Moving to a new-build in Wake County: the two clearances

No market figures on this page

Worth clearing away first.

You will find no population numbers here, no growth rate, no count of housing starts or permits, no median anything, and no claim about how many people are moving into Wake County. We do not have that data, quoting somebody else's would be dressing a guess as research, and none of it would change what your own move costs. What we do have is our own service area and our own prices, both of which are exact.

Clearance one: what does not come

The one everybody sees coming.

Decided at the old address in the run-up to the move, and driven by a deadline somebody else set. Furniture that has done its time, the contents of a loft, whatever was behind the water heater. This one gets planned because it is standing in front of you while you pack.

Clearance two: what arrives and has nowhere to go

The one that surprises people, and the reason this page exists.

Three weeks after the move, the boxes are mostly open. What is left is the flattened cartons, the packing material, and a category that is hard to anticipate: things that came along because deciding was easier than not deciding, and that now have no home at the other end.

That is a real load, it is at a different address, and it happens on a different date. Two bookings, not one.

Why the second one is invisible beforehand

And it is not carelessness — it is structural.

A house you have lived in has absorbed things over years. There is a shelf that has held the same objects since you moved in, a loft that filled gradually, a cupboard nobody opens. A new-build has none of that yet. Nothing has been absorbed anywhere, because there has not been time, so everything that arrives has to be actively placed rather than quietly accommodated.

The surplus is therefore visible in a way it never was before. It was probably surplus in the old house too; the old house just had somewhere to put it.

What each clearance costs

The same ladder applies at both ends:

Nothing prices below $75, at either address.

A worked move, both ends

An illustrative composite. First the outbound clearance at the old house:

That fits the 3/8 truck at $338. Now the inbound clearance, three weeks later at the new address:

That is the quarter truck at $241. Two bookings, $579 between them.

They cannot be combined, and here is the cost of that

Worth stating precisely rather than glossing over.

The two loads total 8.9 cubic yards. If they existed at one address on one day, that would be the 5/8 truck at $513. Booked separately they come to $579 — $66 more. That gap is the price of the two ends being two ends, and there is no arrangement that removes it, because the material is in two places three weeks apart.

Sixty-six dollars is also the whole of the penalty, which is worth knowing before anyone tries to force both into one trip.

Look at what dominates the second load

The cartons, and by a wide margin.

Twenty-four flattened boxes is $744 priced individually and 2.4 cubic yards in reality. Packing material is the bulk of an inbound clearance, and it is the row that makes the itemised column absurd — which is why the tier price is the one to ask for at that end particularly.

Both addresses have to be in the service area

A practical check that takes ten seconds and can save a wasted booking.

Inside Wake we cover Raleigh itself along with Knightdale and Garner to the east and south, Wake Forest to the north, and the Cary–Morrisville–Apex–Holly Springs corridor to the west. Beyond the county line the footprint takes in Durham, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and reaches into Johnston County as far as Clayton. Any move whose two addresses both sit inside that boundary is covered end to end.

Where we do not go yet

Stated because it is more useful than pretending otherwise.

The outer edges are not in the footprint at present — Wendell and Zebulon, the far side of Fuquay, Hillsborough, and out into Chatham. If one end of your move is in that territory, we can handle the covered end and you will need somebody else for the other. Ask rather than assume, and ask about the specific address rather than the town.

If only one end is covered

Not unusual, and it changes the sequencing more than the cost.

Do the covered end with us and arrange the other separately. There is nothing awkward about a single-ended booking, and the clearance at the covered address is priced exactly as any other job — there is no surcharge for the fact that your move began or ended somewhere we do not reach.

The gap between the two

Three weeks is the figure in the example above, and the reasoning behind it is worth borrowing.

Booking the inbound clearance too early means booking a load that has not finished forming; the cartons are still in use and the surplus has not declared itself. Leaving it too long means living around a stack in the garage. The workable point is when the unpacking has stopped rather than when it has finished, which are different moments.

The garage is not storage yet

A specific new-build observation, and it explains where the second load ends up.

In an established house the garage has already been colonised. In a new one it is empty, so it becomes the temporary home for everything unresolved — cartons, the furniture that did not find a room, the things you meant to decide about. That is fine as a staging area and poor as a permanent arrangement, and it is the single place worth walking before you book the second clearance.

