"How much to clear the house?" is the first question everyone asks, and the honest answer is that no operator can give you a real number over the phone without knowing what is in it. What they can do is explain how they price. Once you understand the four things that move the number, comparing quotes becomes straightforward.
Price is built from volume, labour, disposal and difficulty
Almost every cleanout quote in Victoria is assembled from the same four ingredients.
Volume is measured in cubic metres or truckloads. A hoarded two-bedroom unit can easily hold more material than an ordinary four-bedroom house, which is why floor area alone is a poor guide. Operators quote on what they see, not on the number of bedrooms.
Labour is crew size multiplied by hours. Two people for a day is the baseline for a modest home. Sorting slows a crew down enormously — a team told "take everything" moves several times faster than a team told "open every drawer and set aside anything that looks like a document or jewellery."
Disposal is the cost of getting the material into a transfer station or landfill. This is a real, receipted, per-tonne cost that operators pass through, and it is affected by the Victorian landfill levy, which is set by the state and reviewed periodically — the current rates are published by the Environment Protection Authority Victoria. Anything that can be recycled or resold instead of tipped reduces this line, which is why a good operator sorting on site can genuinely come in cheaper than a cheap operator tipping everything.
Difficulty covers stairs, narrow driveways, no off-street parking, long carries, upper-floor apartments with a single lift, and rural properties an hour from the nearest transfer station. It also covers anything requiring specialist handling — see below.
The things that push a quote up sharply
Asbestos is the big one. Anything built or renovated before 1990 may contain it in eaves, sheeting, fencing or floor coverings, and it must be handled and disposed of under WorkSafe requirements by an appropriately licensed removalist. This is a separate scope of work, not something folded into a general clearance.
Hoarding and squalor jobs need protective equipment, more crew, sometimes pest treatment, and often biohazard and specialist cleaning afterwards. Deceased-at-home situations always do.
Whitegoods, mattresses, tyres and e-waste attract per-item surcharges at most transfer stations. Victoria bans e-waste from landfill entirely, so televisions and computers must go to a designated e-waste drop-off — Sustainability Victoria maintains the list of locations.
The things that bring it down
Saleable contents are the biggest lever. If the estate holds furniture, tools, machinery, collectables or a vehicle, an on-site clearing sale or auction can offset a meaningful part of the clearance cost, and in estates with genuine antiques it occasionally covers the whole job. Get an appraisal before you assume there is nothing worth selling.
Doing the sorting yourself also helps. If the family has already taken what it wants and boxed the paperwork, the crew is doing straight removal rather than careful triage, and the labour line drops accordingly.
Flexibility on timing is worth something too. A job that has to happen on a specific Saturday before a Monday settlement costs more than one that can be slotted into a quiet week.
How to compare quotes properly
Ask every operator the same five questions and the differences become obvious:
- Is this a fixed price or an hourly rate, and what happens if the job runs over?
- Are tip fees included in the figure, or billed separately at cost?
- Will you sort for documents, cash and valuables, and how do you return them?
- What is being recycled or donated versus landfilled, and can I have the transfer station receipts?
- Do you carry public liability insurance, and can I see the certificate of currency?
Always get the quote in writing, and be wary of a number quoted sight-unseen — it is almost always revised upward on the day. Consumer Affairs Victoria's guidance on quotes and estimates is worth a read if you want to know where you stand if a price changes.
Executors: keep the receipts
Reasonable clearance and disposal costs are ordinarily payable out of the estate rather than from your own pocket, but you will need to account for them. Keep every invoice and tip docket with the estate records. If you are unsure what the estate can and cannot pay for, that is a question for a wills and estates solicitor — the Law Institute of Victoria referral service (03 9607 9550, listed in our legal and probate resources) is the simplest way to find one, and State Trustees Victoria has free executor guidance online.
Next steps
If you have not started yet, Clearing a Deceased Estate in Victoria sets out the order to do things in. If the house is going on the market, Preparing a Deceased Estate Property for Sale covers what to spend money on and what to leave alone.
Tell us the suburb, property size and timeframe and we will send you a shortlist of suitable cleanout businesses within 24 hours, so you can compare like for like.