Read the bedrooms off your tenancy agreement and you have the price. A studio in E8 is £156 and a two bedroom conversion is £243, agreed on the phone by Monster Cleaning Dalston and identical on the invoice. Two things can join that figure: the floors, counted room by room and flight by flight, and the oven, priced as a line of its own.
| Property | Fixed price |
|---|---|
| Studio | £156 |
| 1 bedroom | £207 |
| 2 bedrooms | £243 |
| 3 bedrooms | £339 |
| 4 bedrooms | £425 |
Why the band sits on bedrooms and not on a clock
Your clean gets marked against the check-in inventory, and hardly any tenant has read that document past the photographs at the front. Charge for it by the hour and a slow bathroom becomes your problem. Band it on bedrooms and the slow bathroom becomes ours. A roomy two bedroom flat off Albion Square therefore pays what a cramped one behind the high street pays, and an afternoon that overruns is an afternoon we absorb. Only one thing shifts a band: a property genuinely unlike the one described on the call, and that conversation happens before anything comes out of the van. Loft rooms let as bedrooms count. Bathrooms do not, at any number.
When one room in a share is what changes hands
This is the commonest booking in Dalston and the one the price list does not cover, so it is worth setting out plainly. A great many flats here are let room by room, which means the tenancy ending is often a single bedroom while the rest of the household carries on cooking in the same kitchen. The banded prices above assume the whole property is handed back empty, so they do not fit that job. A room-only check-out is quoted on the phone instead, against the £67 one off minimum rather than against the bedroom bands. What settles the figure is the scope: the room itself, plus whichever share of the kitchen and the bathroom your agreement makes you responsible for. A property with two kitchens and two bathrooms in daily use has more in it to scope than a one bedroom flat does. Tell us how many rooms are in the scope and the number comes back before you hang up. When the whole flat is going back at once, the bands apply exactly as printed.
What the banded figure takes in
Cupboards emptied, then cleaned front, back and along the tops, with the narrow gap beside the cooker done as well. Fridge and freezer, provided they have been switched off overnight and allowed to thaw. The washing machine gets its drawer, its filter and its door seal, which a clerk opens early and a tenant forgets entirely. Bathrooms come right back down through their scale. After that the second tier: skirtings, frames, switch plates, the backs of radiators wherever a brush can reach, wardrobe interiors, window runners and the inside faces of the glass. Floors are the last surface touched, so nothing gets walked over twice.
Scale on the glass is the item that gets photographed
Thames Water supplies Hackney hard. Screens cloud upward from the tray, tap bases crust, and the rainfall heads in the Dalston Square flats and the warehouse conversions fur inside a few months of being fitted. It is the easiest fault in a flat to photograph, which is precisely why it turns up on check-out reports. Scale is a mineral bonded onto a surface rather than dirt lying on one, so it wants an acid descaler and dwell time. It does not want scouring, because a scratched chrome finish costs a great deal more to put right than the limescale ever would. Those waiting minutes are inside the banded figure already.
Planning round zone C and the market
Zone C covers Kingsland High Street, Dalston Lane and Ridley Road from 8.30am to 6.30pm, Monday to Saturday, and with Ridley Road market trading six days a week and more than 140 camera-enforced traffic filters across Hackney, each slot is planned around your own street.
Stairs, goods lifts and a concierge desk
Say which of these you have and the morning plans itself. The Georgian houses on Dalston Lane have steep narrow staircases with a half-turn in them and no lift, so kit goes up in pieces and comes down the same way. The warehouse conversions above the high street are often three or four floors with only a goods lift, and that lift is regularly locked at a weekend. The rebuilt Holly Street blocks and the Kingsland Estate have working lifts and door entry, so the delay there is getting in rather than getting up. Dalston Square and the newer blocks over the station mean a concierge, a visitor name and sometimes a booked loading bay. None of it changes the band. All of it changes how long the slot has to be.
Late summer is the pinch
Turnover in Dalston runs all year, because the shared flats and the ex-council maisonettes change a name every few months rather than every few years. Late August and September are still the hard peak, when the new intake arrives across the Overground. The other bad day is the last working Friday of any month, which is when every agent in E8 wants a flat finished. Ring as soon as the check-out date is known, even if the hour is not settled. Three or four days notice is normally plenty outside those two windows.
Adding the oven and the floors
The oven comes first. Its racks and runners come out to soak while the rest of the flat is cleaned, and on a move-out it is one £31 line, well below the appliance prices it carries when booked alone. A two oven AGA has to be off from the night before because it must be stone cold. A £243 two bedroom flat with the oven on it therefore comes to £274. Strip a hob down and that is £23. An extractor is £28. Then the floors, which go by the room and cost less riding on a move-out than booked alone: a bedroom £29, a living room £36, a knocked-through front and back £47, a stair flight £35, single rugs £29 or £42 either side of 3 sq m. Put two carpeted bedrooms and a through lounge on top of a £243 flat and you are at £348. That sum gets read out over the phone rather than discovered later.
If the clerk marks something down
Ring 020 8077 6967 inside 48 hours. Somebody comes back, redoes the item, and nothing is charged for it. There is no form and nobody argues about whose fault it was. Ask the clerk for the written check-out report and send that through rather than relaying it, because agents paraphrase and the item described down the phone is frequently not the item on the page.
The band holds across the whole round, from the flats above the shops towards the Narrow Way to the canal blocks in Haggerston and the converted houses up in Clapton. The complete list is on the prices page, and 020 8077 6967 is picked up by a person for the whole of 8am to 7pm, any day you care to ring.
Questions we get asked
What does a two bedroom move-out clean cost in Dalston?
£243, settled before anybody leaves the yard. It buys the whole flat, the cupboards emptied and the bathroom taken down through its scale. Floors can join it from £29 a room on the same booking, and the oven adds £31, which makes £274.
Do you clean one room in a shared flat rather than a whole property?
Yes, and it is one of our commonest Dalston bookings. The bedroom bands assume the whole property is handed back, so a room-only check-out is quoted on the call against the £67 one off minimum instead. Tell us which rooms are in the scope, including any share of the kitchen and bathroom.
How far ahead should I book a check-out clean?
Three or four days is usually enough. Late August and September are the busy weeks here, and the last working Friday of any month is the worst day to leave it late. Ring when the date is confirmed, even if the time is not.
Is the oven included in the fixed price?
It goes on as an add-on at £31, and the racks sit soaking while the flat is done. Hobs are £23 and extractors £28.
Do I need to be there, and does the flat have to be empty?
Not on the first count. Most check-outs run on a key from an agent, a safe by the door, or a concierge desk in the Dalston Square blocks. On the second, emptier is better, since a clear floor lets us reach every corner a clerk looks at.
Does a Sunday or an evening check-out cost more?
It does not. The rate runs 8am to 7pm on all seven days, which puts a Sunday teatime check-out on exactly the same money as a Wednesday morning one. No loading goes on for the day, the hour or how far out you are.
Prefer the phone? 020 8077 6967, 8am to 7pm.