Abacus has been doing house clearance in Birmingham since 2007, from the flats above the ring road in B1 out to Northfield, Erdington and Quinton. The job that shows best how we work in this city was a three-bedroom house in Selly Oak, B29, cleared in May 2026. The instruction did not come from anyone in Birmingham. It came from a property firm sitting in another county, more than a hundred miles away, working from a job reference and a photograph.
A full house clearance in Selly Oak, B29, booked from another county
The brief was short and the deadline was fixed: clear the house, deal with the garden, have it done inside three weeks. Nobody wanted to be there on the day. The occupier had not asked to be present, so we worked to a key handover and sent photographs of every room afterwards, which is how most of our clearances for absent instructing parties in Birmingham end up running.
Selly Oak houses of that age are narrow at the front and long at the back. This one had the usual layout — two rooms down, kitchen off the back, three up, and a garden that had gone over completely. We put one team on it for the day and worked front to back. Furniture, beds, the contents of every wardrobe and cupboard, the kitchen out to the last drawer, then the garden cutback, which took nearly as long as the top floor. It came out in two loads.
Two things on that job had to be handled apart from everything else. There was a mattress, which cannot be tipped in with mixed household waste and goes off for shredding and separation. And there was an upholstered item — a sofa, in this case — which since 2023 has to be kept out of the general load and sent for incineration under the persistent organic pollutants rules. Neither is optional and neither is a matter of preference. The instructing firm also asked us to set out separately anything that still had resale value rather than let it go for disposal, which is a fair request and one we are happy to answer.
The last part was a clean through the house, three bedrooms and downstairs, so the place could be photographed and let or sold without another trade going in. The property was handed back swept, with the carpets up where we had been asked to lift them.
That is a fairly ordinary Birmingham house clearance for us, and it took one day. What made it work was the key arrangement and the photographs. Executors, landlords and managing agents at a distance make up a good share of what we do here, and none of them needs to stand in a cold house in B29 watching a van fill.
What came off the van, and where it went
We hold a waste carrier licence, CBDU419679, and we are insured for the work. Everything we lift out of a Birmingham house goes down one of three routes.
Furniture, white goods, tools, crockery and clothing that still has wear in them are offered round the reuse projects and charity shops in the city before anything else happens to them. Birmingham has a lot of them, and they are choosy — a wardrobe with a missing door is no good to anybody, so we are honest with ourselves about what is genuinely usable.
Metal, cardboard, wood and electricals are separated for recycling. Fridges and freezers go to a facility that removes the gases properly before the cabinet is stripped. Whatever nobody can use is booked into a permitted waste site, and we can hand over the transfer note for the load if an executor, a solicitor or a managing agent needs it for the file. People acting on someone else's behalf often do, and asking for it costs nothing.
The kinds of house clearance we do in Birmingham
Probate house clearance in Birmingham
Probate work is the largest part of what we clear in this city. A probate house clearance in Birmingham usually starts with somebody who lives nowhere near the property and has a solicitor asking when the house can go on the market. We can collect a key from an agent, a neighbour or a relative, clear the house, and send photographs of every empty room the same evening. If there are papers, photographs or small items of sentimental value, we set them aside and post them on.
On the invoicing, we will be plain about it. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. Payment can come out of the estate once probate allows it. There is no deposit, and the estimate is free and carries no obligation. Where more than one executor is involved — and we have had Birmingham estates with three of them, all needing to agree before anything moved, as far back as March 2019 — we are content to put everything in writing and wait for the three of them to say yes together. Our page on probate house clearance sets out the process in more detail.
Hoarder house clearance in Birmingham
Hoarder house clearance is slower, dirtier work, and it needs saying out loud rather than hinted at. A hoarder property in Kings Heath or Handsworth may have floor-to-ceiling contents in every room, a staircase you can only walk sideways up, and a kitchen nobody has been able to use for years. We do these, and we do not make a performance out of arriving. Masks, gloves, full protective kit and a plan for the room order. We also go slowly through the contents rather than shovelling — banknotes, jewellery and paperwork turn up inside books, tins and coat pockets in these houses more often than people expect, and anything found is put aside for the family. See hoarder house clearance for what a heavily overfilled property involves.
End of tenancy clearance and flat clearance in Birmingham
Landlords and agents in Selly Oak, Edgbaston and the city centre book end of tenancy clearance from us most weeks in the summer. A student let in B29 at the end of an academic year can hold more than a family house — mattresses, broken desk chairs, three microwaves, a fridge left with food in it. Flat clearance in the B1 to B5 blocks is a different problem again. Lifts have to be booked with the concierge, loading bays are timed, and some blocks will not let a van stand at all outside set hours. We ring ahead and arrange it, because turning up hopeful at a city-centre block wastes everybody's morning.
Garage and loft clearance in Birmingham
Garage and loft clearance is often all that is wanted. Post-war semis in Northfield, Erdington and Quinton have detached garages at the end of the drive, and the door has usually not opened for a decade. Lofts are the same story: suitcases, cots, boxes of tiles, a water tank somebody replaced and never took down. We bring the ladders and we do the carrying. Nothing needs to be brought down to the hall first.
