It is being emptied · E
When it is being cleared
A house that nobody is moving into is a different job from every other move on this site. There is no arrival address, no handover hour and no chain. What there is instead is a person acting for somebody else, who will be asked questions later.
The deliverable here is not an empty house. It is an account of how it came to be empty.
How an estate clearance runs
Slowly, and on purpose
A crew clearing at speed will not find what is inside the furniture, and in a house lived in for decades there is always something inside the furniture. Money in books, documents behind drawers, jewellery in a coat pocket in a wardrobe nobody has opened.
So the pace is deliberate and the quotation says so. An estate clearance that takes longer than a house move of the same volume is not inefficiency; it is the service.
What an executor actually needs
Not an empty house — that is the easy part. What an executor needs is the ability to answer a question from a beneficiary months later about one particular item, and to answer it from a document rather than from memory.
That is why we list at the property and why the list describes contents rather than counting cartons. "Two cartons, contents of the front bedroom" helps nobody in nine months' time.
More than one destination
Estates rarely go to a single address. Some furniture goes to one family member, some to another, some to a saleroom and some is disposed of. We plan the routing as part of the job rather than treating each leg as a separate booking.
Tell us the split as early as you can, even provisionally. It changes how the load is built.
The limits, stated up front
We do not value contents. We do not advise on distribution. We do not hold a waste carrier licence for general disposal, so licensed disposal is routed to somebody who does. And we will not clear a property where the authority to do so is unclear — where there is a genuine dispute, we hold and wait.
It is being cleared
Questions about it is being cleared
01 We do not have probate yet. Can you start?
Often the sensible step is to collect, list and hold rather than distribute or dispose. Everything is recorded and nothing is irreversible, and the decisions wait until the authority is settled.
02 What happens to things you find inside furniture?
They are set aside, noted, and given to the person who instructed us. Nothing found in a drawer or a pocket is packed, disposed of or handled by anybody but the executor.
03 Can you deliver to several different addresses?
Yes, and most estates need it. Tell us the split early, even in outline, because it changes the order the vehicle is loaded in.
04 Will you tell us what anything is worth?
No. We record what was there. Valuation is a separate professional discipline and mixing the two serves nobody, least of all an executor who may have to justify a decision.
05 How long does the record stay available?
The job file, including the inventory, is retained for the period our accounting and insurance obligations require — and estate records are exactly the kind that get asked about later.
06 Is this different from a house clearance company?
Yes. A clearance company empties a property. We move and record, and where licensed disposal is needed we route it to somebody who holds that permission and say so plainly.
What is happening to the house you are in?
Sold, handed back, let out, cleared, or nothing settled yet. That answer plus the two addresses is enough for us to ask you something useful back.