Moving-out cleanout costs in Philadelphia

The short answer

A move-out cleanout is the stuff that does not make the truck: the sofa that will not fit the new place, the bed you are replacing, the desk that fell apart, the contents of the basement you inherited from the last tenant.

Priced per item, a common Philadelphia leftover load looks like this:

That is $126 + $143 + $83 + $72 = $424. Priced by volume instead, it is very close to the $431 half-truck rung. A quarter truck is $241, three quarters is $587, a full one is $732. The minimum is $75 per visit.

Philadelphia's two move-out seasons

This city does not move evenly through the year. It moves in two waves, and they matter for scheduling.

The end of August into the first days of September. An unusually large share of Philadelphia leases turn over on the same handful of days, and the student cycle at Temple, Drexel, Penn, Jefferson and La Salle stacks on top of it. Every block in Powelton Village, Spruce Hill, Cedar Park and around Cecil B. Moore becomes a furniture pile. Trucks are booked out. If your move is in that window, book the cleanout two or three weeks ahead, not two or three days.

Late spring, around settlement season. Philadelphia sales tend to cluster from April into June, which means a steady run of "we settle Friday and the basement is still full" jobs. Slightly easier to book than the September wave, but not empty.

The quiet windows are January through early March and the back half of October. If you have any flexibility, those are the easy weeks.

What "broom-clean" actually means to a Philadelphia buyer

Most agreements of sale here require the property be left broom-clean and free of personal property at settlement. In a row home that phrase does more work than people realize, because there are four levels to empty and buyers open all of them.

• The basement. The single most common failure. A buyer walking through the day before settlement will go down there, and forty years of paint tins is a conversation you do not want on a Thursday afternoon.
• The third floor or attic. Whatever was too heavy to bring down when the previous move happened.
• The back yard or patio. Patio table $89, chairs $30 each, a charcoal grill at $59, a lawn mower at $65.
• The shed. If there is one, it counts.

Clear all four in a single visit and you avoid paying a second $75 minimum for the thing you forgot.

Renters: the security deposit arithmetic

If you leave a sofa in the unit or on the pavement, a Philadelphia landlord will deduct removal from your deposit, and they are not obliged to find the cheapest possible price when they do it. Paying $126 to have the sofa gone before the walkthrough is almost always cheaper than whatever line appears on your deposit statement, and it is the only version where you control the number.

The same goes for the pieces that are genuinely tempting to abandon:

• Futon $111 — the single most abandoned object in West Philly every September.
• Twin mattress $82, full $94, queen $103. Nobody wants your mattress. Do not leave it in the vestibule.
• Particleboard bookcase $100, office chair $61, standard desk $83.
• Window AC unit — small $87, large $109. Landlords notice when one is missing from the window and when a broken one is left in it.

Two specific Philadelphia access problems to sort before the day

The building with rules

If you are moving out of a Center City tower near Rittenhouse, Logan Square or Washington Square West, the management office almost certainly requires a reserved freight elevator, a move window inside set hours, and a certificate of insurance naming the building and management company. That paperwork takes a day or two and buildings do not waive it. Book the elevator before you book the truck.

The street with no room

If you are moving out of a row home, there is no driveway and the street is one lane once both curbs are parked. That is normal, it is not a surcharge, and it does not need anything from you — but if you have a removals truck booked for the same morning, stagger the two by a couple of hours so they are not competing for the same twenty feet of curb.

What to do before the crew arrives

• Separate keep from go, physically. Put the go pile in one room if the house allows it. In a narrow row home, the front room is usually the right staging area.
• Walk the basement and the top floor with a torch. Both.
• Empty and defrost anything that was plugged in — fridge $164, chest freezer $146.
• Have gas and water disconnections done in advance if a range at $137 or a dishwasher at $109 is going.
• Take the photographs you will want for the deposit dispute you hope not to have.

One visit, one number

The whole point of pricing this in advance is that a move-out is already a day with too many moving parts — the removals firm, the settlement table, the utilities, the keys. The junk should be the boring, settled part of it.

Count the pieces, get the sum, book the date, and let the crew handle the staircase with the turn in it, the basement hatchway and the parking. That work is what the price is for.

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