Most weeks there is a van of ours somewhere in Redhill, and not every job is a house clearance in the ordinary sense. November 2020, an RH1 address south of the town centre, out the Earlswood way. That one wasn't a clearance at all — it was wallpaper. Three of our team for the day, walls and ceilings, paper that had been up long enough to have two older layers hiding underneath it. Walls left bare and ready for a decorator to start on Monday. The note that came back afterwards thanked the team leader by name and called the service excellent, which we passed on to the three of them, because stripping paper all day in a cold empty house is not the glamorous end of this job.
It goes first because it is the part people don't expect. Half the houses we empty in Reigate and Banstead are being sold or relet, and once the furniture has gone the owner stands in the hall looking at forty-year-old woodchip and realises the room isn't finished. So we strip it while the van is already outside. We have been at this since 2007, and that is the sort of thing you only learn by doing it.
What a Redhill clearance day actually looks like
We book a nine o'clock start rather than a morning window, and if the van is held up on the M23 you get a call, not a shrug. The team aims to have the property done that day wherever the volume allows. How long it takes is the question everybody asks on the step, and the honest answer splits two ways: on a three-bed with a loft and a garage, most of the day; on a flat with the wardrobes already emptied, a few hours.
The team leader walks the property with you first and photographs it before anything moves. Same again at the end. Those pictures are ours for quality checking, but executors dealing with a house from two hundred miles away tend to want a look at them.
Nothing needs boxing or bagging beforehand. We empty wardrobes, cupboards, drawers and the cabinet under the stairs that hasn't been opened since the 1990s. What we do want, before the day, is a straight list of what is staying.
September 2022, a five-bedroom house — about the fullest kind of house clearance there is, and the customer had it worked out before we arrived. Asked to confirm the size of the property and the outside areas to be cleared, the answer came back as "5 bed house including loft, garage and garden furniture". So: five bedrooms of furniture, a loft that had been filling since the family moved in, a garage, and garden furniture that had sat out through several winters. Garage and loft clearance on the same day as the rooms is the usual shape of these jobs, and it is also the part people underestimate. The loft on its own can take two of the crew most of a morning, one in the hatch passing down, one on the landing.
Then the things that were to stay. Asked what was to be left, the reply named them one at a time: "In kitchen, cooker, microwave, washing machine, dishwasher and refrigerator." Five appliances, listed like that, because a fitted kitchen left with gaps where the white goods were is somebody else's problem later. Carpets and curtains weren't ours either — asked whether they were to be cleared, the answer was "No we will clear these out." Fair enough. We work round what stays and the crew keeps boots off it.
One more detail from that job, and it is the one worth copying: the day after accepting, the customer emailed again to correct a typo in the telephone number they'd given us for the day. Small thing. It is also the difference between a crew getting in at nine and a crew standing outside a locked door ringing a number that doesn't answer.
Flats, stairs and where the van goes
Redhill has three kinds of property and they behave completely differently on a clearance day. There are the Victorian and Edwardian terraces close to the station and up towards Merstham, narrow hallways, awkward turn at the top of the stairs, and a front door that opens onto a road with residents' bays. There are the interwar and 1950s semis spreading out towards Earlswood, Whitebushes and Salfords, usually with a garage the door of which hasn't opened in years and a loft hatch with no ladder. And there are the newer town-centre blocks and converted flats above the shops, where everything depends on one thing: whether there is a lift and whether we can get within thirty feet of the entrance.
A third-floor flat clearance with a working lift, parking round the back and a neighbour holding a spare key is a comfortable day. Take the lift away and you add hours — every mattress, every wardrobe carcass, every bag of loft insulation goes down three flights on somebody's shoulder.
So when you ring, tell us the floor, the lift, and where a Luton van can legally stand. If the loading bay has a time limit, say that too — we would rather plan round it than have the crew moving the van every twenty minutes.
Where it all ends up, and the licence
Anything still usable gets offered on before it gets thrown. Furniture in decent order, unopened kitchen bits, books, tools, curtains still on their hooks. The crew sets those aside for a charity shop or a reuse scheme that will actually take them, and around here there is no shortage of them between the town centre and Reigate. What's genuinely finished goes to a permitted transfer station and is weighed in under our name, with a waste transfer note issued for every load.
Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679. Ask and we will send you the notes for your job — one customer on a probate clearance wanted proof the contents hadn't ended up down a lane somewhere, and got the note for each load in turn.
