A quick Berkeley House clearance guide

We offer a few tips to help you prepare for your house clearance and identify some of those more common pitfalls to avoid! Whether your hiring house clearance service, or clearing a property yourself our house clearance guide is here to help.

The best way to start a property clearance is with a professional assessment. You can get basic advice over the phone. To get a more thorough assessment and a better understanding of ‘how to proceed’ you need to book a home visit.

During the home visit you’ll get advice about valuing household items, recycling, managing waste, service costs and many other house clearance matters.

Most house clearance professionals will offer a valuation and appraisal service free when they carry out a home visit. It’s particularly beneficial to use the home visit service if you need advice about selling antiques and valuables.

The role of the house clearance professional is simple. They are there to help you find the easiest and most cost effective way to clear a home.

When you hire a house clearance professional they bring their expertise. A reputable service provider will quickly identify what needs to be done and offer the advice and practical support that’s needed.

What should you keep and what should go? Many decisions and considerations have to be made when a home needs to be emptied. If you are clearing a home following a bereavement the decisions may be more difficult to make. Especially when items hold sentimental value.

At Berkeley House Clearance we help you navigate the emotional and practical challenges of manging household items and waste. We can help sort waste and items for recycling. Plus we can help customers understand the legal aspects that need to be considered before starting a property clearance following a bereavement.

Very often there will be items that need to remain in the home. Anything earmarked for family members or items that has been agreed as part of a house sale should be boxed and/or labelled. Your service provider will know that these items are not to be removed.

When you entrust a company to clear a home you want to be sure they will manage everything respectfully and legally. You also want to be sure that they remove everything that needs to be removed and can be trusted to complete the job!

Find out more about a company on their website and look at their reviews on Facebook and Google. The best way however to determine if a service provider is reputable and can offer the support you need is to call and chat.

Establishing an understanding of the costs involved in managing and disposing of household waste is a step you can take if you keen to secure a better price from your service provider.

Having less in the home doesn’t necessarily guarantee you will get a lower quote to have a property cleared. Regulations about commercial waste disposal are complex and change all the time. The cost to remove and dispose of household items very much depends on what the item is. You may think it cost effective to dispose of waste, start recycling or give things away to friends and neighbours. However, when you do this you may be ‘discarding’ things that a service provider may agree to use to offset the cost of clearing the property, and leaving all the things that incur a high disposal cost.

To get advice about managing household waste and discuss house clearance costs please call and chat to Terry.

Selling those high value items can help you save money on your house clearance service, or maybe not? Whilst it’s beneficial to sell ‘value items’ it’s more important not to leave yourself with a hefty bill to remove and dispose of everything else that’s left in the home. Remember one of the highest cost a house clearance company has to pay out is their tipping charges!

A company whose only motivation is to purchase items, offers their help to remove just a few things, and yet fails to give you a clear understanding of all the costs involved in clearing the property may not have your best interest at heart. With this in mind it’s best to avoid service providers who only want to ‘cherry pick‘ their way through your house clearance items!

A reputable house clearance service provider will help you understand everything that needs to be done, and all the costs that are involved!

Get a quote that covers the cost to remove and dispose of everything you want cleared from the home. When you know the full cost of your property clearance you are in a better position to negotiate the sale of any higher value items.

The Environmental Agency licence gives a company their legal right to collect and manage waste. You can search the Environment Agency public register and find businesses that are registered as waste carriers here.

If a company is not registered is best to avoid! They have no legal right to manage your waste and likely to be a rogue waste operator. To find out more out more about managing household please follow the link here.

Remember the saying one man’s junk is another man’s treasure? At Berkeley House Clearance recommend customers get advice from a property clearance professional before discarding or giving away household items.

Terry: Berkeley House Clearance
Terry at El' Dorado in the Jewellery Quarter Birmingham.

Need help to prepare for a house clearance?

At Berkeley House Clearance we can advise about a full range of property clearance matters. Please get in touch with Terry for support.

Call 07973 620154

Read our case studies. Find out more about the house clearance process and what we do.