Clearing the home of a parent or relative is one of the hardest jobs an executor faces. You are grieving, often juggling probate at the same time, and the practical side of it feels endless. Most people just want the house emptied quickly, fairly and without fuss. It is understandable to focus on booking a van and picking a day that works. But the costliest mistake in a house clearance is rarely the date you choose or the price of the van. It is not understanding how the clearance company gets paid, and letting things leave the house before anyone has recorded or valued them. Get that wrong and it can cost the estate thousands, in two very different ways.

The two ways a clearance company charges, and why it matters

There are broadly two charging models, and the difference between them decides who profits from anything valuable in the house.

The first is a fee for the service. You pay for the labour, the transport and the disposal. Anything saleable is sold on your behalf, usually through auction, and the proceeds come back to the estate less the auctioneer’s commission. Everything is accounted for. You can see what was there, what it sold for and where the money went.

The second is the “we pay you” or “free clearance” model. The company takes the contents in exchange for a lump sum, a discounted fee, or sometimes nothing at all, and keeps whatever it finds and sells. Some firms describe this openly as an offset. Once the family have taken any specific gifts, the firm adds up the probate value of the remaining contents and offsets that figure against the cost of the labour. If the contents come to £500 and the clearance costs £1,500, the £500 is subtracted and the family pays the £1,000 balance. Only rarely does the value of the contents exceed the cost of the labour, in which case the client is paid the difference.

Read that mechanic carefully and the problem shows itself. Under the second model, the same firm both decides what your items are worth and keeps the upside. It sets the number that gets subtracted from its own bill. For genuine junk, that is fine and probably the most practical option. But the moment something valuable is tucked in a drawer, a loft or the back of a wardrobe, the incentive runs against the estate. Nobody with a financial interest in the answer should be the one deciding what your late relative’s possessions are worth.

As an independent service, our preference is for the transparent fee-for-service model, because everything is recorded and sold openly instead of quietly absorbed into someone else’s margin. You keep the evidence trail, and the estate keeps the value.

Why “free” house clearance is rarely free

A legitimate clearance firm has real costs. There is labour to pay for, fuel, and disposal fees charged by the tonne at the tip. A genuine clearance runs from roughly £175 for a quarter van up to around £595 for a full van nationally (with a full house often needing 3-6 vans), with extra charges for items like fridges and mattresses. So when a firm offers to do all of that for nothing, one of two things is usually true. Either they expect valuables in the house to cover their costs, or they are not disposing of the waste legally.

The second possibility is where the estate is exposed. A firm carrying an estate’s waste needs upper-tier waste carrier registration. If an unregistered operator takes your relative’s belongings and dumps them, the liability can come back to you. Under the household waste duty of care in section 34(2A) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, occupiers of a domestic property must take all reasonable measures to make sure they only transfer household waste to an authorised carrier. According to the household waste duty of care guidance, a fixed penalty notice can be issued where fly-tipped waste is traced back to someone who failed to check the carrier was authorised. The maximum penalty is £600 for that breach, and fly-tipping itself carries fixed penalties of up to £1,000, with unlimited fines on prosecution for the worst cases.

This is not a rare or theoretical risk. Defra’s fly-tipping statistics for England for 2024 to 2025 recorded 1.26 million incidents, and household waste made up 62 per cent of them. There is a helpful nuance for householders. For household waste, there is no legal duty to keep a waste transfer note, and the absence of written records does not stop you making the case that you met your duty of care. But keeping the carrier’s registration details is the simplest way to show you checked.

A few red flags worth watching for:

• Cash only, with no paperwork or written quote.
• Same-day offers to “take the lot” with no time to record anything.
• A refusal or reluctance to give a waste carrier registration number.
• A “free” price that seems too good to be true.

You can check any operator’s registration in about a minute on the Environment Agency public register. An upper-tier number starts with the letters CBDU. Confirm that the name and number match before you let anything go.

What actually gets missed, a former auctioneer’s view

The reason the charging model matters so much is that value hides where you least expect it. In our experience the items most often under-spotted in a clearance are jewellery and loose gemstones, wristwatches, coins and medals, art and prints, silver, and certain furniture and ceramics. The pattern is nearly always the same. The valuable thing is not the obvious showpiece on the mantelpiece. It is small, ordinary looking, or forgotten in a drawer.

