Settling a parent's home or preparing a property for sale is hard enough. We handle the whole clear — attic to crawl space — discreetly and at one flat photo-quoted price, from $295 for a quarter truck to $895 for a full one, donating what we can to Triangle Habitat ReStores and Goodwill and getting you the receipts for the estate. $75 minimum. No NC sales tax on the service.
Send a few photos — flat price and a real timeline back
Upload Photos & Get Quote →One or two wide shots per room, plus the attic hatch and the garage. We read the volume and send back a flat truck-fill number and an honest day count — before anyone comes to the house, and without a salesperson walking through a family's home.
Tell us what's staying, what's going to family, and what the estate sale already claimed. We schedule around the sale, the probate hearing or the listing date — and we can hold a date while the family is still deciding.
Good furniture and housewares go out to the ReStore and Goodwill first, with receipts. Then the crew clears room by room to attic and crawl space and leaves it broom-clean. Anything that looks personal stops the line and gets photographed for you.
Estates price by volume, not by piece — the number is how much of the truck the house fills, quoted flat from your photos with the carry-out, the stairs, the drive and the disposal already inside it.
| Truck fill | Flat price | Typical estate job |
|---|---|---|
| Quarter truck (2/8) | $295 | One room, or what the estate sale left behind |
| 3/8 truck | $415 | A small apartment or an assisted-living downsize |
| Half truck (4/8) | $525 | A one-bedroom condo, cleared |
| 5/8 truck | $625 | Partial clear plus the attic |
| Three-quarter truck (6/8) | $720 | A furnished small bungalow |
| 7/8 truck | $810 | Most of a furnished single-story home |
| Full truck (8/8) | $895 | A furnished floor, or the attic and crawl space together |
| Multi-truck whole-home clear | Scoped from photos | A furnished two-story ITB house is commonly two to four full trucks |
$75 minimum order. If the estate is really just a few heavy things — an upright piano at $390, a china cabinet at $215, a wardrobe at $165, a dresser at $169, a sofa at $170, a mattress and box-spring set at $192, a large gun safe at $273 — we'll price it per item instead and quote you whichever is lower. Boxes and bags of household goods price in bulk (ten bags $178, twenty $348). A 10×10 storage unit the family has been paying on for two years is $715. No NC sales tax on the service.
Third-party context so you can compare: 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 $10–$50 trip charge and per-item surcharges. Our quarter truck sits in the middle of that market and our full truck is the highest of the three; we're not the cheapest truck in the Triangle. On an estate, what people are actually buying is a fixed number quoted before a stranger walks through their mother's house, no surcharges, and a crew that treats the contents like they belong to someone.
| Option | Cost | Speed | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of Raleigh Bulky Load | $35 per scheduled load ($70 special / appliance item) | Scheduled collection days, repeated for weeks | Curbside only — the family carries every piece to the street and it sits in public between collections |
| Estate sale company | Commission on what sells | Weeks to schedule, one weekend to run | Excellent for the valuable third; the other two thirds are still in the house on Monday morning |
| Donate it yourself | Free | Days to weeks | Habitat ReStore's free large-item pickup is real and generous, but it runs on the charity's schedule and only takes resellable goods |
| Rent a truck and self-haul | ~$37/ton at South Wake Landfill + truck rental | Multiple weekends | Grieving families moving a 1920s wardrobe down original stairs is how people get hurt |
| Traditional full-service hauler | Published Triangle cards run ~$298–$738 (Junk Doctors), ~$305–$695 plus trip charge (McJunk) | 1–3 days | Volume estimated on site, surcharges added there too — the real number arrives with the crew |
| JunkRabbit | $295 quarter to $895 full truck, flat; multi-truck scoped from photos | Usually 1–2 days once we start | None — priced from photos before we come, keepsakes flagged, donation-routed with receipts, broom-clean finish |
Municipal, landfill and competitor figures above are third-party published rates, not ours. Our numbers are the truck-fill ladder in the table above.
Partly, and cheaply, and we'd rather you know it. City of Raleigh Solid Waste Services runs a scheduled curbside Bulky Load at $35 — special or appliance items are $70, electronics are collected free up to four items a week, and tires are not accepted at all. You book it through the City (919-996-3245, raleigh.gov). For a single dresser or a mattress left after the family has taken what they want, that's the right answer and it beats our price outright.
Where it stops working is the word load. A bulky load is one load, on the City's calendar. A whole house — a furnished living room, three bedrooms, a dining set, a china cabinet, a garage, an attic full of holiday bins and a crawl space nobody has opened since 1988 — is not one bulky load. It is weeks of them. Every single piece has to come down the stairs and out to the street by hand, by the family, and then remain visible at the curb of a neighborhood where everyone knew the person who died, until each scheduled truck arrives.
And an executor almost never has weeks. Probate has dates. The realtor has a listing date. Out-of-state heirs have flights home. The insurer wants the vacant house sold. That mismatch — a $35 program that runs on municipal time versus an estate that runs on a legal and emotional clock — is the entire reason full-service estate cleanouts exist here. It's also worth knowing the program is City of Raleigh: Cary, Apex, Morrisville, Durham and Chapel Hill each run their own arrangements, so the municipal answer changes with the town line while ours doesn't. Confirm current rules and rates with the City before planning around them.
