Haggerston splits neatly in two, and which half you are in changes the morning more than the price does. There are the rebuilt estate blocks with working lifts, and there are the newer flats along the Regent’s Canal. It is E2, a single Windrush line stop south of Dalston Junction, and a two bedroom move-out is £243 in both halves.
Lifts change the job, not the figure
After a week of Georgian staircases on the Dalston side, a building with a lift that works feels like a holiday. Kit goes up in one trip instead of four and the slot can be shorter. The price does not move for it, because the band follows the bedroom count and the carpet rate follows the room. What a lift does buy you is an earlier appointment, since a job that takes three hours rather than four leaves room for another one behind it.
Canal-side flats
The towpath side is reached on foot, so anything on the canal frontage is carried in from the road behind. Tell us which entrance you use and the slot is planned to match. On a carpet job it matters twice over, because there is more to carry and every trip starts from wherever we can legally park.
New blocks, chrome and hard water
Chrome on everything and shower screens that show every water mark. Thames Water runs hard here as it does across the borough, so those flats need descaling far more often than their tenants expect, and it is the single item that takes longest on a team deep clean. Two cleaners across three hours is £186 and most canal-side two bedroom flats come in around there. A rainfall head comes down and soaks. A screen takes an acid descaler and two passes, with the waiting doing more than the scrubbing.
The estate rebuilds
Square rooms, sealed floors and lifts that work. Cleaning is quicker in them than the room count suggests. Door entry is the one thing to plan, so leave a mobile number that will actually be answered rather than a flat number on its own, and where there is a concierge get the cleaner onto the visitor list before the day. Weekly housework in one of these is usually the three hour minimum, which is £69 at the weekly rate of £23 per cleaner per hour.
Getting here, and the filters in the way
The Overground makes Haggerston easy for cleaners arriving without a van. The awkward part is the driving. Hackney has more than 140 traffic filters, all camera enforced, so the direct route is frequently not a legal one and the driver may reach your street from an unexpected direction. Where a job is tied to a key handover, say so on the phone and the slot gets built around the handover rather than around the traffic.
What gets booked
Move-outs and carpets, mostly. Carpet pricing is by the room, £36 a bedroom and £43 a living room, and in a two bedroom canal-side flat that usually means £72 for the bedrooms with a hard floor in the living space, or £58 when they go on the same visit as a move-out. Rugs are £35 or £51 depending on size. The move-out clean is banded from £156 for a studio, with the oven priced on top rather than folded in. Balconies we sweep and wash down. Next door is Hoxton, worked on the same run, and every figure is on the prices page.
Questions we get asked
How much is an end of tenancy clean in Haggerston?
The same as Dalston: £156 for a studio, £207 for one bedroom, £243 for two, £339 for three and £425 for four. Add the oven for £31, and carpets are counted apart, £29 a bedroom when they join the move-out.
Can you reach a flat on the canal frontage?
Yes. Everything is carried in from the road behind the towpath. Tell us which entrance you use and how far it is, because that decides the length of the slot rather than the price.
Do the new blocks need descaling more often?
They do. Thames Water runs hard across Hackney and the chrome and glass in those flats shows it within months. On a deep clean from £186 the bathroom takes the largest share of the hours for exactly that reason.
How do you get into the building?
Leave a mobile number that will be answered, or arrange a fob or a visitor name with the concierge where there is one.
Prefer the phone? 020 8077 6967, 8am to 7pm.