What Can Chelsea Landlords Reasonably Expect Regarding End Of Tenancy Cleaning?

If you asked a bunch of landlords and property management agents in both Chelsea SW3 and SW10 what the most common reason is for not giving former tenants back their deposit money, then you’ll probably get the answer “cleaning”. The condition that tenants left the rental property in is often nowhere near what it ought to be – which highlights just how important the whole topic of moving out cleaning is. Most landlords could tell you a few stories.

Hygiene Horror Stories

If you get a landlord talking about their rental property in Chelsea and telling stories about it, unfortunately, the stories that you are most likely to hear aren’t along the lines of: “Yes, we had fantastic tenants in our flat on Kings Road, and when they left, they left everything properly clean, and they’d got the carpets steam cleaned and everything.” Instead, you’re likely to hear horror stories: the tales about terrible tenants with equally terrible standards of hygiene who left the property in a foul condition.

Honestly, if you hear some of these stories, you have to wonder about the mental state of the tenants and whether they knew how to use a broom or vacuum cleaner at all, to say nothing of the deep cleaning required when moving out. Here are a few tales that I’ve encountered over the years:

• The tenants who left behind rotting food in the fridge and several bags of rubbish and old clothes… but who took the sofa that was part of the furnishings.
• The ones who weren’t supposed to have a dog but obviously did, as indicated by the dog poop left in the carpet.
• The ones who decided to add an extra electrical wire to the house so the shed outside had electricity – and I’m not talking about running out an extension cord with a multibox but a full-on illegally welded on job.
• The students who had a ritual of punching at least one hole in every bedroom wall.
• The ones who sprayed obscene graffiti on the living room wall.
• The ones who let mould grow everywhere – and it wasn’t because of poor ventilation, home design, rising damp, or anything like that.
• Entire rooms full of old rubbish, broken appliances and the like
• Gardens full of dead cars

To be fair and give the other side of the story, a few renters will also have stories about bad or overly demanding Chelsea landlords. You hear about the ones that charge premium rates for “homes” that have poor ventilation and insulation. Such ventilation never gets around to fixing the leak in the roof but still get snotty about the resulting mouldy carpet under the leak; the ones who never cleaned up after the previous terrible tenants and expected the new renters to pay out for moving in cleaning, and the ones who refused to give the deposit money back because one of the plants in the garden had died.

Things Landlords Need To Know

The first thing that landlords need to know is what is and isn’t reasonable to expect from tenants in the area of end of tenancy cleaning. It is reasonable to expect tenants to leave your rental property in good condition inside and out. However, it’s not reasonable to expect tenants to reverse the laws of entropy somehow and leave you with a property that is in better condition than before they went in or even in exactly the same condition. But you can ask them to keep and leave the place clean.

It’s a law of nature that things wear out and deteriorate over time, including things in your rental property (even in Chelsea, furniture can age, believe it or not, lol). This means carpets will become threadbare, the wallpaper will fade and possibly even peel away, the paint will become chipped, and appliances will break down. This is known as ordinary wear and tear, and you can’t refuse to give a tenant’s deposit back just because these inevitable things have happened. The same applies to plants in the garden. Sure, you can expect tenants to keep the lawns mowed, the weeds pulled, and the hedges trimmed, but plants do die from mysterious causes now and then, and it may not be the tenants’ fault.

Expecting tenants to take ridiculous measures to keep the rental property in good order is also unreasonable. For example, you can’t require that your tenants must take their shoes off indoors to protect your carpets – although you can require them to get the carpets professionally cleaned as part of the moving out cleaning. Nor can you insist they always keep the curtains pulled so the wallpaper doesn’t fade.

In the UK, it’s also illegal for landlords to require tenants to get a professional cleaning company to do the end of tenancy cleaning for them. Sure, many tenants hire professional end of tenancy cleaners to save themselves the hassle and to be more certain of getting their deposit money back, but this isn’t compulsory. It is OK to do your own deep cleaning, as long as you’re certain that you can do it right.

It’s also reasonable to have a final walk-through inspection with your tenants when they hand the keys over. This way, if they have accidentally overlooked something and not cleaned it – easy to do during the hassles and stress of moving out – then you can notify them of the problem and give them a chance to deal with it. Most of them will wipe out that one drawer that was overlooked or whatever it is.

The Perils Of Old Fridge Syndrome

One common trap that landlords can fall into is what I’ll call Old Fridge Syndrome. In Old Fridge Syndrome, a landlord might buy themselves a nice new American-style fridge with double doors, a brushed aluminium finish and an ice dispenser (very trendy in Chelsea, I must admit). This means they have to decide to do with the old fridge, which may still be in working order. It seems so simple. Why not just put the old fridge in the rental property as one of the fixtures?

The problem with this is that it is an old fridge, subject to all the wear and tear and breakdowns that happen to old fridges. What’s more, if you’ve put the fridge in the rental property, it’s still your responsibility to fix it if it breaks down. In fact, if it breaks down and can’t be repaired, you are now obligated to replace it because your tenants rented a place with a fridge included as one of the fixtures. It will be on the contract and everything, so you can’t insist that your tenants go out and buy a new fridge with their own money… unless you renegotiate the whole deal and lower the rent because you’re now not providing them with something. You’re also responsible for getting rid of the broken old fridge and taking it to the nearest whiteware recycling centre.

If you want to put your old fridge in a rental property, go ahead. You can expect the tenants to keep it clean and not scribble notes all over the outside. When they move out, you can expect they’ll leave an empty fridge that’s been wiped out thoroughly. You can expect them not to kick it about, wrench the doors off it or smash the trays. However, especially in the case of long-term tenants, you can’t expect the fridge to look like it’s just come off the showroom floor. There may be scratches. Seals around the door will perish over time.

Of course, if the tenants took a blowtorch to the fridge or tried to light a fire inside it, you can demand that they replace your fridge – but that’s quite another story, probably one to add to the collection of terrible tenants.