The best recent illustration went through Cheffins in Cambridge. A watercolour titled “Vecchio Sultano” was spotted by a dealer at a Cambridge house clearance sale and bought for £150. Once authenticated as a genuine Salvador Dalí by the expert Nicolas Descharnes, it went under the hammer at Cheffins in October 2025 and sold for £45,700, well above its estimate of £20,000 to £30,000. Brett Tryner, a director at Cheffins, called it “a significant rediscovery for Dali scholars”. The point is not that every clearance hides a Dalí. It is that an ordinary looking picture, bought for the price of a weekend away, turned out to be worth a small fortune, and it very nearly slipped out of a house unnoticed.

Because these categories are where the surprises live, they are exactly the things you want appraised by someone independent before anything moves. We value house contents, and we also handle jewellery valuations and cars and motorbikes, the sorts of items that families routinely misjudge in either direction.

Get it valued before it leaves the house

There is a stubborn myth that a “probate value” is some discounted figure, lower than what things are really worth. It is not. As Rebecca Walkley of TWM Solicitors puts it, “There is a perception that there is such a thing as a ‘probate value’, which is lower than the open market value, but this is incorrect.”

What the law actually requires is open market value at the date of death. Inheritance Tax Act 1984, section 160 defines it as “the price which the property might reasonably be expected to fetch if sold in the open market at that time”. This is not insurance value, replacement cost, what something cost new, or what it means to you. HMRC’s manual IHTM21041 makes the point directly, warning that a valuation “for insurance purposes” using replacement values “may include too high a value”, and confirming that sales after death, particularly at auction, “provide the best evidence of the open market value”.

The practical trigger is the £1,500 rule. Single items worth more than £1,500, such as jewellery, art or antiques, need to be listed separately with a proper valuation. Ordinary household goods below that can be a reasonable estimate. You can see the detail in the IHT400 valuation guidance. Whatever the totals, photograph every room before anything is touched, so there is a record if HMRC ever asks.

Here is the trap with the “we pay you” model. Once the firm has removed everything, there is no independent record of what was in the house or what it was worth. That makes an accurate estate account far harder to produce, and it makes any HMRC query almost impossible to answer. And the stakes are not trivial. Executors can be held personally responsible for careless or inaccurate valuations, with penalties charged as a percentage of the tax at stake. The fix is simple and cheap by comparison: an independent valuation before any clearance is booked, so every decision rests on evidence and not a stranger’s estimate.

Your checklist before you book a clearance

• Get the charging model in writing before you agree to anything.
• Ask for an itemised quote that separates the service fee from any valuables the firm intends to take.
• Check the waste carrier registration on the Environment Agency register, confirm it is upper tier, and match the name and number.
• Let nothing leave the house until it has been photographed and, where needed, valued.
• Be wary of same-day “we’ll take the lot” offers.
• Keep the carrier’s details as your record, even though a transfer note is not legally required for household waste.
• If the estate is near or over the £325,000 nil-rate band, get a professional valuation before you clear.

Frequently asked questions

Do house clearance companies pay you?

Sometimes, under an offset arrangement, where the value of saleable contents is set against the cost of the labour and only rarely leaves a balance paid to the family. The catch is that the same firm usually sets the value it deducts from its own bill, so an independent valuation protects the estate.

Is free house clearance really free?

Rarely. A genuine clearance carries real labour and disposal costs, so a free offer usually means the firm expects to keep valuable items or is cutting corners on disposal. If your waste is then fly-tipped, you can face a household duty of care fine of up to £600.

Should I get a valuation before a house clearance?

Yes. Open market value at the date of death is the legal standard for probate, and once items have left the house, proving what was there and what it was worth becomes very difficult. Photograph everything, and get anything possibly worth £1,500 or more professionally valued first.

What items should I never let a clearance company take before recording them?

Jewellery, loose gemstones, wristwatches, coins, medals, art and prints, silver, and certain furniture and ceramics. Also anything tucked away in a drawer, loft or cupboard, since that is exactly where value tends to hide.

Do I need to clear the house before probate is granted?

In England and Wales you generally cannot complete the sale of the property before the grant, but executors can take preparatory steps and, with care, clear or sell the contents. Extra caution is sensible where the estate is close to or over the inheritance tax threshold, when an accurate professional valuation of the contents matters most. Keep a record of anything sold or given away.

Losing a parent or relative is exhausting enough without worrying whether you have accidentally cost the estate money or exposed yourself to a fine. The simplest safeguard is to have an independent record of what was in the house, and what it was worth, before anyone starts clearing. We do that remotely from photographs, so you do not have to arrange access or delay the clearance while you wait. If it would help to have that record in place first, see how our estate valuations work.