End of Tenancy Cleaning in Wollaton Park

End of Tenancy Cleaning for Wollaton Park homes

Tenancies run to the academic year, so houses change hands in September rather than the July rush on the student streets. A fair share are let by owners rather than agents, and a fair share happen before a tenancy instead of after one.

Letting here does not follow the student calendar. Tenancies are tied to the academic year and to research contracts, so houses change hands in September with a smaller run in January, and a good number are let by owners rather than through an agent. A family goes abroad for a year, or a department needs somewhere for somebody arriving to take up a post. That shifts the job twice over. The property comes back to a person rather than to a clerk, so the benchmark is an owner's memory of their own kitchen. And a fair proportion of what gets booked is before a tenancy rather than at the end of one, because the incoming tenant is arriving from overseas and has never stood in the house.

Wollaton Park sits in NG8, under Nottingham City Council. Regular domestic help is most of it, in households where both adults work and the house holds more rooms than the week has evenings. Deep cleans once a year, carpet and upholstery more often than average, and a run of houses let to university staff, which changes hands in September rather than July.

What we run into on Wollaton Park end of tenancy cleaning jobs

Where an owner lets their own house rather than buying to let, there is usually one room or one cupboard shut off, quite often with a lock screwed onto an original door in the last week before they left. That room is outside the tenancy and outside our scope, and it is worth having that in writing rather than assumed. The door itself is a different matter. Fresh screw holes, split paint round a retrofitted lock and the marks where a hasp was fitted are exactly what gets raised at the end by somebody who last saw the door intact, and they are worth photographing at the start rather than explaining later.

How a Wollaton Park end of tenancy cleaning job actually runs

An empty house makes the job harder in ways people do not expect, so the practicalities are worth sorting when you book. We need power for the machines and hot water at the tap, which means the electricity and the boiler stay on until we have finished rather than going off the day the tenant leaves. In winter, leave a little heat on as well, because a cold empty house will not dry and a bathroom cleaned in the morning is still damp by late afternoon. Tell us who holds the keys and where they come from, whether that is the letting agent's office or a neighbour, and what time the checkout appointment is, because everything else is worked backwards from that. If a removal van is coming the same morning we work behind it rather than round it. And say plainly whether furniture, rubbish and garden waste are still to go, since clearing a property and cleaning it are separate jobs and only one of them is ours. Where both are wanted, tell us at the outset and we will treat them as two visits rather than one.

Who books it here

One specification across the whole estate, so the fittings repeat from house to house: steel casement windows in the original openings, tiled fireplaces upstairs as well as down, rooms sized for furniture that is no longer made. What differs between two houses on an avenue is how much of it survived.

We run Wollaton Park on the same round as Wollaton, Lenton and Lenton Abbey.

What we check on every Wollaton Park job

Most of these kitchens still have the original larder cupboard built into the wall, deep and cool, with a stone or slate shelf and a small vent through to the outside air. It is the last cupboard anybody empties and close to the first one a clerk opens. The shelf is porous and was never sealed, so anything spilled on it has soaked in rather than sat on the surface, and wiping does nothing; it wants scraping, a neutral cleaner and time to dry before the door goes shut. The vent itself is usually furred with old dust and cobweb, and clearing that is what stops the cupboard smelling once the house stands closed up between tenancies. The alcove cupboards either side of a chimney breast behave much the same way. They were built in, they are rarely emptied, and the shelf paper lining them has usually been down for years and comes out with the last of the tenant's belongings.

What the end of tenancy cleaning covers

A sample of what is included

• Bathrooms: Extractor vent, cabinet interiors, mirrors and chrome polished
• Kitchen: Hob, extractor hood and filter degreased
• Bathrooms: Shower screen seals and the tracks they sit in
• Throughout: Behind and under furniture where accessible

That is a sample rather than the whole list. The full end of tenancy cleaning page sets out every section of the scope, what is deliberately excluded and why, how long it takes on each property size, and what tends to go wrong.