Do you deduct the value of the furniture?
No. We do not subtract the resale value of usable furniture from the price, and we therefore do not advertise that we might. Munich's second-hand market for standard furniture does not support it: collection, interim storage, photographing, listing and selling cost more working time than the proceeds bring in.
That is an inconvenient answer, because many competitors promise the opposite. So here is how the calculation behind that promise actually works.
How the promise is priced
A value deduction is not a discount. It is a line in the calculation — one that is planned in before the site visit and removed after it.
The sequence is remarkably consistent:
- The quoted price is set higher from the outset, because a "possible offset" is priced in.
- On the day it turns out nothing sellable was found after all — the wall unit is chipboard, the sofa is stained, the kitchen is a discontinued model.
- You pay the price originally quoted. You have simply spent the intervening weeks budgeting for a saving that never existed.
This works because nobody knows the counterfactual. You have no quote without an offset to compare against.
How can I tell whether an offset is meant seriously?
Two questions are enough, and both belong in writing:
- What is the price with no offset at all? Without a figure there is no benchmark.
- What happens if nothing sellable is found? If the answer is "then the regular price applies" and that regular price is never stated, the offset is negotiating room.
A serious offer names the items concretely — "oak table, six chairs, longcase clock: €400" — and does so before the clearance, not after.
Why the second-hand market does not support it
Work it through. A well-kept standard sofa might fetch €60 on the Munich second-hand market. To realise that €60 you need:
- Careful, damage-free transport instead of dismantling — roughly 30 minutes extra
- Interim storage until a buyer appears — storage space costs rent
- Photos, a listing, answering enquiries, coordinating collection — easily an hour
- The risk that nobody comes and the sofa is disposed of anyway eight weeks later
At an hourly rate of 65,45 €55,00 €, the proceeds are gone after about an hour and a half of extra work — and that is for a piece in above-average condition.
For chipboard furniture, mattresses, appliances over five years old and fitted kitchens, the market value is not small but negative: disposal costs more than the sale brings in.
What we do instead — and what it saves you
We do not throw away things that are still usable. Working appliances, furniture in good condition, bicycles, tools and household goods are offered to charity shops and non-profit organisations.
The effect for you is not a credit but less weight on the scales. Disposal is billed at {{p:disposalPer100Kg}} per 100 kilograms. If 200 kilograms of usable goods are passed on rather than disposed of, roughly €95 comes off your invoice — verifiable against the weighbridge ticket.
That is the more honest mechanism: it is checkable, it does not depend on anybody's judgement, and it does not evaporate on the day.
Where there is genuinely money to be had
Some contents are worth selling. They just do not belong in a clearance:
- Antiques and art. Get a valuation before anything is cleared. An auction house achieves prices no clearance company can offer.
- Collections. Coins, stamps, records, model railways, watches. The value lies in the collection being complete, and that ends the moment somebody "takes it away".
- Tools and machinery. On workshop and business closures, selling working machines individually is almost always more lucrative than scrapping.
- Quality musical instruments. A playable branded piano has a market. An average 1960s piano does not — see disposing of pianos, safes and other heavy objects.
Our rule is simple: anything that might have an auction value, we do not touch. We set it aside and tell you to have it valued. On a full household clearance that is part of the process.
The special case of the "free clearance"
Offers promising a free clearance in exchange for a value offset are not inherently dishonest — but they presuppose contents an ordinary household does not have. For a clearance to become free, the resale proceeds must cover the working time, the transport and the disposal cost of everything that cannot be sold.
For an average flat that is several thousand euros of value. If you had that, you would generally know.
What happens when the contents fall short of expectations is rarely in the small print — and then gets negotiated on site, on a day when saying no is hard, because the flat is handed back the day after tomorrow.
Our position, in one sentence
We give you a price calculated without any offset, we hold it, and we reduce your disposal weight wherever we can. The full rates are in what a clearance in Munich costs and on the disposal and recycling page.