Apartment Clearance in Naas: Selling an Investment Apartment After a Long Let

The tenancy has ended and the apartment is yours again

Plenty of apartments in Naas were bought as investments and let for years, often to the same tenant for a long stretch. Now you are selling. The tenancy ends, the keys come back, and you are standing in an apartment that is part what the tenant left, part furniture you bought in a hurry when you first let it, and part fittings that belong to the apartment itself and will go with the sale. Before an estate agent can photograph it, the three have to be separated and most of the first two have to go.

This guide is for that owner. It covers the handover on the day the tenancy ends, how the contents divide into the tenant's, yours and the apartment's, whether to show the apartment furnished or empty, what a Naas block's management company and car park mean for a clearance, the keys and fobs the solicitor will ask for at closing, and the order of work from the tenant's last day to sale agreed.

It is practical guidance, not legal advice. Ending a tenancy, the deposit and anything a tenant leaves behind are governed by rules; check your position with the Residential Tenancies Board or your solicitor before disposing of anything you are not certain is yours. The services are described on our apartment clearance and end-of-tenancy clearance pages. PropertyClearance.ie is based in Athy, Co. Kildare, so Naas is close to home; see our house clearance in Naas page, or call 083 090 4545 to talk it through.

The handover: an hour that saves a week

Try to be in the apartment on the day the tenant leaves, or have someone there for you. An hour spent carefully at the handover answers most of the questions that come up later.

• Walk every room with the tenant if they are willing, including the balcony, the storage space and the car park space, and agree what they are leaving behind and why.
• Photograph everything where it stands, dated, before anything is moved. These photographs are the record of the condition the apartment came back in, and they are also what we quote from.
• Count the keys and fobs against what you handed over at the start of the tenancy. Fobs and car park remotes are easy to lose over a long let.
• Take the meter readings and a photograph of each meter.
• Find the inventory from the start of the tenancy, if there was one. It is the simplest way to separate your furniture from the tenant's.

If the tenant has left belongings behind and the position is not clear, do not dispose of them. Photograph them, write a short list, and ask the Residential Tenancies Board or your solicitor what you may do. Our Celbridge landlord guide covers that sequence in detail; we can clear the rest of the apartment and leave the tenant's things in one room until you have an answer.

Three kinds of contents, three different answers

After a long let, almost everything in the apartment falls into one of three groups. Deciding which group an item is in decides what happens to it:

Furnished or empty: ask the agent before you clear anything

The one decision that shapes the whole clearance is how the agent wants to show the apartment. Some buyers of apartments in a commuter town are investors who would rather it came furnished and ready to let; others are first-time buyers who want to see empty rooms. The agent knows the local market and will have a view. Ask before you book, and you will usually get one of three answers:

• Empty. Everything that is not a fitting goes. The simplest clearance and the simplest photographs.
• A few pieces for scale. A bed in the main bedroom, a sofa, a table. Tell us exactly which pieces stay, so they are protected while the rest leaves. Tired pieces rarely help a photograph; if the agent wants furniture in the pictures and yours has had a decade of use, clear it and let the agent arrange staging.
• Furnished, as a ready-to-let unit. The tenant's leftovers and anything worn go; your sound furniture and the white goods stay, and the apartment is swept around them.

Whatever is decided, write it down room by room and send it with the photographs. The quote is for exactly what leaves; nothing is added on the day.

The management company and the car park in a Naas block

Many of the apartments in Naas are in developments built from the late 1990s onwards: three- and four-storey blocks and duplexes, a surface or undercroft car park, a bin store, a management company, and rarely a concierge. That shape changes a clearance in small ways that matter.

• Tell the management company. With no concierge, notice goes to the managing agent by email: the date, the hours (we work Monday to Saturday, 8am to 5pm) and that a truck will be loading. Ask whether the block has rules on moving hours or lift use, and send us the answer.
• Lift or stairs. Some blocks have a lift, many walk-ups do not. Tell us the floor and whether there is a lift; three floors of stairs are routine, but they are part of the plan and the price.
• The car park. Undercroft car parks often have a height barrier the truck will not pass, so the truck stands at the entrance, in a visitor space or on the road outside and the crew carries to it. Send a photograph of the car park entrance and the space nearest the block door.
• The bin store is for household waste. A mattress or a wardrobe left there is a quick way to hear from the management company. Everything bulky leaves in the truck.
• The storage space and the parking space. Both belong to the apartment and both are easy to forget. Photograph them; a storage space often holds as much as a bedroom.

From the tenant's last day to sale agreed: the estate agent's timetable

The order that gets an apartment on the market with the fewest repeat visits:

1. HandoverWalk-through, photographs of every room, meter readings, keys and fobs counted, inventory found.
2. Agent's decisionThe agent says furnished, empty or a few pieces for scale, and gives you a target date for photographs.
3. QuoteSend us the photographs, the room-by-room list of what stays and what goes, the floor, the lift and the car park details. One fixed written price covering labour, transport and disposal.
4. Management company toldDate, hours and the truck. Any lift or moving-hours rules passed to us.
5. ClearanceKeys collected from you, the agent or a key safe. The route from the apartment door to the truck is protected, the apartment is cleared to your list, each room is swept and photographed, and anything that looks personal among the tenant's leftovers is set aside and handed to you rather than removed.
6. Keys and fobs backReturned to you or the agent and counted. Now is the time to order replacements for anything missing, before the solicitor asks.
7. Clean, repairs, photographsA clean is a separate job; ask when you request the quote and we will say what can be arranged. Painting and small repairs follow, then the agent's photographs and the first viewings.

What happens to the contents

Everything that leaves is sorted at the truck for reuse, recycling or disposal, with sound furniture set aside for reuse where possible. Freestanding fridges, washing machines and tumble dryers being cleared are handled as waste electrical equipment; defrost and empty a fridge beforehand if you can, or tell us it is full. Mattresses and bed bases go with us. Integrated appliances stay as part of the kitchen unless you tell us otherwise.

We cannot take paint, solvents, oils, chemicals, batteries or gas cylinders, which tend to turn up under the sink and on the balcony after a long tenancy; they go to a civic amenity site. Anything personal found among the leftovers, such as post, documents or photographs, is set aside and handed to you rather than removed. If pieces of your own furniture are going to family or to another property, see furniture removal.

Naas, Sallins, Kill, Johnstown and Newbridge

Naas is a short run up the road from our base in Athy, and the same apartment developments, and the same selling decisions, are found in Sallins, Kill, Johnstown and Newbridge. If the apartment is being cleared after a death rather than a tenancy, our guide to house clearance after a death in Naas covers the estate side. For a city-centre block with a concierge, a service lift and a loading bay, see the Dublin 2 and Docklands guide, and for the county as a whole start from the Kildare page.