Most house clearance work in Brighton starts the same way: a phone call, a few photographs sent through, a date pencilled in. A terraced house in BN1 was one of those. The only thing the customer wanted settled before the day was how to pay — "I’d like to pay by card. Do I need to call you?" They didn't have to in the end. The job itself ran the way most Brighton ones run. Team at the door for nine, the van filling steadily through the morning, one mattress going out with the rest of the load, floors swept and the keys handed back before the afternoon was out.
A normal day here is three men and one Luton van. If everything in the house goes inside it, you have the property back that same evening. If it plainly won't all fit, the team says so while there is still time to decide something, rather than once the van has already gone.
We have been working this stretch of coast since 2007, and Brighton is one of the places the crews know street by street rather than off a map.
What actually comes out of these houses
Nobody rings with an unusual house. It is nearly always the same shape of job: a front room with a suite too heavy for two people to lift, a bureau or a sideboard nobody in the family has room for, bedroom furniture that will not survive being taken apart a second time, kitchen cupboards still full, and a loft that has been the overflow since the children left. Books, records, tools, garden pots, a shed with forty years of tins in it.
Before the day we ask for two lists. The first is the obvious one, room by room, so the team knows whether it is looking at one van or two. The second list is the more useful of the pair, and it is the one people forget to write: what to leave alone. Curtains and light fittings, more often than not. Whatever the agent wants left in place for viewings. The fridge, the washing machine and the cooker where they are staying with the property. A box marked *leave*. We work off both lists and tick them off as we go, because on a probate clearance the argument afterwards is never about what came away — it is about the one thing that was supposed to stay.
Garage and loft clearance is worth pricing as its own piece of work here, and often it is the whole of the booking: the lofts in the Preston Park and Patcham semis have been the overflow since the seventies, and a garage on a Hollingbury back lane is rarely opened between owners.
Some things have to be handled separately whatever else is going on. Mattresses are one. Fridges and freezers, upright or chest, are another. Upholstered furniture — sofas, armchairs, padded stools, anything foam-filled — counts as POP waste and has to be kept out of the mixed load and sent down its own regulated route, which has been the rule since January 2023. None of that is a surprise to us. It just means the van gets loaded in a particular order.
Getting a van onto the street
Brighton is not a straightforward city to park a Luton in, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. Most of the terraces inland of the seafront sit in controlled parking zones with resident bays either side and no space for a five-metre van to stand for six hours. The hill streets around Hanover run steep and narrow with cars both sides. Around Seven Dials and the North Laine the roads were laid out for horses. Down on the front, BN1 and BN2 mean red routes, bus lanes and loading windows that close at exactly the wrong hour.
Where there is genuinely nowhere, a bay suspension through Brighton and Hove City Council is the honest answer, and it wants applying for in advance rather than on the morning. Otherwise the team carries. Long carries are normal here and nobody makes a fuss about them. What actually slows a day down is a third-floor conversion with no lift and a dog-leg stair that a wardrobe will not turn on. Tell us the floor and whether there is a lift when you ring, and the day gets planned round it.
Flat clearance in the converted seafront houses brings its own quirk: communal entrances where the front door cannot be propped, and a caretaker who wants notice before three men start walking furniture through the hall. Ten minutes of warning saves an hour of standing about.
Where we cover from here
BN1 covers the middle and the north of the city — Seven Dials, North Laine, Preston Park, Withdean, Patcham and Hollingbury, and up as far as Coldean and Falmer. BN2 runs east and up the hill: Kemptown, Hanover, Bevendean, Moulsecoomb and Whitehawk, then Woodingdean and out along the cliff to Ovingdean, Rottingdean and Saltdean. West of the city boundary we work BN41 for Portslade and BN42 for Southwick, and BN45 takes in Pyecombe under the Downs. BN50, BN51 and BN88 are business and mail-handling codes rather than streets, so if one of those is the address on your paperwork, we will need the actual property postcode as well.
Next door, house clearance in Hove sits in BN3 and has its own page. Further west along the coast we do house clearance in Worthing, east along it house clearance in Eastbourne — the bigger town that way — and inland over the Downs, house clearance in Burgess Hill. Those are the neighbours that sit comfortably in the same working day as a Brighton job; anything beyond them is a separate conversation, not a promise.
