Summary

End of tenancy cleaning sits in an odd spot for a lot of trade and cleaning businesses: it looks like a simple domestic clean, but it's actually judged against a written standard (the check-in inventory report) by a third party (the letting agent or landlord) who often wasn't on site to see the work happen, and it comes with an implicit expectation of a re-clean if it's rejected. Price it like a standard domestic clean and you'll either underquote the labour on a heavily soiled property or find yourself doing a free second visit that eats the entire margin on the job.

The customer relationship is also different from most residential cleaning work. Since the Tenant Fees Act 2019 (England) and the equivalent Renting Homes (Fees etc.) (Wales) Act 2019, landlords and agents can no longer charge tenants a mandatory professional cleaning fee as a condition of the tenancy — the "must use our approved cleaning company" clause common before 2019 is now a banned fee. That doesn't mean the work has disappeared; the commissioning relationship has shifted instead. Landlords and agents still routinely book end of tenancy cleans — either to prepare a property for re-letting between tenancies (a void-period clean, billed direct to the landlord), or because the outgoing tenant hasn't returned the property to the standard set out in the check-in inventory, in which case a cleaning cost can be deducted from the tenant's protected deposit if the agent can evidence the shortfall. Which scenario you're quoting for changes who pays, how fast they want it done, and how fussy the standard needs to be.

This guide covers typical labour hours and day rates by property size, materials and equipment costs, what's normally included versus what's a chargeable extra, the factors that blow a quote off its baseline (pet odour, heavy soiling, previous tenant neglect), and the re-clean guarantee question that most new entrants to this work under-price. For pricing the deposit-and-payment-terms side of working with agents generally, see quoting for landlords and letting agents.

Key Facts

Quick Reference Table

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Property Size Team Time on Site Materials Cost Typical Price (Regional) Typical Price (London)
Studio flat 1 cleaner 2-3 hrs £12-£18 £75-£120 £110-£160
1-bed flat/house 1-2 cleaners 3-4 hrs £15-£20 £90-£150 £130-£200
2-bed flat/house 2 cleaners 3-4 hrs (6-8 person-hrs) £20-£25 £150-£220 £210-£300
3-bed house 2 cleaners 4-6 hrs (8-12 person-hrs) £25-£30 £220-£300 £300-£420
4-bed house 2-3 cleaners 6-8 hrs (12-24 person-hrs) £30-£40 £320-£450 £440-£620
5+ bed house 3 cleaners 8+ hrs (24+ person-hrs) £35-£50 £420-£600+ £580-£850+
Add-on: carpet clean (per room) — 20-30 min/room £3-£5 £25-£45 £35-£60
Add-on: oven deep clean — 30-60 min £5-£10 £40-£75 £55-£100
Add-on: external windows — 30-45 min £2-£5 £20-£45 £30-£60

Detailed Guidance

What's Typically Included in a Standard End of Tenancy Clean

A "standard" end of tenancy clean is more thorough than a routine domestic clean, and letting agents expect a specific checklist to be covered as a baseline — this is what separates it from a general house clean and justifies the higher price per hour:

Anything outside this — garden waste clearance, removal of left-behind furniture, mould treatment beyond a surface wipe — should be quoted and itemised separately, not absorbed into the base price.

Labour Hours and Day Rates by Property Size

The person-hours estimate matters more than headcount, because most firms flex team size to hit a target turnaround (agents often want same-day or next-day turnaround between tenancies). As a working baseline: studio/1-bed 2-4 person-hours, 2-bed 6-8 person-hours, 3-bed 8-12 person-hours, 4-bed+ 12-24+ person-hours depending on condition.

Convert person-hours to price using your effective hourly labour rate (£15-£22/hr regional, £20-£30/hr London per operative), then add materials and margin. Most firms quote a fixed price per property size rather than hourly, because agents want a number against a job reference — but build the fixed price up from person-hours so you know your actual margin before committing, and can hold the line if the property turns out worse than described.

Materials and Equipment Costs

Per-job consumables are modest but add up across volume: multi-surface cleaner, degreaser, limescale remover, oven cleaning chemical, glass cleaner, disposable cloths or laundered microfibre, bin bags, and rubber gloves typically run £15-£40 per job depending on property size and how heavily you need to hit the oven and bathroom.

Equipment is a capital cost to amortise across jobs: vacuum cleaner £80-£250; steam cleaner (grout, hob, tiles) £60-£150; carpet extractor / hot water extraction machine £400-£900 to buy, or £40-£80/day to hire if carpet cleaning is occasional; window cleaning kit (squeegee, pole, water-fed if doing externals regularly) £30-£150. If carpets or external windows are a regular add-on rather than occasional, buying rather than hiring pays back quickly and improves margin on those lines specifically.

The Tenant Fees Act 2019 — Who Actually Pays for This

Before June 2019, it was common practice for a tenancy agreement to include a clause requiring the outgoing tenant to pay for a "professional clean" from a company nominated by the landlord or agent, regardless of the property's actual condition. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 ended this in England by banning "prohibited payments" — fees charged to tenants outside a defined list of permitted payments (rent, a capped tenancy deposit, a capped holding deposit, and a small number of other specific charges). A mandatory professional cleaning fee is not on that permitted list, so it can no longer be written into a tenancy agreement as a compulsory charge. Wales has an equivalent ban under the Renting Homes (Fees etc.) (Wales) Act 2019. [Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate tenancy law regimes — verify current fees rules before quoting north of the border.]

