The summer turnover
Every summer, Drumcondra's rental houses turn over. Students at DCU's St Patrick's Campus and the Glasnevin campus finish their exams around May, leases end in late May or June, and the next group arrives in late August or September. In between, landlords have a few weeks to get each house cleared, cleaned and ready.
That window is what this page is about. Summer is also concert season at Croke Park, and our main Drumcondra page explains how we plan around event days, along with the area's red-brick and family homes.
What a student house leaves behind
Students don't take much when they leave. Room by room, you can usually expect:
| Room | What's typically left |
|---|---|
| Bedrooms | Mattress toppers, duvets, desk chairs, clothes rails, lamps, bags of clothes |
| Kitchen | Pots, plates, half-used food, bottles, a microwave or a toaster |
| Living room | A second-hand sofa, a TV stand, beanbags, board games |
| Hall and yard | Bikes, broken garden chairs, bags of rubbish, empties |
We take all of it, mattresses included, and sort it as it goes: bottles, cardboard and metal to recycling, and sound furniture set aside for reuse where possible.
spotless.ieA turnover plan for landlords
A summer turnover runs smoothly when each job happens in the right order:
- Before the tenants leave, ask them to send photos of each room in their last week, or take them yourself once they've gone.
- Get a fixed price from those photos, and book the day after the lease ends.
- We clear everything that isn't yours, and leave the floors swept.
- The cleaner comes in to an empty house.
- The carpets get cleaned last, so they're dry for the inventory; see carpet cleaning in Drumcondra.
- The inventory and photos for the next tenants are done on a clean, empty house.
Our guide to preparing a rental property covers the rest. If you own several houses in Dublin 9, we can schedule them back to back over one week.
Turning over a Drumcondra rental this summer? Send photos of each room, the yard and the attic on WhatsApp, with the date the lease ends. We'll reply with a fixed price, usually the same day.
What to ask the tenants before they go
A short message to your tenants a few weeks out saves time on the day:
- Take what's yours, or tell us what you're leaving. A list helps us price accurately.
- Don't leave mattresses on the footpath. Putting them out for someone to take usually ends in a complaint to the council.
- Hand back every key, including the back door and the shed.
- Empty the fridge, or at least bin the food.
If the house is shared by a group, one person should be the contact for the hand-over.
How a student house is priced
A student house is priced like any other clearance, from photos. The things that move the figure are how much has been left, how many mattresses and appliances there are, whether the attic or the shed needs doing too, and how far the van is from the hall door.
What students leave changes from year to year, so each turnover is priced on its own rather than on last summer's job. The most accurate price comes from photos taken after the tenants have gone, or in their last few days once most of their things are packed. Once you've agreed it, that's the price, even if a few extra bags turn up on the day.
The houses themselves
Student houses in Drumcondra are mostly red-brick terraces near the Drumcondra Road and 1930s semis around Griffith Avenue. On a terrace, everything is carried out through the hall door; the semis usually have a side passage to the back garden, which makes the yard quicker to clear.
Both often come with an attic the landlord uses for storage, a back yard shed full of things previous tenants left, and sometimes a garage off the back lane. Our pages on attic clearance in Drumcondra and shed clearance in Drumcondra go into those.
When it's not a routine turnover
Some Drumcondra rentals were family homes first. If you're letting out a parent's house after their death, the first clear-out deserves more care than a student turnover; see bereavement house clearance. If a tenant's room, or a whole house, has become very full, we clear it patiently and without judgement; see hoarder clearance. For rentals in purpose-built blocks around Santry and Whitehall, see apartment clearance.
Mattresses and appliances are priced in because they need their own disposal. We're an authorised waste carrier, permit NWCPO-25-13287-01, and fully insured, and everything we take goes to reuse, recycling or licensed facilities. For other areas, see house clearance in Dublin.
