Tenant moved out and left a mess? We clear apartments and condos fast — furniture, mattresses, and the leftover pile — so the unit is broom-clean for the next lease. Truck-fill pricing runs $295 for a quarter truck up to $895 for a full one, or a few single pieces price flat (sofa $170, queen mattress $139). Elevator and loading-dock coordinated, COI on request, no NC sales tax on the service.
Send photos of what's left — flat price back in seconds
Upload Photos & Get Quote →With roughly 76 people a day moving into Wake County, apartments and condos here turn over nonstop — and someone has to clear what the last tenant left. That churn is the structural fact of this market: turnover isn't a summer season the way it is in older cities, it's every month of the year, driven by RTP job starts, university calendars and a steady inbound stream from everywhere else. We handle the clear-out across the Downtown Raleigh (27601), Glenwood South and North Hills / Midtown (27609) condo buildings — elevator and loading-dock coordinated, COI on request — and across the apartment-dense suburbs at Morrisville (27560), Brier Creek (27617) and Cary, where the RTP and RDU commute puts a lot of one-year leases in a small radius. Whole-unit clear or a single-room pile, photo-quoted flat, usable items donated, the rest hauled and recycled.
Walk it with your phone — the room the furniture is in, the closet nobody emptied, the balcony. That's enough to size the load and send back an exact flat price, without anyone meeting you on site first.
Tell us the elevator reservation, dock hours or the move-out deadline you're working against. We book it with the leasing office or concierge, and send a certificate of insurance ahead if management wants one on file.
A vetted local crew carries everything out — no curb staging, no hallway pile, nothing left on the dock. Usable furniture is routed to donation and the floor is swept for the walkthrough.
A cleanout is priced by how much of the truck the unit fills — the full ladder is below, so you can see exactly where a studio, a one-bed and a furnished two-bed land instead of guessing between two tiers.
| Truck-fill | Price | Typical Raleigh unit |
|---|---|---|
| 1/4 truck | $295 | Partial clear — the couch, a mattress and the boxes |
| 3/8 truck | $415 | Small studio, lightly furnished |
| 1/2 truck | $525 | Studio or 1-bed, fully furnished |
| 5/8 truck | $625 | 1-bed with a storage cage or packed balcony |
| 3/4 truck | $720 | 2-bed, most of the furniture staying behind |
| 7/8 truck | $810 | Large 2-bed or a roommate unit |
| Full truck | $895 | 3-bed, or a unit abandoned as-is |
Only a few pieces left behind? Then it prices flat instead of by volume — sofa $170, loveseat $128, queen mattress $139, box spring $124, twin mattress $111, dresser $169, desk $112, bookshelf $97, TV $91. Put them all in one photo and we quote the set together, then compare it against the truck-fill number and charge whichever fits the job. $75 minimum on very small jobs. Carry-out, stairs, elevator waits and disposal are included, and there's no NC sales tax on the service.
Third-party context on what a truck-fill costs here: Junk Doctors publishes a Triangle rate card of a $135 minimum, quarter truck $298, half $488, three-quarter $608, full $738 (junkdrs.com/pricing). McJunk publishes a $175 minimum, quarter $305, half $435, three-quarter $565, full $695 — plus a $40 mattress surcharge, $10 per tire, $10 per CRT television and a $10–$50 trip charge, which on a move-out full of mattresses adds up quickly. Those are volume estimates confirmed at your door; ours is quoted from photos before the truck leaves the yard.
| Option | Cost | Speed | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of Raleigh Bulky Load | $35 per load (special/appliance items $70) | Scheduled collection day | Curbside and scheduled — you carry it down the service elevator yourself, and most apartment buildings on private dumpster or compactor service aren't eligible at all |
| Donate it (Habitat ReStore / Goodwill) | Free | Days | Only clean, resellable pieces, and the charity's pickup calendar rarely matches a lease-end date |
| Rent a truck and haul it yourself | Truck rental + ~$37/ton tip fee at South Wake Landfill | A full day | You need help lifting, a dock reservation, and a weekday free — and a one-way rental in a move-out week is scarce |
| Traditional truck-fill hauler | $135–$175 minimum, $695–$738 full truck (published Junk Doctors / McJunk rates) | 1–3 days | Estimated by volume on arrival, and McJunk's card adds mattress and trip surcharges to a move-out load |
| JunkRabbit | $295–$895 truck-fill, or flat by the piece | Same day, most days | None — photo-quoted before we arrive, elevator window booked, carried out of the unit, donation-routed |
Competitor and municipal figures above are third-party published rates, not ours. Our numbers are the truck-fill and flat item prices in the table further up this page.
On paper, yes — and for a single-family homeowner it's genuinely the cheapest option there is. City of Raleigh Solid Waste Services (919-996-3245) collects a scheduled curbside Bulky Load for $35, charges $70 for a special or appliance item, takes electronics free up to four items a week, and won't take tires at all. For an apartment, though, that program falls apart on two words: curbside and scheduled.
A fourth-floor apartment doesn't have a curb. The City collects what is already sitting at the street. Getting a sleeper sofa and a queen set from unit 412 to the street means somebody — you, the tenant who already left, or a leasing agent who did not sign up for this — carrying it down a service elevator, through a corridor with a reservation sheet on it, past a loading dock with posted hours, and out to a sidewalk. That is the entire job. Once it's at the curb, the hauling was never the hard part.
