What goes wrong with end of tenancy cleans, from both sides

I started in the cleaning industry at 20, after realising university was not for me. I worked for a cleaning company where I learnt the trade, and after years of working for somebody else I realised I could do things my way and do them better. I started Cleaners of London in 2016.

What an end of tenancy clean actually is

I wanted to focus on end of tenancy cleans because it is a service where the customer has moved out, the property is empty, and it is ready for the cleaners. It is a deep clean that covers every area of the property. You will hear it called move out cleaning, move in cleaning, pre tenancy cleaning or after tenancy cleaning, but it is the same thing. Once a property is empty of personal belongings, whether somebody is moving in or has moved out, it needs an end of tenancy clean.

Empty, cleaned, ready for the check-out

North West London, after an end of tenancy clean.

Why the clean takes as long as it does

The most important and most difficult things to clean during an end of tenancy clean are the oven, the fridge and freezer, the kitchen in general, the bathrooms and toilets, and the windows and window sills. Let me go through them, because this explains a lot of what goes wrong later.

The oven

Ovens get neglected and nobody knows how to clean an oven properly. Customers also don't have the specialist chemicals that professional cleaners use, which makes it much harder.

Inside, outside, racks and trays

A double oven after an end of tenancy clean. Both cavities, both doors, racks and trays.

The fridge and freezer

Usually neglected too. Food spills, mould grows. You would be very surprised at the kind of fridges we see on a daily basis. A lot of customers don't throw away their food, so more often than not there is a foul smell, because the fridge has been turned off and the food has been sitting there for as long as the property has been empty.

Before

Before After

Tap to compare. A real fridge from an end of tenancy clean, September 2026. The food was left behind.

The kitchen

The kitchen is the hub of every home. You cook in it daily, so mess happens naturally. You cut some bread, now you have crumbs on the floor and near the toaster. You are not going to hoover that up. You are cooking up a mean steak, now there is oil flying everywhere, on the extractor fan, on the hob, and oil splashes travel far. The floor becomes slippery and grimy, and rather than cleaning up you of course want to go and enjoy that steak. You say you will clean it later, then it becomes tomorrow, and next thing you know you are frying up some eggs and you never did the original clean. This is normal and we don't judge. We are human, we have busy lives, and I understand how things get out of hand quickly. Let's not forget that while you are cooking you open the fridge to grab some extra ingredients, now the fridge handle is greasy. You need a plate, now the cupboard handle is greasy. That is how things get out of hand.

The kitchen is the hardest room to clean. During an end of tenancy clean in London the cleaners use professional grade chemicals to tackle stubborn stains and grease that may have been building up for months. Then there is limescale, which needs doing properly at least once a week, and once again most people don't, so after a few months you have a real limescale problem too. A kitchen can easily take 3 to 4 hours for one cleaner to clean professionally.

Before

Before After

Tap to compare. Where the steak oil ends up. Same hob, same day, September 2026.

The bathroom and toilet

Isn't it ironic that we use the bathroom and shower to clean ourselves, but let them get really dirty? Shower screens get covered in limescale quickly.

The other thing is that people forget to flush, or don't know the importance of flushing. The amount of toilets we have seen covered in a thick yellow and brown layer of you know what is ridiculous. This happens when people don't flush after using it. The number 1 and number 2 sit there for hours and slowly build up a thick layer. When people ask why end of tenancy cleaning is so expensive, this is part of the reason. The cleaners have to drain the toilet so there is no water in it, use very strong chemicals to break up months or years of built up grime, and then restore it. In most cases customers can't recognise their own toilet afterwards. And it could have been prevented by simply flushing, and using some Harpic and a brush once a week for a 10 second clean.

South East London. The toilet and the shower screen are the two things a check-out clerk looks at first.

Windows and window sills

London has a lot of pollution. With this many cars, lorries, buses and trains there is a lot of dust in the air. Londoners also don't have air con, so windows are open all summer. Add pollen and general dust, and your windows and sills get extremely dirty very quickly. The other problem is mould. Condensation happens a lot, and mould builds up fast. Cleaners have to make sure windows, sills and rails are all cleaned properly. Be honest again, when was the last time you cleaned your window rails? Yet customers are very quick to point out a small mark on a rail that had never been cleaned before.

Sills, rails, shutters, radiators

Every slat of those shutters gets wiped. That is where the summer dust lives.

