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Estate clearance, deceased-estate cleanout, hoarding cleanup and senior downsizing (US)
Nobody quotes a cleanout without seeing it, and now you know why
An independent guide to estate cleanouts, deceased-estate clearance, hoarding cleanup and senior downsizing in the United States. What each job costs, what changes the price, and who to call for which situation.
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Guides and explainers across the subject.
Square footage sets the floor. Condition sets the price.
Hoarding cleanup is published at $1 to $2 per square foot, or $1,000 to $4,000 for a typical job, with hourly rates of $25 to $100. Those numbers are real and they are also why quotes over the phone are close to meaningless.
Two 2,000 square foot houses can be the same job or completely different jobs. One is full of furniture and boxes. The other has blocked exits, a non-functional HVAC system, pest infestation and mould. The published square-foot rate covers the first. The second is a remediation job with different equipment, different disposal rules and different insurance.
The industry works from a five-level severity scale, and knowing roughly which level a property sits at tells you more about the likely cost than the floor area does. It also tells you which kind of company to call, because a general cleanout crew and a biohazard remediation firm are not interchangeable.
The severity scale, priced
Cleanout companies quote from a five-level clutter and hoarding severity scale, and the level decides almost everything about the job. We set the published level descriptions against the published cost ranges so you can work out roughly where a property sits before anyone visits.