End of Tenancy Cleaning

End of Tenancy Cleaning

When one has tenants who are immaculate and who keep a clean house, it is so  easy to re-let the property. There are no worries about the end of tenancy clean.

I always start viewings in the last month of the tenancy, and so if the property looks lovely, it makes it so much easier to re-let it, without there being an annoying void period.

But tenants who live like pigs are a different proposition altogether. (We try to avoid people who live like pigs, but there is no referencing process that’s yet been devised that can predict pig like behaviour).

With these sorts of situations, it can be very hard to re-let a property that looks filthy and is a mess. We have found that few applicants can see past the mess to what the property could be like. Most are just put off completely.

The other problem is how do you get the property clean and back into the same clean state it was when you let it, which may be some years ago.

For folks who live like pigs, there is really no point us giving them our standard end of cleaning tenancy notes to follow themselves, as they simply won’t know what to do anyway. These kinds of people would not know the difference between a duster and a mop if one hit them on the head.

Professional Cleaners

So, for these kinds of tenants, we suggest they pay for a professional firm to do an end of tenancy clean. And we ask them to ensure that whoever they hire, they check what their standard clean includes to make sure it includes everything we have set out they should do in our end of tenancy cleaning notes.

The problem is that the standard of the end of tenancy cleaning that is actually delivered is often, in our opinion, well short of the standard we would like to see. The messy duster-shy, mop-shy tenant, of course, will not have clue what standard should be delivered and will happily pay the cleaners bill and let them wander off into the sunset.

The fact is that smart cleaners know a soppy, dippy mop-shy tenant when they come to a property and are happy to deliver a duff job, which they would not dream of delivering if the owner-landlord was standing over and watching them.

Most end of tenancy cleaning in the UK, and certainly in London is performed by migrant workers, often working for a franchise, at very low rates. Given the time it takes to do the job and the prices the gang masters charge, the pay these poor souls get for the time taken is clearly well below the minimum wage. It is a scandal, (but you get what you pay for, I guess). The cleaners on such pittance pay have a clear incentive to get the minimum done and move on. if a soft, mop-shy tenant will pay them, that is exactly what they will do – the minimum.

And so this means that we often have to make deductions for additional cleaning from the deposit, that the end of tenancy “professional cleaning” company missed. This something we don’t like to do, but which we have little choice over. The only other alternative is for us to attend when the end of tenancy cleaning takes place, but this is very time consuming for us and not always practical with our other work.

If anyone knows a really good professional cleaning firm who can deliver a great standard of end of tenancy cleaning in London and North West Kent, please let me know. We know of an awful one (based in Canary Wharf in London)  who we had to get back three times to do the job properly.

Final word. Our experience has found that Brits from the upper classes generally live like pigs and are wholly averse to ever cleaning. Also, expat workers who may be on low incomes in the UK but who come from countries where they are wealthy in their home country (and who probably also have servants to clean after them) are usually very mop and dusty-shy too. 

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