Builder material is not your load

Worth separating, because it turns up in the same driveway.

Offcuts, packaging, protective film and general construction leavings from the build itself sit with the builder unless your contract says otherwise. Check before you pay to remove anything that was never yours. If it does fall to you, it prices as construction material rather than as household goods.

Appliance packaging

A small category that occupies more than its share.

New appliances arrive in substantial cartons with foam and film, and a house being fitted out produces several at once. It compresses poorly and fills a truck faster than its weight suggests. If the second clearance is happening anyway, this is worth adding to it rather than storing.

What we take at either end

Ordinary household contents.

Furniture, mattresses, appliances, electronics, rugs, boxes and packing material at both addresses. Anything unusual is worth naming while booking. If the load includes a screen or an appliance with a sealed cooling system, those follow their own routes regardless of which end they are at.

Do not pay to move what you will pay to remove

The one piece of advice on this page that saves real money.

Anything you already suspect is surplus is cheaper decided at the old address than at the new one, because you would otherwise pay to transport it and then pay again to have it taken away. The outbound clearance is where that decision belongs. Our page on the furniture you cannot take works through how to weigh a specific item.

Try the free routes at the outbound end

Where they work best, and they cost us the booking.

Serviceable furniture has takers, and the old address is where you have both time and access to arrange that. At the new end you are unpacking and the window is narrower. Who collects at no charge is set out separately — anything that leaves that way never reaches either invoice.

Short notice does not cost more

Relevant at both ends of a move.

Closing dates move, handovers slip, and the inbound clearance is by nature hard to schedule in advance. There is no rush rate, so booking either clearance at short notice costs what booking it weeks ahead costs.

What is not in the calculation

The same at both addresses.

Which floor the material starts on. Whether there are stairs. How far the carry runs. Which of the towns above you are in. How much warning you gave. Every one of those modifiers reads zero, so the volume is the sole input at either end.

If you are leaving the area entirely

Then the second clearance is somebody else's problem, and that is worth planning for.

An outbound clearance here is an ordinary booking. The inbound one at a destination outside the Triangle is not something we can arrange, so budget for it locally at that end. The structure still applies even where we are not the ones doing it — there will still be two clear-outs.

If two households are merging

Then the second clearance is the larger of the two, which reverses the usual shape.

Two of everything arrives and one of each is redundant — two sofas, two dining tables, two sets of garden tools. None of that is decidable at either old address, because the comparison only becomes possible once both lots are in the same building. Expect the inbound load to be substantial, and expect it to consist of perfectly good furniture rather than of worn-out furniture, which makes the free routes unusually worth using at that end.

If you are downsizing into it

The opposite case, and it front-loads the work.

Where the new place is smaller, the outbound clearance carries almost the whole job and the inbound one is mostly cartons. That is the efficient shape: decisions made at the old address cost you once, whereas the same decision deferred costs transport and then removal. If you already know the new house has less room, the outbound booking is the one to make generous.

If the closing date slips

Which happens, and it affects the outbound clearance more than the inbound.

A clearance booked for the week before a move is tied to a date that may not hold. There is no charge for rescheduling and no rush rate if it lands at short notice, so the safe approach is to book against the packing rather than against the closing — the packing happens whether or not the date moves.

What to do with the cartons in the meantime

A small thing that keeps the second clearance honest.

Break boxes down as they empty rather than stacking them whole, and keep them in one place. Flattened cartons take a fraction of the space and, more usefully, a flat stack is countable — you can tell us a number rather than describing a corner of the garage. Whole boxes stacked inside each other are easy to over-estimate, because the pile looks like furniture and measures like paper.

Which clearance are you booking?

Find the closest description:

The golden rule

A move is two clearances at two addresses. Budget for the second. Plan the outbound one alongside the packing, because that is where a decision saves you paying twice. Then expect a smaller one three weeks later at the other end, made mostly of cartons and of things that came along because deciding was harder than loading them. Budget for both and neither one surprises you.

Related services

Serving Raleigh, the Triangle and Wake County

Frequently asked questions