What an estate cleanout costs in Denver

The short answer

Estate cleanouts are volume jobs, so the truck-fill ladder does most of the work: a quarter truck is $241, a half is $431, three-quarters is $587, a full truck is $732. A long-held Denver house with a basement, a crawl space and a detached garage is normally at least one full truck and often more than one.

The heavy singles get named separately because they are genuinely different work: an Upright Piano is $364, a Safe (Large / Gun Safe) is $260, a Pool Table is $603, a Cabinet / China Hutch is $160. A full truck plus the piano that has been in the front room since 1968 is $732 + $290 = $1,022.

The Denver house this usually is

There is a recognisable type. A brick bungalow in Park Hill or Berkeley from the twenties, or a 1950s brick ranch in Harvey Park, Virginia Village, Athmar Park, Applewood or Bonnie Brae. One owner, forty or fifty years, and three separate storage zones that were never cleared out at the same time.

• The basement. Half finished in 1974, wood panelling, a wet bar, a chest freezer, and everything the family ever stopped using. Reached by that steep flight with a turn at the landing.
• The crawl space. Under the addition. Holiday decorations, canning jars, a rolled carpet.
• The detached alley garage. No car has been in it since the Reagan administration. Ladders, a workbench, paint, tires, a mower.

Any one of those alone is a half truck. Together they are the reason the estimate is a full truck and a second trip.

Fifty years of Colorado, physically

What comes out of a long-held Denver house is different from what comes out of a long-held house anywhere else, and it is not subtle. Skis from four decades — straight skis, then shaped, then a pair of the kids' twin tips. Backpacks and external frames. Coleman stoves, coolers, a tent that smells like 1992. Elk quarters in the chest freezer and the freezer that replaced the one before it. A gun safe bolted to the basement slab.

Priced honestly: Sports Equipment (Golf Clubs / Skis / Misc) is $33, a Freezer (Chest) is $146, a Kayak / Canoe / Paddleboard is $71, a Safe (Large / Gun Safe) is $260. A freezer and a gun safe out of the same basement is $146 + $260 = $406.

The dry air has one genuine upside here: things stored at altitude for decades are usually intact rather than moldering, so more of an estate is actually donatable than families expect. It also has a downside. Vinyl, leatherette and old foam go brittle, and the veneer on mid-century pieces lifts. A dining set that looks fine in photographs can come apart when it is picked up.

What the pieces cost individually

A dining room in a Bonnie Brae ranch — the table and the china hutch — is $163 + $160 = $323. A bedroom stripped in the same house is a large dresser and a queen mattress at $148 + $103 = $251.

When the heir lives somewhere else

This is the most common version of the call we get in Denver, and it is a direct consequence of the last thirty years. The parents stayed on the Front Range. The children took jobs in Seattle, Austin, Chicago. Now there is a house in Park Hill, a court date, a realtor who wants photographs, and nobody within a thousand miles.

We can work an estate cleanout with the client out of state. Photographs and a walkthrough over video are usually enough to set the scope, a lockbox or an agent handles access, and you get the quote in writing before anything moves. Nothing leaves that you have not seen. The relevant thing about Denver specifically is the seasonal window: if the house is going on the market, the metro's buying season and its hail season and its moving season are all the same warm months, so a spring estate cleanout competes with every roofer and every mover in the city for calendar space.

If the house is a scrape-off or a pop-top candidate

Plenty of long-held houses in Berkeley, Sloan's Lake, the Highlands and Platt Park are bought for the lot. If that is where this is heading, the cleanout is still worth doing properly rather than leaving it for the demolition contractor, because contents and structure are handled differently and a house full of contents complicates the sale.

Clear the contents first, then let the buyer deal with the building. If you are keeping the house and renovating instead, the debris side has its own prices: Construction Debris is $120, Carpet (rolled) is $68, a Full Kitchen Cabinet Set (rip-out) is $293.

How to sequence it

• Keep, sell, donate, haul — in that order, and out loud. Decide before the crew is standing in the room. Mark the keeps with tape.
• Do the basement first. It is the biggest volume and the hardest carry, and finishing it changes how the rest of the day feels.
• Name the heavy singles when you book. Piano, safe, pool table, hot tub. These need the right crew and the right equipment, and the price is published: $290, $260, $603, and $390 for a Hot Tub / Spa.
• Expect the garage to be worse than you remember. Detached alley garages in the older neighborhoods are where a family's decisions go to be postponed.

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