quinton and out towards Romsley, plus the neighbouring towns across the Dudley borough on the same terms.
Can you invoice a solicitor or an executor for a probate clearance? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can come from the estate. There is no deposit, and the invoice follows the work rather than coming before it.
How do I get a figure for my house clearance in Halesowen? Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page, along with the size of the property and whether the loft, garage, shed and garden are included. Photographs tell us more than descriptions do, and the quote is free and puts you under no obligation.
What can't you take? Tins of paint, gas cylinders and chemicals cannot go in with household waste. Mattresses, fridges and freezers, upholstered furniture under the POP rules and fluorescent tubes are all taken, but handled in separate regulated streams — tell us they are there and they get booked in properly.
How long does a clearance take? Most houses are a day. A full house with a loft, a garage and a garden can run to two, and a hoarder house clearance can run longer than that. We will tell you which we think yours is before you book, not on the day.
Do I need to be there? No. Plenty of our Halesowen work is done for people who live nowhere near the West Midlands. Keys from a solicitor, a neighbour or a key safe are all normal for us.
Getting a figure for your Halesowen property
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 or send an email with the address, the size of the property, whether the loft, garage, shed and garden are included, and anything awkward about access. Photographs help more than descriptions. We will come back with a realistic figure and the earliest dates we can put a team on it, whether the house clearance is in Halesowen itself, over towards Stourbridge and Kingswinford, or anywhere else across the borough.
