Landlords’ Tips For End Of Tenancy Cleaning
A lot of the online advice about moving out cleaning has a tendency to forget an important stakeholder in the whole process, which is why it gets called moving out cleaning instead of end of tenancy cleaning. The focus is on the person moving out. However, in the case of a rental property in Bayswater, the other party involved is the landlord. The landlord seems to hover in the background of these sort of articles like some sort of shadowy Dark Lord who has to be placated in order to get the deposit money back.
However, the landlord is still an important player in the whole thing, being the person who actually owns the property and doing things like paying for maintenance and so forth. The deposit money isn’t a way for landlords to hold tenants to ransom; instead, it’s a protection for the landlord in case of terrible tenants who trash the place and ruin it.
The whole idea of end of tenancy cleaning is to leave the empty house clean and ready for new tenants to come in. After all, as a landlord, you’ve invested in the property, and you want to get a return on it. Any time that the house sits vacant is the time when it’s not earning your retirement fund for you like you’d planned.
The situation is completely different depending on whether the tenants moving out are good or bad. Naturally, I’m assuming that you’re a nice landlord who isn’t a greedy tyrant looking for any possible excuse not to give the deposit money back but a reasonable human being who wants to treat others fairly and be treated fairly in return.
End Of Tenancy Cleaning And Good Tenants
Good tenants are the ones you are sorry to see go. They didn’t cause any fuss, they paid the rent on time, and you only heard from them once in a while if a pipe burst or something along those lines. Tenants like this are usually good about maintaining the rental accommodation and may often have a go at doing the final cleaning job themselves with a little help from their friends. Others will take the initiative to contact a professional end of tenancy company in Bayswater to handle the task quicker, better and, in many cases, with guaranteed results.
With good tenants, good communication is a must. This is particularly the case if you plan to redecorate the property between tenants. It’s a bit sad if you discover when it comes to replacing the curtains that the tenants have carefully had them dry-cleaned. The same goes for other fixtures. When the tenants give notice, this can be a good time to let them know about anything they don’t need to bother cleaning because you’re going to redecorate anyway.
With all tenants, good and bad, it’s a must to go through the property together for the final inspection. This way, if your tenants have accidentally overlooked something – that bathroom cabinet that somehow got overlooked and didn’t get wiped out during the final cleaning session, for example – you can give them a chance to clean it themselves.
In some cases, the tenants will give you a completed cleaning checklist from a professional moving out company while they hand over the keys. This is the ideal situation, as you know that the place is clean. Now all you have to do is to wait for the new tenants to come in response to your ad.
If you started advertising the property as being for lease as soon as your current batch of tenants gave notice, you may get some eager beavers wanting to inspect the property right away before the old ones have moved out. In this case, you’ll need to give the current tenants plenty of warning so they can straighten the place up a bit or at least be prepared for people coming through (if the prospective tenants have any sense, they’ll know to overlook things like cardboard boxes being packed with household items). Set these inspections for reasonable times of day that work with your current tenants – after all, the old tenants still have the right to privacy and to go about their daily business (e.g. don’t expect them to take a day off work to open the place up for you and some prospective renters).
The only time when things get tricky with end of tenancy cleaning with good tenants is when something unfortunate has happened, and your tenant dies unexpectedly. Here, you’ll have to deal (sensitively) with the bereaved relatives while getting the place tidied up – and that’s a topic that deserves a whole post of its own. Again, professional cleaners can help take some of the sting out for everyone, including you.
End Of Tenancy Cleaning And Bad Tenants
Some tenants aren’t so easy to deal with. These are the ones who don’t seem to care what sort of house they live in, fill the place with junk, punch holes in the walls, set fire to the carpet, keep unauthorised dogs and all the rest of it. But can you tell your tenants how clean to keep their home? You will be surprised.
Some bad tenants are worse than others, but when they go, you are usually somewhat relieved, and you hope like mad that the next ones will be better.
With really bad tenants, you probably won’t be giving the deposit money back to them because of all the mess they’ve made – and in some cases, they don’t care (and in really bad cases, they leave the place in an atrocious condition then throw a hissy fit and try to explain how they’re entitled to leave it messy but still get the deposit money back – brats!). Exactly how you put that deposit money to work to repair the damage will depend on how bad it is. In some cases, you may have to do a complete redecoration job, replacing the carpet and repainting the lot. Hopefully, the deposit money will cover this!
In other cases, although the structure of the property is sound, the place is a mess. There’s rubbish in odd places, the carpet looks dingy, and the place smells funny. In this case, a professional end of tenancy cleaning company is your best friend. After all, you probably have another job that you have to take care of, and it can be heartbreaking to clean up the mess left of your place by a bunch of slobs, especially if the property has some sentimental associations rather than being a place bought simply as an investment. Spare yourself the rage, the frustration, the tears and the disbelief about what someone did to your property – get someone else to do the cleaning up. Honestly, as a professional moving out cleaner, I’ve seen it all before. We get to clean up all sorts of horror stories. We will sympathise with you but won’t be shocked – or fazed!
If you call on a professional team to tidy up after the Tenants From Hades have left (good riddance!), then good communication is important. The cleaners should know how to contact you if they discover something is too far to clean. For example, in the case of a carpet with single marks or that’s been graffitied, it’s probably easier to replace it than to try cleaning it. Burn marks can’t clean off.
It would be nice if you could make getting into an end of tenancy cleaning company a condition of the lease, but the law won’t let you do that. After all, if the tenant is a professional cleaner, it would be silly to ask him or her to call on someone else to do the job! Other hardworking people are capable of doing an adequate job by themselves. However, there are others… Best of luck with the new ones.