Estate Cleanout in
the DMV

A DMV estate, cleared with care

An estate clear is a sensitive job: a downsizing, a probate sale, a home going to market. We handle it quietly and discreetly, protect the fine furniture, art, and antiques the family is keeping or selling, and route everything usable to donation. The whole home is priced flat as truck-fill — including the basement and attic, where an estate's decades of contents often live, carried up and out. We work on the executor's, family's, or realtor's timeline, and handle the historic estates of Georgetown and Cleveland Park as well as Chevy Chase, Potomac, McLean, and Great Falls. When we're done the home is broom-clean and realtor-ready. (DC adds sales tax; in MD and VA there's no sales tax on the service.)

How much does an estate cleanout cost in DC?

Whole homes price by truck-fill, in seven published tiers, with as many truckloads as the house needs. A modest condo downsizing might be one partial load; a McLean house with a full basement, a garage and an attic is several.

$100 order minimum. Loading, stair-carry, sweep-out and disposal are inside every tier.

The storage unit that came with the estate. Almost every estate has one, and nobody knows what's in it. Units price by size, cleared start to finish:

The heavy things that stop an estate sale. These are the pieces buyers won't take and movers won't touch, and they're the reason a house sits half-empty for a month. All published flat:

For outside context: HomeGuide's 2026 junk-removal cost research puts a 1-800-GOT-JUNK full truck at roughly $700–$1,000 and College HUNKS at roughly $600–$800+ — both quoted only after an on-site estimate. Our ladder is published here and committed from photographs, which is what an executor working to a settlement date actually needs.

Maryland and Virginia do not tax the service. The Bethesda–Chevy Chase–Potomac–McLean–Great Falls estate belt — which is where most of this work is — is quoted with no service tax at all. Inside the District, DC sales tax shows at checkout.

Does DC pick up an estate's contents?

Not at this scale, and the numbers make it obvious. DC DPW bulk trash — requested through 311 or dpw.dc.gov — allows up to seven items per appointment, serves single-family homes and buildings of three units or fewer, and does not accept construction or demolition debris. A four-bedroom house with a full basement is not a seven-item appointment; it's forty appointments, spread across a year, with a curbside pile each time in a neighborhood where the estate is trying to be discreet.

And a large share of DC's housing can't use the program at all: condos, co-ops and apartment buildings of four or more units are excluded outright, and those residents are required to hire a private, licensed hauler. If the estate is a downsized parent's condo in Friendship Heights or a unit at the Watergate, the free option was never on the table.

Outside the District the shape repeats with different rules: Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax County each operate their own scheduled or on-call bulk programs, each with its own item caps and exclusions. None of them is designed to empty a house, and every one of them puts the carrying and the curb-staging on you. For an executor working against a settlement date, a listing date or a probate calendar, that isn't a plan — it's a hobby.

Where an estate's contents actually go — and the receipts

This is the part of the job that matters most to a family, and it's the part most haulers say nothing about. Everything usable gets photographed and offered to a partner who will genuinely take it. In the DMV that means Goodwill of Greater Washington, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity ReStore (which has multiple locations across the metro and takes furniture, cabinetry, fixtures and appliances), and A Wider Circle in Silver Spring — an organization that furnishes homes for families leaving homelessness and issues donation documentation. For an executor, that last one tends to be the one that lands: a mother's dining set going into a family's first stable apartment is a better outcome than a transfer station, and it comes with paperwork the estate can file.

We'll be straight about the limits. Partners accept clean and complete pieces — a sofa with a tear or a dresser missing drawers doesn't clear their bar, and no amount of good intention changes that. So we photograph, we route what will be accepted, and receipts follow the drop-off. What we will never do is put a dollar valuation on your donation; that number belongs to the estate and its accountant, not to a hauling crew.

The rest is separated properly: metal to scrap, electronics to the county e-waste programs, and anything with refrigerant — the kitchen fridge, the basement chest freezer, the window units — through EPA-certified freon recovery before disposal. Genuine waste tips at the regional facilities on the Maryland and Virginia sides. Disposal is expensive in this metro; it's inside your quoted number rather than a line that appears later.

When families call us

• An executor settling a parent's home — often on a probate or settlement clock, often while grieving, and usually needing photographs of the process rather than to be there for it.
• Downsizing into a condo — a Bethesda or Chevy Chase house traded for two bedrooms and no basement, with sixty years of contents that don't fit.
• After the estate sale — the pickers took the good pieces and left three-quarters of a house behind, which is the normal outcome, not a failure.
• Aging-in-place transitions — a move to assisted living, handled gently and without a spectacle on the street.
• Long-distance heirs — an adult child in another state who needs a discreet, insured crew, a firm number, and pictures when it's done.
• A house going straight to market — the listing agent wants it broom-clean by the weekend.

What estate customers say

Estate cleanouts across the DMV

Frequently asked questions