Clearing a hoarded unit when you are the landlord

A family calling about a hoarded flat is usually asking how to do this kindly. A landlord or an agent is usually asking how to do it by a date. Both are legitimate and they need different answers.

Your questions are the practical ones

• What condition will the unit be handed back in, in concrete terms rather than as a promise that it will be clean.
• What has to be replaced rather than cleaned. Flooring, fittings and anything absorbent that has taken damage is a replacement conversation, not a cleaning one.
• How the waste is documented, which matters when you have to account for it to somebody else.
• Whether anything biological is present, because that changes the work, the protection and the disposal route.

Ask those on the first call. Any company that cannot answer them plainly is guessing at your job.

Find out whether anyone is still living there

This changes everything about how the work runs. If the tenant is still in the unit, their belongings are theirs and a clearance is not a clearance, it is a negotiation with a clearance at the end of it.

We are not able to advise you on your position as a landlord, on notice, or on what you are entitled to remove. That is not our trade and we will not pretend it is. Take that advice from someone qualified to give it, and we will work to whatever is agreed.

Tell us plainly whose belongings these are and what has been agreed. It is the single fact that decides how the day runs.

What is usually under a hoarded unit

Volume is labour and trips. What makes it specialist is what tends to be underneath: spoiled food and organic waste, pests, biological waste where somebody has been unwell for a long time, and damage to flooring, walls and occasionally wiring that nobody could see.

That last one matters most to you, because it is the part that turns a clearance quote into a reinstatement budget, and it is not visible from the doorway.

Why we look before we quote

One of the directors attends and assesses the unit in person. A number given over the phone on a job like this is a number somebody made up, and the gap gets discovered halfway through when you have a handover date.

Sequence it with the other trades

Clearance, then cleaning, then any pest treatment or reinstatement, in an order that does not waste one of them. A unit treated for pests before the organic material is out is a unit that gets treated twice.

The service is hoarder disposal and clearance. If there has also been a death in the unit, that is trauma and biohazard remediation and it comes first.

Budget for the floor, not just the clearance

The single most common surprise on these jobs is what is under everything. Flooring that has been covered and damp for years, skirting that has gone, and occasionally damage that needs a contractor rather than a cleaner.

None of it is visible until the unit is empty, which means a clearance quote and a reinstatement budget are two different numbers and should be treated as such from the start. A quote that covers both before anybody has seen the floor is a guess.

Get the condition recorded

Photograph the unit before the clearance, once it is empty, and again after the cleaning. You will need the middle set more than the other two, because that is the only point at which the actual condition of the property is visible.

Ask for a record of the work and of how the waste was disposed of. If you have to account to an owner, an insurer or anybody else, that is the document that does it, and it is much easier to ask for on the day than a month later.

What is protected while the work happens is in what happens to the belongings, and the pest question is in hoarding and pests.