Pricing a move-out clean

Why the estimate is usually wrong

Condition is invisible from a phone call. Customers are not being dishonest when they say "it is not too bad." They have lived there for three years and stopped seeing it. The oven is the giveaway and nobody volunteers the oven.

Scope creep is built in. "While you are here, could you do the garage?" on a job already running long, on a day with a completion deadline attached.

The deadline is real and it is not yours. A tenancy ends, keys go back, a buyer moves in. You cannot come back tomorrow, so an underestimate is absorbed entirely by you.

The empty-property illusion. No furniture to move around sounds like a saving. What it means is that the marks behind the sofa are now part of the job.

Build the price

floor = cost per sellable hour
        x realistic block hours (including travel both ways)
        x size band
      + condition band
      + consumables
      + margin

Cost per sellable hour is total monthly business costs, including paying yourself, divided by the hours you can actually sell. Not 160. Subtract quoting, travel, admin and unbooked slots, and for most solo operators it is 60 to 90 hours a month. Run it in the free calculator.

Realistic block hours for a move-out are commonly around double a standard clean of the same property. Start from that assumption and adjust down only when you have seen it.

Publish bands rather than negotiating

Bands turn the awkward part of the conversation into a lookup, and they let a customer see where their property sits before you have to tell them.

Say openly that band D is quoted separately. A band D property priced as band C is where both the money and the goodwill go.

Quote a range, then look

Ask for video of the oven, the fridge, inside a kitchen cupboard and the bathroom sealant. Those four tell you most of what a walkthrough would, and asking for them specifically is more effective than "send me some photos" because it tells the customer what you are actually assessing.

Write the inclusion list down

The single cheapest dispute prevention available. Give it to them before the job, in writing.

Included: inside oven, hob and extractor filter; inside fridge and freezer; inside all cupboards and drawers; all skirting, door frames and handles; window interiors and tracks; light fittings and switches; all sanitaryware, tiles and sealant; floors throughout; behind and under movable appliances.

Extras, priced separately: exterior windows, carpet shampooing, garage or loft, garden waste, wall washing, mould treatment beyond surface cleaning, rubbish removal.

Rubbish removal is the one to be explicit about. Departing tenants leave things, and hauling a sofa is not cleaning. Say so before the day, not on it.

The deposit is not optional here

A move-out is a long booking on a fixed date tied to someone else's tenancy or completion. If it cancels the morning of, you cannot refill it, and the date cannot move.

Mobile-service software vendors consistently report no-show and cancellation rates of 15 to 25 percent without deposits, dropping under 5 percent with deposits plus reminders. Those are vendor figures rather than independent research and should be read as directional, but on a full-day booking even the low end is not survivable.

Take 20 to 25 percent, credit it against the invoice, and put it in the booking confirmation as one line alongside the date, the price and the cancellation window. Presented as procedure, it reads as procedure. What a no-show actually costs.

The letting-agent version

Agents are repeat business and worth having, with two conditions worth setting at the start.

Agree the standard in writing. "Professional standard" means whatever the inspecting agent decides on the day unless you have defined it.

Agree who pays for a re-clean, and when. A re-attendance request a week later on a property that has since been occupied is not a re-clean, it is a second job.

Get both in an email before the first booking. It is a five-minute conversation that prevents the only argument this work reliably produces.

Where Rigsheet fits

Move-out cleans are exactly the shape a generic scheduling tool handles badly: long fixed-date blocks, size and condition bands, a published inclusion list, a deposit rule, and a booking that must not be double-booked over.

Rigsheet ships home-size pricing multipliers and per-service deposit rules as defaults, and blocks the calendar for the real duration rather than the billed hours. From $4/month — four tiers up to $39, flat, with no per-user fee and no appointment cap. In development.

$4 buys the core, not everything. Starter has no appointment cap and no per-seat charge, but customer texting starts at Solo ($29) — worth saying before the entry price does the persuading. ZenMaid's cheapest is $19/month, caps you at 40 appointments and adds $4 per seat on top. Every competitor compared.

Questions and answers