Rental Property Turnover Cleanouts for Landlords and Property Managers

Published August 3, 2026 · By Daw's Junk Solutions

You're standing in a unit the tenant handed back yesterday. There's a sectional nobody could fit in a U-Haul, a mattress leaned against the wall, a dead TV, and eleven bags of stuff that never made it to the car. The carpet guy can't start until it's empty. The painter can't start until the carpet guy is done. And your listing photos can't happen until all of that is finished.

Nothing moves until the junk moves. That's the whole job, and it's the part landlords get stuck on, because most junk removal companies are set up to talk to a homeowner who is home. You're not home. You're managing eleven doors and this is Tuesday.

Here's how we run turnover cleanouts for landlords and property managers around Pearland and the South Houston suburbs, what it costs, and the one part of this we won't give you an answer on.

Every Day That Unit Sits Empty Is Rent You Do Not Get Back

Speed is the product here. Not the trailer, not the crew shirts. Speed.

Do the math on your own unit. A rental at $1,650 a month is about $54 a day. Wait four days for a hauler with an opening and you burned $216 before anybody touched a paint roller. Do that on three units a year and it's real money, and none of it shows up on an invoice where you'd notice it.

That's why we hold same-day and next-day slots. You don't need us in two weeks. You need the unit empty before the flooring crew shows up Thursday. Most turnovers we run take between 45 minutes and two hours on site, and the trailer leaves with everything in it.

What Tenants Actually Leave Behind in a Turnover

After enough of these you stop being surprised. It's the same short list almost every time, and it's almost never the stuff people expect:

• The couch or sectional that would not fit in the new place
• Mattresses and box springs, usually one more than there were bedrooms
• A washer or dryer that quit and never got hauled off
• A refrigerator, sometimes unplugged with food still in it
• Bagged trash in the kitchen, the closets, and the garage
• Broken TVs, a computer tower, a pile of cords
• Kids' toys, a bed frame in pieces, a mirror with no home
• Patio furniture, a grill, and whatever was behind the shed
• Half a garage of hangers, cleaning supplies, and paint cans

We take all of that. The furniture side is the bulk of it, so the couch, the bed frames, and the rest of it come out first, and the fridge and the washer go the same trip. Freon units go to certified disposal, not straight into the pile.

The short list of what we can't load is hazardous material:

• Liquid paint, stains, and solvents
• Motor oil, gasoline, and pool chemicals
• Asbestos and anything bio-hazardous

Dried-out cans we can usually work with. Full ones need a household hazardous waste drop-off. Send us a photo and we'll tell you which one you've got before we roll.

What Texas Law Says About the Stuff a Tenant Leaves Behind

This is the part landlords call us about most, and it's the part we are careful with. Read this as the general shape of it, not as advice about your unit. We're the guys with the trailer. We are not your attorney.

Start with the thing that decides everything: a constable executing a writ of possession and a tenant handing you the keys are two different situations, and they don't work the same way.

When a constable executes a writ of possession

Section 24.0061 of the Texas Property Code lays out what the writ orders the officer to do. The officer posts a written warning on the front door of the unit at least 24 hours before the writ is executed. When it is executed, the officer delivers possession to you, and has the personal property removed from the unit and placed outside at a nearby location, not blocking a sidewalk, passageway, or street, and not while it's raining, sleeting, or snowing. The officer can bring in a bonded or insured warehouseman at their own discretion, and the same section says the officer may not require you to store the property.

Practically, that means the pile ends up on the grass and it's on you to make it disappear. That's where we come in. You can read Chapter 24 on the state's own site if you want the exact wording.

When the tenant just leaves and the stuff stays

This one is murkier, and the internet will hand you a wrong answer with a straight face. Search it and you'll be told Texas gives you 60 days of storage before you can dispose of a tenant's property. That 60-day rule is real, but it lives in Chapter 93 of the Property Code, and the very first section of that chapter says the chapter applies only to commercial rental property. Your house, your duplex, your fourplex is not commercial rental property. Do not run your turnover off that number.

There's also a separate track in Chapter 54 for a residential landlord who wants to seize a tenant's property over unpaid rent. It has its own rules about what can't be touched, whether your written lease authorizes it at all, leaving an itemized written notice behind, and how far ahead of a sale the tenant has to be notified. That is a lien, not a cleanout, and it is a different decision than the one you're making about a pile of trash bags.

What a Rental Turnover Cleanout Costs

We price by how much room it takes in the trailer. No hourly rate, no surprise on the back end. You get the number before we load anything.

• Minimum pickup, a couple of items: starting at $125
• Small load, about 2.25 cubic yards: starting at $175
• Medium load, 4.5 cubic yards or half the trailer: starting at $225
• Large load, about 6.75 cubic yards: starting at $325
• Full trailer load, 9 cubic yards: starting at $449

One thing to be clear about, because it's the question we get from every property manager: $449 is the price of one full trailer load. It is not a cap on the job. A one-bedroom that a tenant walked away from is often a medium or large load. A three-bedroom left full can be two full loads. Four units turning in the same week is four separate jobs, priced on their own, not one $449 invoice.

What that buys you is all of the labor. We carry it out. Upstairs units, no elevator, a hallway with two turns in it, none of that changes the number. You do not lift anything and you do not have to stage a pile at the curb first.

How This Works When You Are Not On Site

Most of the landlords and managers we work for never meet us. Here's how it actually goes, start to finish:

1. 1You call or text with the address, the unit number, and roughly what's in there. A couple of photos from your phone is plenty.
2. 2We give you a price range off those photos and a window. If we get there and it's smaller than it looked, the price comes down.
3. 3You send a lockbox code, a gate code, or tell us the key is at the office. If the power is off, say so, because we plan the crew around a dark unit.
4. 4We text you when we pull up, and we shoot the unit before we touch anything.
5. 5If the scope is bigger than the photos showed, you get a text with the real number before we load. No surprises on an invoice.
6. 6We clear it, sweep up behind ourselves, and send after photos of every room.
7. 7Invoice comes by email. One per unit if you need it that way for your books, or one for the whole building.

The before and after photos are the part managers care about most. They go straight into your file on the unit, and if a tenant later disputes what came out of there, you have a timestamped record instead of a memory.

Same setup works when there's no tenant involved at all, like getting a vacant property show-ready before it hits the market, or when a court date is already on the calendar and you need a crew standing by for the day the writ gets executed.

Multi-Unit Buildings and Back-to-Back Turnovers

If you have four units turning in the same two weeks, tell us up front. It changes how we schedule, not just what we charge.

A single trailer holds 9 cubic yards. On a multi-unit day we work the building in order, run a load to the transfer station, and come back for the next one. If all four units are light, that can be two trips total. If two of them are packed, it's a longer day and we'll say so before we start rather than after. Either way you get a per-unit number, because your books need it that way and because it keeps everybody honest.

A few things that make a multi-unit day go faster, from doing plenty of them:

• Give us all the unit numbers and codes in one message instead of one at a time
• Tell us which units have stairs and which have an elevator
• Say where we can park the trailer, and whether the fire lane is enforced
• Flag the units where the power is already shut off
• Let us know if a dumpster on site is off limits to us, which it usually is

We run this work on rentals all over the Pearland side, plus Friendswood, Alvin, Manvel, League City, Missouri City, Pasadena, and the rest of the south suburbs. Seven days a week, because leases do not end on business days.

Frequently Asked Questions

Get the Unit Empty and Get It Re-Rented

Call or text 281-202-9668 with the address and a couple of photos, or fill out the form below. You get a price before we load, a crew that carries everything out, and photos of the unit when it's done. Better Call Daw.