Landlord turnover cleanout in Columbus

The short answer

Turnovers are priced by volume because they are never an item list. Quarter $241, three-eighths $338, half $431, five-eighths $513, three-quarters $587, seven-eighths $661, full $732.

Typical Columbus units: a studio or one-bedroom left partly furnished is a quarter to a half. A two-bedroom garden unit out on Bethel or Hamilton Road is usually a half. A four-bedroom campus-area double left loaded is a full load, sometimes more.

Common named items: mattress and box spring set $143, sofa $126, dresser $126, desk $83, mini fridge $115, refrigerator $164, window AC (large) $109, large junk pile $208.

Speed is the whole economics

The cleanout is not the expensive part. The vacancy is.

A unit sitting full for a week while you find a crew is a week of no rent, a week of delayed paint and carpet, and a week later onto the listing sites. In a market moving as fast as the Columbus rental market, that is real money against a removal cost that is fixed and modest.

The single operational change that saves the most: book the removal for the morning after the lease ends, before you schedule paint, carpet or the cleaner. Whatever the outgoing tenant told you they were taking, the final hour produces more than expected, and a pickup on the right day catches all of it in one visit instead of two.

Abandoned property: handle the legal side first

When a tenant leaves possessions behind, what you may do with them and when is a legal question governed by Ohio law and by your lease. It differs depending on whether the tenancy ended by surrender, by expiry or by eviction, and we are not going to summarize it here, because getting it wrong is expensive and the details matter.

Confirm your obligations with counsel or your property management association before anything is removed. What we can tell you is the operational practice that protects you either way:

• Photograph everything before it moves, room by room, with a timestamp. Then photograph the empty unit.
• Keep the booking record and the receipt. It names the operator, the date and the disposal chain.
• Separate anything that looks like documents, identification or personal papers and store it rather than disposing of it.

Those three habits cost nothing and answer almost every question that comes up later.

The Columbus turnover calendar

This metro does not turn over evenly, and if you own in more than one neighborhood you are running two different calendars.

Mid-August, campus-area. The University District, Old North and Weinland Park roll over in the same handful of days. Doubles, half-doubles, three-story conversions. High volume, abandoned furniture as standard, contested parking, and every truck in Franklin County booked. Reserve in late July.

May through July, suburban and family. Garden complexes along Bethel, Sawmill, Hamilton Road and out toward Reynoldsburg and Grove City, plus single-family rentals. Driven by school calendars and closings.

Month-end, year-round. Ordinary lease cycles cluster on the last and first days of the month. Mid-month weekdays are the easy slots, and there is no price difference, so use them where you can.

What gets left behind, by unit type

Campus doubles. Mattresses, particleboard desks and shelving, sofas nobody could get down the stairs, window AC units, bunk beds. A four-bedroom house routinely produces four mattress sets on its own: 4 x $143 = $572, which is why the full load at $732 is usually the right booking.

Garden and suburban units. Full-size furniture, a working television, kitchen items, patio furniture on the balcony, and whatever is in the exterior storage closet.

Single-family rentals. The basement and the garage, because tenants use them the same way owners do. Expect a chest freezer at $146 or a mini fridge at $115 that has been in the basement for two tenancies.

Condos and managed buildings. Less volume, more paperwork. Many buildings Downtown and in the Short North require a certificate of insurance on file and a reserved service elevator window.

Running it without being there

Most turnover bookings in this city are handled remotely by the owner or the property manager.

• Lockbox code or unit access instructions in the booking notes.
• Photos before and after on request, which is standard.
• The price fixed before dispatch, so nothing gets renegotiated by phone while a crew waits.
• Receipt by email for your file.

For portfolios, the efficient pattern is to book multiple loads in advance across a turnover week rather than calling unit by unit. In the August campus two weeks that is the difference between clearing eight houses on schedule and clearing them over three weeks.

The tree lawn is not a strategy

It is tempting to put a departing tenant's furniture out at the curb and let collection handle it. Two problems with that in Columbus.

First, item limits. A four-bedroom house produces more than one collection's worth, and what is over the limit stays on your grass.

Second, the notice lands on you. Whatever is on your parcel outside the set-out window is the property owner's responsibility, not the student who moved to Chicago. In the University District, where year-round residents have been pushing back on August furniture piles for decades, this is not a quiet issue.

Check the city's refuse collection page for the address, use the curb where it genuinely works, and book the rest. It is cheaper than a notice and much cheaper than a reputation on a street where you own several houses.

What is included

• Two people, all the loading, and the truck.
• Carry-out from any floor, which in campus-area doubles is the entire job.
• Disposal, transfer and recycling, with refrigerant recovered on appliances.
• Broom sweep of the unit, so paint and carpet can start.
• Certificate of insurance for managed buildings on request.

No stair charge, no same-day surcharge, no seasonal pricing in August.

Frequently asked questions