A rental left full after an eviction or a walkaway is not a normal turnover. The belongings still legally belong to somebody, the schedule is set by a court process rather than a lease end date, and the unit has usually sat with the power off. Confirm your legal position first, then clear it. The hauling is the fast part.
Everything below assumes the legal side is settled.
Confirm where you stand before anybody loads a thing
We are haulers, not attorneys, and this is the one job where we say that up front rather than at the bottom. What happens to a tenant's property in Texas depends on how the tenancy ended, what the writ said, and what your lease says. Anybody in our trade who tells you they can answer that is guessing with your liability.
The Texas State Law Library keeps a plain-language guide to the eviction process and a separate page on ending the lease, which is where the property-left-behind questions live. The underlying statute is Chapter 24 of the Texas Property Code. Read them, then confirm the specifics with your own attorney before the clearing is scheduled. We will not tell you what a notice period is, how long anything has to be held, or when property counts as abandoned. Those are legal calls and they turn on facts we do not have.
The practical version is shorter. Landlords who get burned on these jobs got burned on timing, not on hauling.
What makes it different from a normal turnover
A tenant who moves out on their own takes what they want and leaves what they do not. A unit cleared after an eviction is different in four ways, and each one changes how the day runs.
The belongings are not sorted. Clothes are still in dressers, food is still in cabinets, and a working television sits next to a broken chair.
The utilities are often off. No lights in a hallway, no water to rinse anything, and in a North Texas summer an unconditioned unit for two weeks is its own problem. Say so when you book, because it changes what a crew brings.
The refrigerator is the worst item in the building. A fridge that lost power with food in it is a job people underestimate every time. Tell us before the crew arrives so it gets handled first and sealed rather than opened in the hallway.
And there is a deadline with money attached. The unit earns nothing until it is rentable, so the clearing, the repairs and the paint all queue behind each other.
Photograph every room before anything moves, with the date visible. Do it for your own file, not for us. Whatever the dispute later turns out to be, a dated photo set of the condition you found is the cheapest evidence you will ever collect.
The order the work runs in
Photos first. Then the clearing runs in roughly the order we use on a rental property cleanout that ended normally.
Start with anything you have been told to preserve. If your attorney has said specific items are held rather than disposed of, those come out first and go where you were told to put them, before general hauling starts. Mixing that step into the rest is how a clean job turns into a bad one.
Then the refrigerator and anything else spoiled, because it gets worse every hour and the smell moves through a unit. Then the large furniture, which is the bulk of the load and the part that clears floor space for everything else. Then the small items, room by room. Then closets, cabinets and the top shelf of the pantry, which is where things hide. Then the patio, the garage and the storage closet, which get forgotten on about half these jobs.
Last is the part people do not think of as a cleanout at all: the curtains, the broken blinds, the rug pad glued to the floor, and whatever is screwed to the walls. If the goal is a bare unit ready for paint, say bare unit when you book, because otherwise a crew reasonably leaves the mounted shelf alone.
The units that are worse than expected
Two situations show up often enough to be worth naming.
The first is a unit where somebody had been struggling long before the eviction, with volume and conditions a normal cleanout does not prepare a crew for. We handle that quietly, the same way we handle a hoarder house. No commentary, no photos shared, crews who have done it before.
The second is a unit that sat long enough for water to get involved. A slow leak with the power off and nobody reporting it is a different job, because at that point there is building material to remove rather than only belongings. Get the moisture handled before the demo and the demo before the haul. That sequence is in what happens after a slab leak.
Household hazardous waste is a hard stop either way. Paint, solvent, motor oil, pool chemicals and propane bottles are not something we take. Those go to your city's household chemical collection program, which every city in our service area runs at no charge for residents.
What happens to the belongings
Once you have confirmed you are clear to dispose of them, a fair amount is salvageable and a fair amount is not.
Usable furniture, appliances and household goods go to local donation partners wherever a partner can take them. Habitat for Humanity's donate goods pages cover what that network accepts and how pickups work if you would rather route some of it yourself. Metal and cardboard go to recyclers. We aim to keep more than half of every load out of the landfill.
The rest is disposed of properly: mattresses somebody slept on for four years, particle board already swelling at the corners, food, and anything that came out of a unit that lost power. The longer version is in where your junk actually goes after we haul it away.
One thing we will not do is treat a tenant's belongings as a revenue source. What leaves the unit gets donated or disposed of. If you have been told an item is held, it is held, and the crew hears that at the walkthrough.
Scams and the outfit that quotes over the phone
Landlords on a deadline are exactly who gets worked over, and the Texas Attorney General's consumer protection office is where to report it.
The tells are the same every time. A firm number quoted over the phone for a unit nobody has looked at. A quote that does not say whether disposal is included. A crew that turns out to be day labor hired that morning, unsupervised, in a building full of somebody else's property. Ask directly whether disposal fees are included, and ask directly whose employees are walking through the unit. Our answer to both: disposal is in the number, and the people who show up are our own crew.
How the job runs
Send photos of each room, say whether the power is on, and say whether the fridge has food in it. Then say plainly what the finish line is, because bare-to-the-floor and take-the-obvious-stuff are different jobs.
A crew comes out, walks the unit, and gives you a firm number before anything is lifted, disposal included. The quote is the bill. They work room by room, they carry rather than drag, and they sweep before they leave so your paint crew walks into an empty box.
We run seven days a week across the northern suburbs, including McKinney, Allen, Plano, Frisco, Richardson, Little Elm, Prosper, The Colony, Wylie and Fairview. Call before noon and the same afternoon is typical, though typical is the honest word rather than a promise. The service page for this work is estate cleanouts, and you can send photos as soon as you have them.
Frequently asked questions
Can you tell us when we are allowed to dispose of a tenant's property?
No, and we would be guessing if we tried. It depends on how the tenancy ended and what your lease says. Confirm it with your attorney, and use the Texas State Law Library guides linked above as a starting point rather than an answer.
Can you clear the unit while the eviction is still in process?
That is your call to make with counsel, not ours. We schedule the work for the date you give us. We will not advise you on whether that date is the right one.
What if there is a refrigerator full of spoiled food?
Tell us before the crew arrives. It gets handled first and it gets sealed rather than opened inside the unit. It is common on these jobs and it is not a reason to be embarrassed about the call.
Do you take everything down to bare floor?
If that is what you ask for. Blinds, curtains, mounted shelving and rug pads all come out when you say bare unit at the walkthrough. Say it up front so it is in the quote.
Can you come back if we find more after the first pass?
Yes. Garages, patios and storage closets get missed on about half of these, so a second stop is normal rather than a problem.
Nobody enjoys this job. The only good part is that an empty unit can be painted and a painted one can be rented. The rest of what we clear is on the services page.