Now that I have explained the above, let me tell you the main things that go wrong with end of tenancy cleans in London. I will cover the cleaners' side, the company side, and the customer's side.

What goes wrong on the cleaners' side

Cleaners running late

I want customers to understand why this happens. London is a big city and travelling from job to job is always a different journey. It is not like going from your home to the office every day. Sometimes a cleaner goes from E15 to SW12. Another day from EN5 to W5. You get the point. Things go wrong. A train is delayed, a bus is not in service, there is a tube strike or a road closure. Cleaners also sometimes give very little warning. They have a job at 2pm and tell us they are running late at 13:50, and we then have to apologise to the customer and explain what happened. But cleaners are under a lot of pressure to get one property done and get to the next one.

Running late because the morning job was in a much worse condition than a standard clean

Customers have a hard time understanding this, so let me explain it. Let's say we quote £300 for a job. We know it should take two cleaners 3 hours. When the cleaners get there, the property is in the kind of condition I described above. That job now takes two cleaners 5 hours each. They started at 9am and were meant to finish at 12 noon. Now they finish at 2pm. Add an hour of travel and the customer who was booked for 1pm is 2 hours delayed.

Cleaners sometimes miss things

An end of tenancy clean is not easy. It has a lot of checkpoints and humans make mistakes. I make mistakes in my job and I am sure you do too. But when a cleaner misses something, customers can't believe it, as if they have never made an honest mistake at work. This is exactly why our end of tenancy cleaning service in London is covered by a 1 week guarantee. Human error. If something is missed, you have 1 week to get in touch, send us pictures of the missed areas, and the cleaners come back to correct it. Most customers understand things can be missed. Some landlords and estate agents have much higher standards and expect a property with not a single thing wrong. But let me tell you the honest truth.

What goes wrong on the company side

We are under high pressure to cover every job and make sure every customer has a team arranged in advance. A lot happens. Customers book last minute, so now you have an extra job you did not plan for. Cleaners go on holiday last minute, take days off, or are away, and now you have one less team and the remaining teams can't cover two jobs. It doesn't matter how smart your online booking system is or how good your auto assign software is. When a cleaning team says they are not available tomorrow, all of that fails. Now you have two customers you have to either move or find another team for. That causes a lot of pressure and stress on us as a company.

The main things customers get wrong

Number one: not being fully moved out when the cleaners arrive

It is extremely important that you have left the property and all personal belongings are out when the cleaners arrive. They are there to clean an empty property, and so many times customers are still moving their stuff out of the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen. That means cleaners working around you, or us having to cancel the job because the cleaners cannot start. Very often cleaners and removals are booked at the same time. This is not good. Cleaners need an empty property so they can do their job.

Before

Before After

Tap to compare. Bottles on the worktop and bubble wrap on the floor when the cleaners arrived. Same kitchen when they left.

Staying in the property just one more night after the cleaners are done

Once a property has been professionally cleaned to an end of tenancy standard, nobody should stay in it, or the guarantee is voided. No matter how careful you try to be, you will use the toilet, use the sinks, maybe have a shower. When the estate agent or inventory clerk does the check-out inspection, they will say it was not cleaned to a professional end of tenancy level.

Not booking the correct property size and the services you actually need

Bedrooms and bathrooms get missed off. A double oven booked as a single oven. An American style fridge booked as a normal fridge. Expecting professional carpet cleaning and a 3 seater sofa cleaned but never booking it. Whatever you book through our online booking system is the spec the cleaners work to. Anything not booked is charged extra on the day, and we cannot always guarantee carpet and upholstery cleaning on the day if it was not booked in advance.

What I advise every customer to do

The one thing most people never think about

Have a regular cleaner while you live there. A domestic cleaner for 2 hours a week, or 3 hours every two weeks, keeps the property in shape the whole way through the tenancy. The oven, the hob, the limescale, the window rails, none of it gets the chance to build up for months. So when you move out, the end of tenancy clean is a standard clean, not the 5 hour job I described above, and it costs what it should. It is better for everyone. The landlord's property is looked after, you live in a cleaner home, and you get your weekends back instead of spending them cleaning. And your chances of getting your deposit back are much better, because the property was kept to a good standard all along rather than rescued at the end.

I genuinely hope this was helpful. With 16 years in this industry I have learnt a thing or two, and we are always working on better systems and processes to make your journey with us a good one.

Moving out soon? Send this to whoever is booking the clean.