What an apartment cleanout costs in Dallas

The short answer

Apartment cleanouts are priced two ways and you pay whichever is lower. If you can list the contents, we price per item from a published catalogue. If it is a pile of unsorted stuff, we price by how much of the truck it fills.

The truck ladder is $241 for a quarter, $338 for three-eighths, $431 for a half, $513 for five-eighths, $587 for three-quarters, $661 for seven-eighths and $732 for a full load. The visit minimum is $75.

Where a real Dallas flat lands depends far more on whether it was furnished than on its square footage.

Worked examples, priced per item

These are catalogue prices added up. Nothing rounded, nothing bundled.

Studio, tenant leaving the furniture behind. Sofa $126 + queen mattress $103 + box spring $92 + standard dresser $126 = $447. Priced as volume instead, that content often fits a three-eighths truck at $338, so $338 is what you would pay.

One-bedroom, SMU-area rental in May. Sofa $126 + queen mattress $103 + metal bed frame $68 + desk, standard $83 + office chair $61 + TV 42" to 65" $68 = $509.

Two-bedroom, furnished, corporate lease ending in Las Colinas. That is normally a truck-ladder job — a half truck at $431 or three-quarters at $587 depending on how much is soft furniture and how much is boxes.

Just the awkward pieces. Queen mattress $103 + box spring $92 = $195. Or take the set price: a mattress and box spring set is $143.

Furnished versus unfurnished is the whole variable

Two flats of identical size in the same Uptown building price very differently, and it is not about tidiness. It is about whether the sofa and the beds are staying.

An unfurnished move-out is boxes, bags, a shelving unit and whatever is in the wardrobe. That is volume, and it compresses — you can get a surprising amount into a quarter truck at $241. A furnished move-out is a sofa, a bed, a dresser and a dining set, and furniture does not compress. Four pieces of upholstered furniture will eat half a truck on their own.

So when you are estimating your own job, count the large soft items first. Everything else is noise around them.

Dallas building types, and what each one adds

The metro has three distinct apartment realities and they behave differently on the day.

• Uptown, Victory Park and Downtown mid-rise and high-rise. Service lift, loading dock, booked window, and almost always a certificate of insurance from the removal company held by management before anyone is allowed upstairs. The lift slot is the constraint, not the carrying.
• Garden-style complexes around Vickery Meadow, Lake Highlands, Richardson and the Greenville corridor. Two or three storys, external stair, no lift, park as close as the fire lane allows. Straightforward, just a longer carry.
• Corporate and relocation apartments in Las Colinas, Addison and Legacy West. Often furnished by a third party, often cleared on a hard date tied to a lease end rather than a move.

None of that changes the price. There is no stair charge, no lift fee and no long-carry fee. It changes how many people we send and how long we block out.

The COI, and why buildings ask for it

If you are in a mid-rise or high-rise, the management office will almost certainly want a certificate of insurance naming the building before they release the service lift. This is routine and it is the single most common reason a cleanout slips a day — not because the company cannot provide one, but because nobody asked for it until the morning of the move.

We carry insurance and issue COIs. Give us the building name and the management email when you book and the certificate goes over ahead of the visit, so the lift is reserved and the dock is booked before the truck rolls. If your building has a specific additional-insured wording, send that too; we would rather get it right once.

Deposits, and the timing that protects them

A Dallas lease turnover has a hard edge to it. Deposits get withheld for items left in the unit, items left by the compactor, and items left in the assigned parking space. A mattress by the dumpster enclosure is a chargeable violation at most complexes, because it cannot go in a compactor and the property pays a contractor to take it away.

Two practical rules. Book the clear-out for the day before your final walkthrough, not the same day — it leaves room for a cleaner afterwards and for anything you forgot in a closet. And in May, book early: the SMU rental belt around Snider Plaza, Lower Greenville and the University Park streets all empty in the same two weeks, and so does every student flat near the other campuses.

What tends to be forgotten

The estimate is usually short by the same handful of things every time. Check these before you send the list.

• The balcony. Patio chairs are $30 each, a patio table is $89, an umbrella with base is $53. Dallas balconies collect furniture that has been baking since the last tenant.
• The wardrobe floor and the coat cupboard. A bag of clothes is $35, a suitcase is $30.
• Electronics. A TV under 42" is $62, 42" to 65" is $68, a computer monitor is $58, a box of electronics is $77.
• Rugs. A large area rug is $68, a small one is $33.
• The storage cage or assigned garage bay, if the building gave you one. People forget it exists until the day they hand the keys back.

Getting a firm number

Send photos — one per room, taken from the doorway, plus the balcony and any storage cage. That is enough to place the job on the ladder or price it per item, and you get the total before booking rather than in the corridor.

If the flat is already empty of you and you are coordinating remotely from a new posting in Plano or out of state entirely, that works fine. We can collect from the leasing office, work to a lift slot they have booked, and send you photos of the cleared unit afterwards.

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