Moving Out

Before you leave you must ensure that everything in the property is exactly as you found it. Here a well-organised inventory really comes into its own. You need to clean thoroughly. Everywhere. It is no good taking a nice clean house or flat, leaving it in a state and expecting no consequences. Leaving a mess behind will cost you money and cause you hassle.

• Take every room, clean every mark off the walls, wash every inch of floor. (Yes, even behind the loo.) (I know many landlords who always rent by preference to tenants who have been in the armed forces because they are marched into and out of all their service quarters under full inspection. The Swedes have a very strict regime where specialist cleaners must be used by both parties at each end of the rental contract. Even the ball cocks are scrubbed clean under this system.)
• You need to defrost fridges, and wash them out thoroughly. Don’t unplug the fridge and close the door – mould forms immediately. Either switch off and leave the door open when you leave, or leave it switched on with the door closed.
• Clean cookers – the bane of every landlord’s life – and those grease-filled cooker hoods. It takes hours to pull a cooker back from a state and tenants will find their deposit disappearing fast if they don’t clean up thoroughly.
• Wash the insides of cupboards as well as the doors. Hoover everywhere – including under the beds.
• The list is endless. Make the place look exactly as it did the day you moved in. Leave nothing to chance, or indeed to charge.
• If it is a term of your lease and you signed it, you need to take drapes to the dry cleaners and provide a receipt. If linen has been provided, wash and iron it and leave it where you found it.

 

These are just the standard terms. Your own lease can have other requirements, and you need to observe them or you may well end up with other pre-agreed charges.

Tenants in expensive units are advised to employ a professional cleaning service and save the receipt. Less room for claim and counterclaim this way.

And finally, replace anything you have broken or damaged to the same standard. Having cleaned thoroughly, replaced light-bulbs, etc, check around to make sure the furniture is in the same rooms as when you moved in. I know landlords who will shove an armchair back into the lounge, but agencies will call out the maintenance man. You have been warned.

You’re Joking, Right?

No I am not. Landlords and agents get sick and tired of being expected to clean up after other people for free. It means the unit cannot go straight back on the market until someone has pulled it back up to scratch. Remember that the balance of responsibility is yours, not your landlord’s or agent’s. While many are just delighted to get back a lovely clean property and happy to return your deposit in exchange, sadly others are waiting for the tiniest detail for a deposit reduction.

When you are satisfied, repeat the photo process I suggested in the Lesson on inventories or call in someone else you can trust (not your mum) to verify the clean standard of return. This can seem like an awful palaver, but many of you will have lost money over this process in the past, and almost all of you will know someone else who has. Again, fingers crossed that the new Tenancy Deposit Scheme begins chipping away at the routine charges many agents and landlords try for.