This changes who your customer is, not whether the work exists:

  1. Void-period cleans — the landlord or agent books and pays directly between tenancies, no tenant involved, no restriction. Normal commercial instruction. See quoting for landlords and letting agents for how agent-side quoting, authorisation limits and invoicing terms typically work.
  2. Deposit-deduction cleans — the outgoing tenant didn't leave the property to the standard recorded at check-in, and the agent deducts a cleaning cost from the tenant's protected deposit (TDS, DPS or mydeposits) to cover it. This requires the agent to evidence the shortfall against the check-in inventory, because the legal standard is "same condition allowing for fair wear and tear," not an arbitrary higher bar. Cleaning is the single most common category referred to the deposit schemes' dispute resolution service — exactly why agents want an itemised, checklist-based invoice from you rather than a vague "cleaned the flat, £180" receipt.

Either way, quote and invoice the agent or landlord, not the tenant, and keep the invoice itemised against the standard checklist — it protects the agent if the charge is challenged, and protects you if the invoice is later disputed.

What Affects the Price

A baseline quote assumes a normally-lived-in property in reasonable condition. These push the price up, and should be flagged before committing to a fixed figure — ideally after seeing photos or a short video walkthrough, not a phone description alone:

Re-Clean Guarantee and Margin Impact

Most professional end of tenancy cleaning businesses offer a free re-clean guarantee — typically 24-72 hours — if the letting agent inspects against the checklist and rejects specific items. This is a real and recurring cost of doing business in this niche, not an edge case, and it needs to be priced into your margin from the start rather than treated as an unplanned loss when it happens:

              RE-CLEAN GUARANTEE — PRICING LOGIC
                          |
        Quote base price assuming standard condition
                          |
              Add margin buffer (10-15%)
              specifically to cover re-clean risk
                          |
        +-----------------+------------------+
        |                                    |
  Agent accepts on first visit        Agent rejects specific items
        |                                    |
  Margin buffer becomes profit        Re-clean within guarantee window
                                       (materials + labour cost,
                                        no additional charge to agent)

Firms that don't price the re-clean risk into the base rate either quietly eat the cost on every rejected job — margin erosion you won't notice until you total the month — or start disputing every rejection with the agent, a fast way to lose a repeat-instruction relationship. Build a 10-15% buffer into your standard pricing, state the guarantee window clearly in writing, and track how often you use it — it should be a small minority of jobs; if it isn't, the issue is quality control, not pricing.

Worked Example — 3-Bed House, Standard Condition, Regional

Line item Detail Cost
Labour 2 cleaners × 5 hrs (10 person-hrs) @ £18/hr £180
Materials/consumables Multi-surface, oven cleaner, limescale remover, cloths £28
Oven deep clean Included in labour hours above —
Travel/sundries Fuel, laundering microfibre £15
Subtotal (cost) £223
Margin/overhead @ 25% (incl. re-clean guarantee buffer) £56
Quote total (ex VAT) ~£279

Carpet cleaning (3 rooms) and external windows would be quoted as separate add-on lines (£75-£135 and £20-£45 respectively) rather than folded into this figure — keeping them itemised protects your margin if the agent wants to strip back the scope.

What to Include in the Quote

A defensible end of tenancy cleaning quote for an agent or landlord should state:

  1. The checklist covered — room by room, matching the standard inclusions listed above, so there's no ambiguity about what "end of tenancy clean" means on this job
  2. What's excluded/chargeable as an add-on — carpet cleaning, external windows, garden clearance, mould treatment beyond a surface wipe
  3. VAT status — clearly shown; most sole-trader cleaning operations are below the £90,000 VAT threshold and should state "no VAT charged" explicitly so the agent's accounts system processes it correctly
  4. Re-clean guarantee terms — the window (e.g. 48 hours) and what triggers it (specific itemised rejection against the checklist, not a general "not happy")
  5. Payment terms — agents commonly work on 14-30 day invoicing rather than payment on completion; state this on the quote to avoid a cash-flow surprise — see quoting for landlords and letting agents
  6. Access arrangement — key collection, alarm codes, whether the property is void or still tenanted at time of clean

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a landlord still charge a tenant for cleaning at all?

Not as a pre-agreed mandatory fee — that was banned by the Tenant Fees Act 2019. What remains lawful is a deduction from the tenant's protected deposit if the property isn't returned to the same standard of cleanliness recorded at check-in, allowing for fair wear and tear, and the landlord/agent can evidence that shortfall. The distinction matters: a blanket "£150 cleaning fee" clause in every tenancy agreement is a prohibited payment; an evidenced £150 deduction from the deposit because the property was genuinely left dirty is not.

Should I quote per hour or as a fixed price?

Fixed price by property size is the industry norm and what agents expect against a job reference, but build the fixed price from a person-hours estimate so you know your margin. Reserve hourly quoting for properties you haven't seen and can't get photos of in advance — in that case, quote a provisional fixed price caveated as subject to confirmation on arrival if the condition is materially worse than described. The biggest thing new entrants underprice is the re-clean guarantee itself: agents will reject work against a written checklist, and without a margin buffer for the occasional free re-visit, those jobs become loss-making the moment a re-clean happens.

Do I need any specific insurance or registration for this work?

Public liability insurance is expected by any agent instructing work in a property they manage, the same as any trade — see public liability insurance guide. There's no cleaning-specific licence required for standard domestic/end of tenancy cleaning, but COSHH Regulations 2002 apply to how you store, transport and use cleaning chemicals, and if you're removing waste (old furniture, garden waste) from the property yourself you need waste carrier registration — see waste disposal.

How do I handle a dispute where the agent says the clean wasn't good enough?

Use your re-clean guarantee window rather than arguing the point on the phone — a free, prompt re-clean against the specific items the agent flagged protects the relationship far more than a dispute over whether the original clean was adequate. Keep before-and-after photos of every job as standard practice; they're your evidence if a dispute genuinely escalates, and they double as the proof-of-work agents often want for their own records.

Regulations & Standards