Rubbish removal, single items and offices
Not every job is a whole property. We take single items, part loads and general house rubbish removal across Birmingham, and we clear offices and small commercial units when a lease ends.
Wallpaper stripping in a four-bedroom house, B32
Not every booking is a clearance. In October 2024 we spent two days in a four-bedroom house out towards Quinton and Bartley Green, in B32, stripping wallpaper. The family had only just moved in, and the house was fully furnished and lived in, which changes everything about how the days are planned.
The customer wrote to us before the booking: "I just wanted to clarify that we do live at the property, recently moved in, so the house won't be empty." They had new carpets down and protector sheets ready, and were happy to move the furniture into the middle of each room and shift the bed out as the team worked through. Two downstairs rooms and their ceilings, the staircase and its ceiling, then all four bedrooms upstairs — walls only, one layer of paper, one room already half done by somebody else.
Parking was the only real question. The van had to stand on the road outside rather than block the drive, and the family moved their own car off the driveway so the team could get the waste out at the back of the vehicle. That kind of small arrangement, agreed the week before, is the difference between a two-day job and a three-day one. Wallpaper removal has its own page if that is what you need rather than a clearance.
Access and parking, street by street
Birmingham is not one job. The Victorian terraces in Moseley, B13, and Kings Heath, B14, have no front garden and residents' bays that fill by eight in the morning, so we start early and, where the council requires it, arrange a bay suspension in advance. Harborne, B17, and Edgbaston, B15, have wide roads but long front paths and side gates that a wardrobe will not pass through.
Bournville, B30, and the streets around it have narrow service roads behind the houses that look like an answer and rarely are. Erdington, B24, and Northfield, B31, are mostly semis with drives we can back onto. Kitts Green, Acocks Green and Yardley in B33, B27 and B25 are much the same. In the centre, B1 to B5, it is lifts, bays and timing rather than kerbs.
Getting here is straightforward. The teams come in off the motorway network rather than by rail, but for anyone travelling to meet us at a property, New Street is the obvious arrival point, with Moor Street and Snow Hill close by and local stops at Selly Oak, University and Bournville on the Cross-City line.
The postcode districts we cover in Birmingham
Our Birmingham house clearance work runs across the residential B districts, from B1 in the centre out through B10, B11, B12, B13, B14, B15, B16, B17, B18, B19 and B20, on through B21, B23, B24, B25, B26, B27, B28 and B29, and out to B30, B31, B32, B33, B34, B35, B36, B37 and B38. We also cover B40, B42, B43, B44, B45, B46, B47 and B48, along with B2 to B9 in and around the middle of the city. One small local quirk: there is no B22 in use, so if you have been given one on paperwork, it is a typing slip for B21 or B23.
Birmingham City Council is the authority for all of it, and its household recycling centres take small quantities from residents directly, which is worth knowing if you have only a car boot's worth left over after we have been.
Where else we work near Birmingham
We take bookings across the West Midlands and just over its edges, and we keep to places we can reach and clear inside a working day. Alongside Birmingham, that means house clearance in Solihull to the south-east, house clearance in Wolverhampton to the north-west, house clearance in Halesowen on the Black Country side, and house clearance in Stourbridge out towards the western edge.
What we cannot put in the van
Tins of paint, camping gas canisters, thinners, garden chemicals and car batteries cannot travel in a mixed household load. They need a hazardous route, and the council's household centres will take domestic quantities from residents. Anything that looks like asbestos — old garage roof sheets, some floor tiles, artex debris — we stop and leave alone, because it is a licensed job for a specialist and not one for a clearance team.
Fridges, freezers and air-conditioning units come with us but travel separately for degassing. Upholstered furniture is kept apart from everything else for the reasons set out above. Plasterboard is separated too. None of this holds a job up if you tell us beforehand, which is why we ask about it when we quote.
Getting an estimate
Ring us, or send photographs through the form on this page — a shot of each room and the garage is usually enough for a firm answer. The estimate is free and commits you to nothing, there is no deposit, and the invoice comes after the work is finished and you are satisfied with it. Teams start at nine in the morning and most Birmingham house clearances are finished the same day.
Questions we get asked in Birmingham
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 it is released. No deposit is taken beforehand.
Nobody can be at the house. Can you still clear it? Yes. We collect a key from an agent, a neighbour or a relative, clear the property, and email photographs of each empty room afterwards. That is how the Selly Oak job above was done.
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. Tell us what must not leave the house and we will put it to one side.
Will you take on a hoarded property? Yes. Heavily overfilled houses are a normal part of our week in Birmingham, we bring the right kit, and we go through the contents carefully rather than clearing blind.
How long does a house clearance in Birmingham take? Most three-bedroom houses are done in a day. Very full properties, or ones with a garage, loft and overgrown garden as well, can run to two.
Where does everything actually go? Reusable furniture and goods to local charities and reuse projects, metals, wood and electricals to recycling, and the remainder to a permitted waste site under our carrier licence, CBDU419679, with a transfer note available on request.