What we can't take: paint, solvents, pool and darkroom chemicals, pesticides, motor oil, propane tanks and car batteries. Older homes hold a surprising amount of it in the garage and crawl space; those go to a Wake County household hazardous waste drop-off, and we'll tell you what to set aside before we arrive.
This is the part that matters most to the families we work for, and the Triangle makes it easy to keep the promise. Habitat for Humanity ReStore operates ten stores across the region with free large-item pickup throughout Wake, Johnston, Durham and Orange counties — and a mid-century dining set, a solid-wood dresser, a bookcase, a working appliance or clean upholstery is exactly what they resell to fund local home building. Goodwill of Eastern North Carolina is headquartered in Raleigh and takes usable household goods Triangle-wide. Executors ask us for the donation paperwork constantly, for the estate's records and for the family's own peace of mind, and we'll get it to you.
Beyond donation, the sorting is a legal requirement, not a marketing line. North Carolina bans televisions, computers, appliances and whole tires from landfills, along with lead-acid batteries, used oil and yard waste — so the console TV, the basement-era desktop, the second fridge in the garage and the four whole tires under the workbench are routed to e-waste and scrap-metal recycling. The Durham Waste Disposal and Recycling Center takes appliances and scrap metal at no charge. What's genuinely waste — the water-damaged, the pressboard, the mouse-chewed — tips at roughly $37 a ton at South Wake Landfill. Cheap disposal is a large part of why our truck-fill ladder starts at $295, and we'd rather tell you where things went than let you assume.
The historic Inside-the-Beltline core is the heart of it. Hayes Barton — Raleigh's prestige ITB address, laid out in the 1920s and full of period-revival houses on generous lots — turns over slowly, and when it does the house has usually held one family for decades. Five Points is the 1910s and 1920s streetcar suburb next door: bungalows and Tudors, deep front porches, original stairs, heart-pine floors that we pad and protect. Historic Oakwood is Raleigh's oldest surviving neighborhood, roughly 1890 to 1930, Victorians in a designated historic district where a loud, careless crew would be noticed by everybody on the block by lunchtime. Across in Durham, Trinity Park near Duke's East Campus is the same story with a faculty accent. Mordecai and Boylan Heights round it out.
These homes share a set of physical realities we plan crews around. Narrow streets and on-street loading — there's often no driveway worth the name, so the truck works the curb and we stage tight, load quickly and don't block a neighbour in. Original stairs and doorframes that were built before wide sectionals existed, which is why disassembly is part of the job rather than a surcharge. A preservation sensibility: these are neighborhoods where people care visibly about their houses, and being careful and discreet isn't a nicety, it's the requirement.
And the structural fact that shapes every estate job in North Carolina: there are no basements. Piedmont clay and a shallow frost line mean homes sit on crawl spaces or slabs, so the fifty years of accumulation that a Northern estate keeps downstairs is here in the attic and the crawl space instead — up a pull-down ladder that was never designed for two people carrying a steamer trunk, or in low under the house among the ductwork. Those are the two rooms families most often can't face and most often underestimate, and we quote them in from the start rather than discovering them on the day.
"Estate cleanout for my dad's home in Five Points — full attic, decades of it. Discreet, donation-routed, fair flat price for a big job. Couldn't have asked for better."
"Cleared a 1920s home in Hayes Barton before listing. They were careful with the house and the neighbors, donated most of it, broom-clean. Worth every penny."
"Family home in Trinity Park near Duke — whole house. Compassionate crew, fair flat quote, handled the donation routing. Made a hard week easier."
How much does an estate cleanout cost in Raleigh?
By truck fill: quarter $295, 3/8 $415, half $525, 5/8 $625, three-quarter $720, 7/8 $810, full $895, with multi-truck whole-home clears scoped from photos — a furnished two-story ITB house is commonly two to four full trucks. $75 minimum on very small jobs. Carry-out, stairs and disposal included, no NC sales tax on the service.
Can you do a whole historic house?
Yes — Hayes Barton, Five Points, Historic Oakwood, Mordecai, Boylan Heights and Trinity Park in Durham are our most common estate addresses. Narrow streets, on-street loading, original stairs and a full attic and crawl space are the normal conditions, not the exception.
Do we get donation receipts?
On request. Habitat ReStore runs ten Triangle stores with free large-item pickup across Wake, Johnston, Durham and Orange; Goodwill of Eastern NC is Raleigh-headquartered. We'll get you the paperwork they issue for the estate's records.
Isn't the City's $35 Bulky Load cheaper?
For one item, absolutely, and you should use it. A whole house is weeks of scheduled curbside loads, all carried down by the family and left visible between collections — and an executor with a closing date doesn't have weeks.
What about things that are personal?
They stop the crew. Papers, photographs, letters, medals and jewelry boxes are photographed and set aside for the family. We don't decide what's a keepsake; you do.
Can you work around an estate sale?
Yes, and it's the standard sequence — sale first, then we clear the remainder and leave the house broom-clean for the listing photos. We coordinate the dates with the estate-sale company or the realtor.
I'm out of state. Does that work?
It works often. Photos set the price, a lockbox or realtor gets us in, personal items are photographed for your decision, and you get before-and-after photos and an itemized invoice.
How long does it take?
Most furnished Triangle homes are one to two days once we start, including the attic, garage and crawl space, finishing broom-clean.