The short answer

Price the leftover contents, book the window, get the unit showable. Volume pricing: quarter truck $241, half $431, three-quarters $587, full $732. Item pricing for a lighter turn: sofa $126, mattress and box spring set $143, standard dresser $126, desk $83, flat-pack bookcase $100, TV between 42 and 65 inches $68.

The minimum visit is $75. Disposal and carry-out from any floor are included, which matters when the unit is an English basement or a third-floor rowhouse conversion.

The DC turnover calendar

No city in the country has a more predictable rental churn, because four calendars drive it.

  • Electoral. Hill staff turn over heavily after an election and again in January. Group houses in Eckington, Truxton Circle, Hill East and Bloomingdale flip as blocks.
  • Contractual. Recompetes move people between Crystal City, Rosslyn, Tysons, Reston and Springfield with no seasonal pattern at all.
  • Academic. Georgetown, GW, Howard, American, Catholic, UDC, Gallaudet and UMD College Park release students inside a few weeks in May. Langley Park through Hyattsville and Foggy Bottom empty at once.
  • Diplomatic. Embassy and international-organization postings rotate on two- and three-year cycles, concentrated in summer.

If you own units in this metro you can put the busy weeks in a calendar a year ahead. Doing so is the single highest-return thing a DC landlord can do about turnover cost.

What tenants leave here

Consistent, because the furniture was bought for a lease rather than a life, and because moving it out of a rowhouse is harder than abandoning it.

  • The sofa. $126, or $185 if it is a three-piece sectional or an oversize piece that needs cutting apart to clear the stair.
  • The bed. $143 for a mattress and box spring set, $68 for the metal frame.
  • Flat-pack storage that will not survive another disassembly. $100 for a bookcase, $143 for a particleboard wardrobe.
  • A desk and a chair, because everyone here works from home part of the week. $83 and $61.
  • A mini fridge, in student-adjacent units. $115.
  • Bags and boxes. 10 bags of debris $132, 20 bags $259.

A standard furnished one-bedroom leftover -- sofa, bed set, desk, chair -- is $126 + $143 + $83 + $61 = $413, which is why the half truck at $431 usually wins once anything else is in the unit.

The carry is the whole job in DC rental stock

A large share of this city's rental inventory is inside buildings that were not designed as rental inventory.

  • English basements. The below-grade unit under the stoop, with its own exterior stair that turns at the bottom and low headroom. Ubiquitous across Petworth, Columbia Heights, Bloomingdale and the Hill, and the hardest routine carry in the city.
  • Rowhouse floor conversions. A second or third floor reached by a narrow stair that turns at the landing.
  • Walk-ups. Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, Columbia Heights, three and four floors, no elevator.
  • Managed buildings. Navy Yard, NoMa, Ballston, Bethesda, Tysons -- certificate of insurance and reserved freight elevator.

None of those carries a surcharge. The price on the sofa is the price whether the sofa is in the front hall or three floors up.

Deposit and documentation

If you are charging removal against a deposit, document it properly. Photograph the unit with the items in place before anything moves, keep the itemized booking with the published prices on it, and keep the receipt.

A line-item invoice showing $126 for the sofa and $143 for the mattress set is a much stronger position than a round-number figure with no breakdown. Published pricing is useful to landlords for exactly this reason: the tenant can look the numbers up themselves.

The dumping risk is yours

The other reason to handle this proactively: if the outgoing tenant puts the sofa in the alley on a Sunday night, the notice comes to the property owner. Not to them. And you still have to pay for the removal on top of whatever the citation is.

Cheap prevention is a sentence in the lease and a reminder two weeks before the move-out date saying that the metro's collection programs are request-based, that leaving furniture on public space is enforced, and that a booked removal exists. Check your own jurisdiction's current bulky-item page and link it -- DC, Montgomery, Prince George's, Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church and Fairfax all run their own.

Turning a unit fast

The sequence that works in this city:

  • Walkthrough on the day the keys come back. Photograph everything left.
  • Book the removal the same afternoon for the earliest window. There is no same-day surcharge.
  • If it is a managed building, request the COI wording from the office and reserve the freight elevator before anything else. That is the long pole, not the crew.
  • Schedule the removal before the cleaners and the painters, not after. Painters cannot work around a sofa.
  • Pick a mid-day window on permit-parked residential blocks, away from the rush-hour standing restrictions on Connecticut, 16th, Wisconsin and Rhode Island.

Portfolio landlords

If you hold several units in the District or across Arlington, Silver Spring and Hyattsville, the useful pattern is to batch. May is not one turnover, it is six, and booking them together in the same week is easier on everyone than improvising each one.

The pricing does not change for volume, but the scheduling does -- a known set of addresses and windows in advance is a much more reliable week than six separate urgent calls. Send the list, get the numbers, put them in the calendar.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a DC turnover cleanout cost?

A lightly furnished unit is a quarter truck at $241, a typical one-bedroom half a truck at $431, and a furnished two-bedroom three-quarters at $587. Individual pieces price off the list -- $126 for a sofa, $143 for a mattress and box spring set.

Can I charge this to the tenant's deposit?

That depends on your lease and your jurisdiction. What helps in every case is documentation: photographs of the items in place, an itemized booking with published prices, and the receipt.

What if the tenant dumps furniture in the alley instead?

The notice comes to you as the property owner, and you still pay for removal on top. A reminder before the move-out date, linking your jurisdiction's bulky-item page, is the cheapest prevention there is.

Do you charge extra for English basement units?

No. The exterior stair under the stoop is the most common hard carry in this city and it is priced as ordinary work. No stair, walk-up or below-grade charges anywhere.

Can you do several units in the same week?

Yes, and for May and post-election turnovers it is the sensible way to run it. Send the addresses and the contents, get the numbers, and book the windows together.