The honest answer is that it depends on the house
Anybody who gives you a single number without seeing the property is guessing. Two four-bedroom houses on the same street can be weeks apart, because the timeline is set by what is inside and how easily it can be got out, not by the square footage.
The phases
- Assessment. A walk through the property. An hour or so.
- Agreement. A written scope, a fee, and dates. The delay here is normally how long it takes everybody who has to agree to agree.
- Sorting and cataloging. The longest active phase, and the one that scales directly with volume. Garages, workshops and collections extend it most.
- The sale window. A fixed period for an online auction, or a weekend for an in-person sale.
- Buyer pickup. One or two days, sometimes more if there are large items.
- Cleanout. Removal, donation collection and disposal of the remainder.
- Settlement. Reconciling what sold, and paying out.
What reliably makes it slower
- Authority that is not settled. If nobody has the legal standing to sign, nothing starts.
- Heirs who have not decided what they are keeping. This is the single biggest cause of delay, and it happens in the middle of the work rather than at the start.
- Items pulled late. Anything withdrawn after it is catalogued has to be unwound from the listing.
- Specialist appraisals. Jewelry, coins, firearms and fine art go out to somebody else and come back on their schedule.
- Access. Stairs, a narrow or steep street, no truck parking, or a shared driveway.
- Hoarding conditions, which change the job from clearing a house to excavating one, and often bring in pest or biohazard work first.
- A house that is still occupied.
What makes it faster
Decisions made before the work starts. Authority in place, a written list of what is being kept, one person empowered to answer questions, and agreement in advance about what happens to the remainder.
If you have a hard date, say so at the first conversation rather than halfway through. A deadline that is known can be planned around. A deadline that is discovered cannot.
If you live elsewhere, managing an estate cleanout from out of state covers local access, remote approvals and checking the finished property.
Doing it yourself
Expect it to take substantially longer in calendar time, because it happens on weekends and around your job. The physical work is not the constraint.
The realistic sequence is secure the house, find the paperwork, settle distribution among family, sell the genuinely valuable items, book the donation collection, and pay somebody to remove the rest. Each of those steps waits on the one before it.