And it runs on the City's calendar, not the lease's. Bulky Load is arranged for a collection day; a lease-end is a fixed date with a walkthrough attached and a new tenant behind it. You can't leave a mattress on a Glenwood South sidewalk for three days while the two schedules fail to overlap. There's a third catch that surprises people: most apartment communities are on private dumpster or compactor service rather than City carts, so municipal curbside bulky collection often isn't available to the building at all — and the building's own dumpster is explicitly not for furniture, which is how sofas end up abandoned beside the corral with a note taped on. Confirm current rules at raleighnc.gov before you plan around them; municipal programs change.
That's the whole wedge. We're not cheaper than $35 and we don't pretend to be. We're the option where nothing gets dragged through a shared corridor, nothing waits on a sidewalk, and the unit is empty on the day the lease says it has to be.
A move-out pile is usually the best donation material we see all week — furniture bought two years ago by somebody whose new apartment came furnished. So donation comes first. Habitat for Humanity ReStore runs ten Triangle stores and takes usable large furniture across Wake, Johnston, Durham and Orange counties; Goodwill of Eastern North Carolina is headquartered right here in Raleigh and takes housewares and smaller furniture region-wide. Ask and we'll get you a receipt for what's donated.
The rest gets sorted rather than dumped, because North Carolina requires it: televisions, computers, appliances and white goods are all banned from NC landfills, so the TV nobody wanted and the abandoned mini-fridge go to e-waste and scrap-metal recycling. What's genuinely finished — the stained mattress, the collapsed particle-board shelf — goes to disposal, tipping at roughly $37 a ton at South Wake Landfill (mattresses run about $15 each there). That cheap, close disposal is a real reason truck-fill pricing here isn't what it is in a coastal metro.
Downtown Raleigh (27601) is six small districts stacked into a few walkable blocks, and the condo and apartment buildings there were built to that footprint — narrow service entrances, a single freight cab, and street-level loading that competes with everything else happening on Fayetteville, Wilmington and Blount. We stage compactly, load fast, and don't hold a lane longer than the job needs.
Glenwood South is the densest mid-rise cluster in the city and it sits directly on Raleigh's nightlife strip, which makes timing half the job — we work the service entrance and dock off-peak rather than fighting Glenwood Avenue. North Hills / Midtown is the opposite problem: newer luxury towers with a concierge, a strict elevator reservation sheet, protective pads that go up before anything moves, and a management company that actually reads the paperwork.
Some buildings want a certificate of insurance naming the owner or management company before a crew can badge in. It's a far less formal ask here than in a Manhattan high-rise — often a single email to the leasing office — but we carry the insurance and we send the COI. Flag it when you book so it's on file before the window opens.
The suburban apartment belt is a different animal entirely. In Morrisville (27560) and Brier Creek (27617), the buildings are garden-style walk-ups around a parking loop: no freight elevator, but exterior stairs, breezeways and a gate code, and an HOA or management company with firm opinions about anything visible near the dumpster corral. We back to the door, carry down the stairs and load out of sight.
"Tenant left a full unit of furniture in our Glenwood South building. Coordinated the elevator, cleared it same day, broom-clean. Flat price, easy to bill."
"Morrisville apartment turnover near RTP. Quoted from photos, hauled next morning, donated what they could. No sales tax, no hassle."
"Downtown condo, third-floor walk-up's worth of stuff. Crew carried it all down, flat quote, gone in an hour."
How much does an apartment cleanout cost in Raleigh?
By truck-fill: 1/4 $295, 3/8 $415, 1/2 $525, 5/8 $625, 3/4 $720, 7/8 $810, full truck $895. A studio usually lands $295–$525; a furnished two-bed is often 3/4 to full. A few pieces price flat instead — sofa $170, loveseat $128, queen mattress $139, box spring $124, dresser $169, desk $112. $75 minimum, carry-out and disposal included, no NC sales tax on the service.
Will the City pick up what my tenant left?
Rarely usefully. City of Raleigh Solid Waste Services (919-996-3245) collects a $35 Bulky Load, but it's curbside and scheduled — a fourth-floor apartment has no curb, someone still has to carry it down the service elevator, and most apartment communities on private dumpster or compactor service aren't eligible for City collection at all. Check raleighnc.gov for current rules.
Can you handle the freight elevator, the dock and a COI?
Yes — we book the reservation window with your leasing office or concierge and send a certificate of insurance ahead when the building asks for one. Tell us at booking so it's on file before the crew arrives.
How fast can you turn a unit over?
Usually same-day or next-day. A studio is about an hour of crew time; a furnished two-bed two to three. Early-to-mid May and the last days of any month fill up first — book a day or two ahead then.
Is it cheaper than a traditional truck-fill hauler?
Not always on a full truck, honestly. Junk Doctors publishes $135 minimum to $738 full; McJunk publishes $175 to $695 plus a $40 mattress surcharge, $10 per tire, $10 per CRT TV and a $10–$50 trip charge. Our full truck is $895 — with the mattresses, the elevator wait and the carry-out already inside the number and nothing added at the door.
What happens to the furniture after pickup?
Donation first — Habitat ReStore's ten Triangle stores and Raleigh-headquartered Goodwill of Eastern NC. TVs, monitors and appliances are landfill-banned in NC, so those go to recycling or scrap. The rest is disposed of properly at about $37 a ton at South Wake Landfill.