Brighton and Hove is its own unitary council, though the wider ceremonial county is East Sussex, and which side of the boundary a house sits on can change where the load ends up. Vans come in past Preston Park and London Road when we are working the north of the city, and off the A27 for Moulsecoomb, Falmer and anything Portslade or Southwick way. If a relative is travelling down to meet the team, Brighton station is the sensible meeting point — plenty of people hand the keys over there at nine and go and find a coffee rather than sit in an empty house all day.
How you get a figure for a house clearance in Brighton
One answer only, and it is the same for everybody: ring the office on 0800 046 5555 with the postcode and the number of bedrooms, or send photographs through the form on this page. Photographs of every room, the loft hatch, the garage and the garden are worth more than any description, and they take five minutes on a phone. You get a figure back and you decide. Nothing is worked out on the doorstep on the morning.
If the team gets inside and finds the loft is fuller than the photographs showed, you hear about it then, with the options, and you decide again. Nothing gets quietly rewritten while the van is being loaded.
What we can't put in the van
Tins of paint, gas cylinders, solvents, car batteries, weedkiller and the old chemicals from the back of a shed — none of that can travel in a household load. Each has its own disposal route and we will tell you where locally it can go. Same with anything that looks like asbestos: garage roof sheets, old flue pipe, some artex ceilings. We stop and say so rather than break it up and load it. It is the one part of the day where being slow is the right answer.
When the executor lives nowhere near Sussex
A good half of the clearances on this stretch of coast are booked by somebody who lives a long way off — a son in the north, a daughter who moved abroad years ago, a solicitor's office two counties away. Probate work is the bulk of it, and none of it needs you standing in the hallway.
A probate house clearance in Brighton can be arranged entirely by phone and email. We will take keys from an agent, meet a neighbour, or work to a code on a key safe. Photographs of every room go over once the property is empty, so nobody two hundred miles away is taking our word for it. Paperwork can be made out to you, to the executors, or to the firm handling the estate, whichever suits the way probate is being handled. There is more on probate house clearance generally, but the short version is that distance is not a problem and never has been.
Registered upper-tier waste carrier, licence CBDU419679, and fully insured. Everything that leaves is documented at a permitted transfer station, and a copy of the paperwork comes to you if you ask for it. Executors usually do ask, and they are right to.
The rest of it
Furniture, crockery, books and clothing with use left in them are offered to charity shops and reuse projects around the city before anything else happens to them. Records, tools and decent bits of older furniture nearly always find someone. What is genuinely finished gets separated for recycling where it can be — metal, wood, card, electricals — and only the remainder goes as general waste. That is not a green slogan, it is just what the transfer stations are set up to do and what the licence requires of us.
Houses that have filled up over decades are ordinary work here, not a special case. The team turns up, gets on with it, and passes no remarks. If a job needs two days it needs two days, and you will be told that at the quote stage rather than discovering it at five o'clock.
Ring the Brighton office on 0800 046 5555 with the postcode, the number of bedrooms and a few photographs, and you will get a proper figure back the same day.
Questions we get asked in Brighton
Can you invoice the solicitor, and can it be paid from the estate? Yes. On a probate house clearance we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, and payment can be made from estate funds once they are released. There is no deposit, and nothing is asked for before the work is done.
Nobody can be at the property. Can you still clear it? Yes. Keys come from an agent, a neighbour or a key safe, and photographs of every empty room go over the same day.
Do we need to pack or sort anything first? No. We empty wardrobes, drawers and cupboards ourselves, and lift carpets and underlay if you want them gone. Write down what stays — that list matters more than the one of what goes.
Will you take on a house that has been let go? Yes. A hoarder house clearance is ordinary work here, quoted the same way as anything else, with more hands and more loads allowed for. Nobody on the team passes comment.
How long does a house clearance in Brighton take? Most three-bedroom houses are a day. A full loft, a third-floor flat with no lift, or a long carry from a controlled parking zone can push it into a second, and we say so before you commit.
What about the parking? Tell us the street when you book. Where there is genuinely nowhere for a Luton, a bay suspension through the council is the honest answer and it wants arranging in advance.