Two limits worth knowing before the day. Sofas, armchairs, dining and office chairs with padding, footstools and sofa beds fall under the persistent-organic-pollutant rules, which means they cannot travel mixed in with the rest of the load and have to be kept separate and destroyed by an approved route; there is no way round it. And we cannot put paint tins, gas cylinders, solvents, asbestos sheeting or oil into a mixed household load; a fire extinguisher screwed to a kitchen wall stays screwed to the kitchen wall. Tell us what's in the shed and we will arrange the right disposal for it instead of leaving it standing on the drive.
Getting a figure for a house clearance in Redhill
You will not find a price list on this page, and that is deliberate. The only honest answer depends on what is actually in the rooms, and nobody can read that off a table. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and talk it through, or send photographs through the form on this page — room by room, the loft hatch, the garage, whatever is out in the garden. You get your figure back in writing before anything is booked, and the quote is free and puts you under no obligation.
Who we send the invoice to matters as much as the figure. On a probate house clearance in Redhill we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, so payment comes out of the estate rather than out of somebody's own pocket while they wait on the grant. There is no deposit — the work is done first and the invoice follows it. For landlords and managing agents the same applies: the invoice goes to the agency, not to a tenant at the door.
And if more comes out of the house than we were told about, the team leader tells you on the day, before it goes into the van. Never afterwards.
Probate, end of tenancy clearance and houses nobody has opened in years
A good share of our work in RH1 comes through executors, and often they are nowhere near Surrey — sorting a parent's house from Devon, Yorkshire or abroad. That is workable. Key from a key safe or a neighbour, contact number for the day, our photographs at both ends, and the invoice to whoever is settling the estate.
Letting agents book us too. Not every job is a whole house: an end-of-tenancy flat clearance in RH1 can be a single small load — a bed, a sofa, and whatever was left in the kitchen cupboards.
And then there are the houses where the front door only opens eighteen inches. Rooms filled to chest height, floor not visible, kitchen unusable. Those get quoted as a two-day job with a bigger crew, and nobody gets a lecture about it. The team works room by room and hands over any paperwork, jewellery or money that surfaces.
How far we run from here
Redhill station is a junction — the Brighton main line north to East Croydon and south to Gatwick and Brighton, crossed by the North Downs line running west to Guildford and Reading, and by the branch east to Tonbridge. That junction is a fair description of our patch too.
Our own two postcode districts are RH1 and RH77. RH1 is the one on the doorbells: the town centre and the station, Earlswood, Whitebushes and Salfords going south, Merstham up the hill to the north, Nutfield and South Nutfield out to the east. RH77 is a different animal — a large-user number rather than a neighbourhood, the sort allocated to one organisation's postbag and sorted in with the rest of the town's mail. Nobody lives at it. It still belongs to Redhill, and post addressed that way lands in the same delivery office as everything else on this page.
From an RH1 booking the next towns along have pages of their own. House clearance in Reigate is next door, house clearance in Horley sits on the Gatwick fringe, house clearance in Crawley is the other side of the airport, and house clearance in Banstead is up over the Downs. Reigate and Banstead borough is the core of it; Surrey County Council is the waste authority above that.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Redhill
How long does a house clearance in Redhill take? Most properties are done in a day. A three-bed with a loft and a garage will run to most of it; a flat with the wardrobes already emptied is a few hours. Five bedrooms plus loft, garage and a garden is the kind of job where we bring a bigger crew and start at nine sharp.
Do I need to sort or pack anything first? No. We empty wardrobes, drawers, cupboards, the loft and the garage as they stand. What helps is telling us in advance what is staying — appliances in the kitchen, carpets, curtains, a piece of furniture going with the family. Say it before the day and the crew works round it.
Can you invoice a solicitor for a probate house clearance? Yes. On a probate job we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, payment can be made from the estate, and there is no deposit to find up front. Executors living at a distance get our before-and-after photographs and the waste transfer notes for the file.
What won't you take away? Paint, solvents, oil, gas cylinders and asbestos cannot go into a mixed household load, and anything fixed to the fabric of the building stays put. Upholstered furniture is taken, but it has to be kept apart from the rest of the load and destroyed by an approved route under the POPs rules. Tell us what's in the shed and we will sort the right disposal for it.
Which parts of Redhill do you cover? All of RH1 — town centre, Earlswood, Whitebushes, Salfords, Merstham, Nutfield and South Nutfield — plus RH77, and the neighbouring towns named above.
How do I get a price? Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs through the form on this page. Tell us the address, the number of bedrooms, whether the loft, garage and garden are included, and what floor it is on. We will put the figure in writing and give you a date — and if wallpaper needs to come off the walls once the rooms are empty, say so when you book your Redhill house clearance and we will bring the steamers with us.
