Landlord turnover cleanouts in Philadelphia

The short answer

Volume pricing, published in advance so you can put a real number on a turnover before you have seen the inside.

Or itemize. A typical abandoned Philadelphia unit is a futon at $111, a queen mattress at $103 and a medium junk pile at $129 — $111 + $103 + $129 = $343.

Minimum $75 per visit. No stair fee, no walk-up fee, no parking fee, which matters when your portfolio is third-floor conversions on one-way streets.

Speed is the actual product

The removal cost is small against the vacancy cost. A unit that cannot be shown because the last tenant's sofa is in the front room is a unit earning nothing, and in Philadelphia the letting calendar is unforgiving — miss the early-August window on a student-adjacent block near Temple or Drexel and you may be looking at a long vacancy rather than a short one.

So the sequence that works is: walkthrough, book the clear, clear it, then trades. Not the other way round. A painter working around a futon costs you more than the futon does, and a cleaner cannot clean a room with a mattress in it.

The practical version: book the cleanout for the morning after the keys come back, before you have even decided what needs painting.

Abandoned property: document before you clear

This is the part to get right, and it is not something to improvise.

Pennsylvania has rules about how a landlord must handle personal property left behind by a tenant, and they differ depending on how the tenancy ended. We are not going to state notice periods, storage durations or statute references here — those change and getting them wrong is expensive for you, not for us. Check the current requirements or speak to your attorney before you clear an occupied-looking unit.

What is universally sensible regardless of the rules:

• Photograph everything in place before anything moves. Wide shots of each room, then close-ups of anything of apparent value.
• Date the photographs and keep them with the file.
• Set aside anything that looks like documents, identification, photographs or medication. These cause problems later far out of proportion to their volume.
• Keep the removal receipt. If any of this ends up on a deposit statement or in front of a magistrate, an itemized invoice from a real business is worth considerably more than a cash payment to a van.

What Philadelphia units actually contain

Predictable by neighborhood type, which helps you budget before the walkthrough.

• Student house-shares near Temple, Drexel, Penn and La Salle. Futon $111, twin mattress $82, flat-pack bookcase $100, desk $83, office chair $61, mini fridge $115, microwave $30. Usually a half to a full truck for a whole house.
• Row-home conversions in Kensington, Port Richmond, Olney and Frankford. One or two rooms of furniture per unit, plus whatever is in the shared basement. Quarter to half truck.
• West Philly twins in Spruce Hill, Cedar Park and Powelton. Bigger rooms, more furniture, often a third floor. Half to three quarters.
• Northeast and Mayfair flats. Ground-floor access, longer tenancies, more accumulation. Half to three quarters, often with a window AC at $87 or $109 still in the sash.
• Center City condos let out by an owner. Small volume, but the building wants a certificate of insurance and a booked freight elevator. Quarter to half.

The basement nobody mentions

In a Philadelphia row-home conversion there is almost always a shared basement with tenant storage, and it is where three previous turnovers quietly went.

Open it at the walkthrough, not in eight months when a new tenant asks about storage. Typical contents: a dead dehumidifier at $77, a bike at $37, boxes at $45 each, a chest freezer somebody's grandmother gave them at $146, and a sofa that predates your ownership.

Clearing it in the same visit as the unit costs you one visit minimum instead of two, and it is the single most common thing landlords in this city forget to include in the booking.

Things that will not go with the furniture

Budget these separately so a turnover does not stall:

• Refrigerant appliances. Fridge $164, mini fridge $115, window AC $87 small or $109 large. Refrigerant is recovered by a certified technician before disposal — it is inside the price with nothing added, but these are not ordinary curbside bulk.
• Televisions. $62, $68 or $73 by screen size. Handled separately from general trash in Pennsylvania.
• Renovation debris. If you are also pulling a kitchen or a bathroom, that is construction debris at $120, a cast iron tub at $185, a vanity at $69, a detached toilet at $64 — or price the lot by volume.
• Paint and chemicals. Household hazardous waste channels. Check the current city guidance.

Running it across a portfolio

If you hold several units in Philadelphia, a few habits make turnovers cheaper without touching the rate:

• Batch by day, not by address. Two units on the same block or the same street cleared in one visit share one trip.
• Book the block, not the unit. If three leases end the same week, schedule them together rather than reacting as each walkthrough happens.
• Keep a standing number in your model. Because the prices are published, you can budget $241 or $431 per turnover in your spreadsheet rather than guessing.
• Do not rely on the curb. Check the current bulk-pickup guidance, and remember that if a pile sits on a narrow pavement for four days, the complaint points at the property you own.
• Get ahead of the last week of August. Book two to three weeks out. Every trade in this city is booked solid that week.

Frequently asked questions