“How much is a house clearance?” is the first question almost everyone asks, and the honest answer is that it depends on four things: how much there is, how hard it is to get out, what has to be paid to dispose of it, and how far the van has to come. This guide puts real numbers against each of them, using the prices CL Clearances charges across East Yorkshire in 2026.
The short answer
For a property within about 25 miles of Howden:
| Property | What is usually involved | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Single room or part clearance | One room, a loft, or a garage and shed | £150 – £350 |
| One-bedroom flat or bungalow | Full contents, one van load | £350 – £550 |
| Two-bedroom house | Contents, garage or shed, one to two loads | £550 – £850 |
| Three-bedroom house | Contents, loft, garage, garden, two to three loads | £850 – £1,300 |
| Four-bedroom or long-occupied family home | Decades of contents, outbuildings, three or more loads | £1,300 – £2,000+ |
Those are fixed-quote figures, not hourly estimates, and they include the labour, the vehicle, the tip fees and the paperwork. A clearance that turns out to be smaller than the photos suggested is re-quoted down, not up.
What actually drives the price
1. Volume, not floor area
Clearance companies price by how many van loads come out, which is why a small house that has been lived in for forty years can cost more than a larger one that was recently a rental. A 3.5-tonne Luton holds roughly the contents of a one-bedroom flat. Two-bedroom houses are usually one and a half to two loads; a three-bedroom family home with a full loft is commonly three.
2. Disposal cost, which is not the same as volume
Transfer stations charge by weight and by material. A van full of light bagged clothing costs far less to tip than the same van full of soil, rubble or old carpet. Some items carry their own fee whatever they weigh:
- Fridges and freezers: £15–£25 each, because the refrigerant gas has to be removed at a WEEE-approved facility
- Mattresses: £10–£15 each
- Plasterboard: charged by the bag, because gypsum cannot be landfilled with mixed waste
- Tyres: £5–£8 each, banned from landfill
Anything with resale or scrap value pulls in the other direction. Metal, decent furniture and usable tools reduce the quote.
3. Access
Carrying a wardrobe down three flights of an Avenues terrace in Hull takes four times as long as wheeling it out of a bungalow in Brough. The things that add time are stairs without a lift, no parking within carrying distance, permit or ResPark streets that need a council dispensation, narrow doorways that mean furniture is dismantled, and properties where everything has to come through the house because there is no side access.
4. Distance
A collection in Goole, three miles from our base, carries no travel element. Hull, York, Doncaster and Scunthorpe are 20–25 miles and have it built into the fixed price. Barnsley and Leeds sit at the edge of the range and are priced accordingly.
5. What you want done with it
A clearance that separates keepsakes, paperwork and anything of value — the standard approach for a bereavement or probate clearance — takes longer than one where the instruction is simply “everything goes”. It is time well spent, but it is time.
How this compares with the alternatives
Skip hire. A 6-yard skip around Goole and Howden is roughly £200–£260, plus £30–£60 for a permit if it goes on the road. That is competitive with a half-van clearance on price — but you load it, you cannot put fridges, mattresses or plasterboard in it without a surcharge or a refusal, and it sits outside your house for a week collecting other people’s rubbish. We have written a full comparison in skip hire vs a house clearance company.
Council bulky collection. Cheap for a handful of items if you can wait two to four weeks and get everything to the boundary of the property yourself. Useless for a whole house.
Doing it yourself. A weekend of tip runs in a hired van is genuinely cheaper in cash terms for a small job. For a full property it is four or five days of hard work, and household waste sites restrict van and trailer visits.
A cheap “man with a van” off social media. Sometimes fine. Sometimes your sofa ends up in a lane outside Snaith and the fine comes to you, because under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 the duty of care sits with the person who produced the waste. Always check the carrier licence — here is how.
Do house clearance companies pay you?
Occasionally, and it is worth understanding why it is rarer than people expect. A clearance firm will offset the price where there is genuine resale value — good furniture, tools, garden machinery, a car. But most house contents have almost none: flat-pack furniture, worn three-piece suites, CRT televisions and ornaments have a resale value of roughly zero and a disposal cost that is real.
Be wary of anyone who offers to clear a whole property free of charge before seeing it. Either they intend to cherry-pick the valuable items and leave the rest, or the disposal is not going where it should. Where a property genuinely does contain items worth selling, the cleanest arrangement is the one we use: the items go to an auction house or a specialist buyer, the proceeds go to you or the estate directly, and the clearance is invoiced separately so the two figures stay visible.
Questions to ask before you accept a quote
- Is it fixed or an estimate? A fixed written price should not change on the day unless you add to the job.
- What is your waste carrier registration number? Then check it on the Environment Agency public register, which takes about thirty seconds.
- Does the price include the loft, the garage, the shed and the garden? These are the usual sources of a “that will be extra” conversation.
- Will I get a Waste Transfer Note? Essential for landlords, executors and businesses; sensible for everyone.
- Who is actually doing the work? Some quotes come from a call centre that subcontracts the job to whoever is free.
- What happens to items in good condition? A firm that reuses and recycles will tell you exactly where things go.
Getting a price for your property
CL Clearances quotes from photographs for most properties and visits for larger ones, usually within two working days. The price is fixed in writing before anything is booked, and it covers the clearing, the loading, the legal disposal and the paperwork.
Call or WhatsApp 07783 430775, or use the quote form. For what the job looks like town by town, see house clearance and the local pages for Howden, Goole, Selby, Hull, Beverley, York, Doncaster and Scunthorpe. If the job is a few items rather than a property, rubbish removal is priced by the van load and will be cheaper.
