How clean does my house need to be for new buyer?

[orangesoda36]

We have sold and buyers date of entry is in a few weeks. We are moving overseas and not taking anything with us. I offered buyer pretty much everything in the house for free but he responded he only wanted the non integrated fridge freezer and sofa, so I'm having to remove items slowly and then will pay probably for some things to go to rubbish dump/my sister is taking some items.

I'm planning on having the sofa steam cleaned the day before we move out as we have young kids and it gets filthy.

DH says the rest of the place just needs a wipe over and vacuum but after renting for many years and always having to pay for a vacate clean when we moved I was unsure if that is enough?

I don't want to break my back as I have 4 DC and the move overseas is taking a lot of organisation.

Thank you

I think the decent thing is to do a deep clean or pay for someone else to do it. If you have young kids I doubt a quick wipe will leave it clean enough.

By the way it’s a shame to dump furniture if it could be donated. Emmaus and British Heart Foundation are charities that collect furniture for free in some areas, maybe look into that. Less hassle for you and less waste.

Yup I'd donate furniture and pay a cleaning company for the final clean.

Legally I don't think you need to deep clean, or even clean the free sofa and fridge your leaving them, morally it's different. I personally would clean as you go then a hoover when you leave. You have no deposit to claw back. I would make sure all furniture and rubbish is removed.

If you post pictures on your local Facebook group of all the furniture I'm sure it will get snapped up.

There's no obligation at all. But I would say the done thing is the minimum of a full typical weekly clean. So bathrooms and kitchen clean, everything hoovered and wiped down. I'd also clean the insides of the kitchen cupboards as these get surprisingly mucky which becomes obvious once you empty them.

I'll be trying to donate as much furniture as I can the week before we leave but I live quite rural and it can be challenging to have people collect things. Added challenge that there's a few items I need up until the day we go like beds/ high chairs/small appliances

Ok so I'll aim to do as deep a clean as possible then. I paid a lot of money to one of the few cleaners in the area for it going on the market and tbh it wasn't a very good job.

When I moved into the first place I bought the previous owners had left me £50 for a takeaway, an assortment of cleaning products and a note saying they had run out of time to clean the flat! I appreciated the gesture but I was not impressed that I had to do a deep clean (I think years of renting had set my expectations for a spotless home!). But, what could I do other than slap on my marigolds? The deal was done. The money transferred and the keys were in my pocket.

You need to leave the house completely empty and once it is it’s not difficult to wipe over any surfaces and hoover. I think as long as you do that and leave the bathrooms and kitchen clean then that’s enough. I’ve always expected to clean a house myself when I’ve just bought it.

I think the house should be cleaned properly - evey drawer and cupboard should be wiped. A good hoovering. Bathrooms clean including toilets. Imagine how you would expect it to be after a professional cleaner had done a weekly clean.

We had our cleaner come and help during the move.

We have just moved and as each room was emptied I cleaned/hoovered as it was emptied, it didn’t take long and the last things packed was the cleaning supplies. When we got to the new house it was left quite dirty and lots of rubbish was left, first things out the car were the cleaning supplies and I had to hoover as the furniture was placed down.

In your position I would order a skip and arrange for it to be collected the day of the move.

Then you can throw everything in the skip on the morning of your move. it’s nice to donate but sometimes it’s just not possible.

When I move i know I will be too tired to do a thorough clean so I always book a company to do a deep clean. This takes some of the stress out of moving.

Your DH is right. A hoover is fine. There’s no consequences for leaving it dirty, like there is with renting .

You can freecycle some of the furniture. Local facebooks groups have a free cycle area. Personally I would just run a hoover round. I would clean the couch though as it's part of the sale.

Leave it clean, so the new owners items can be put in cupboards etc. we moved a couple of years ago, our buyers were an absolute PITA but I still left the house spotless. We have always left homes we have sold clean, I just couldn’t not. The house we bought was immaculately clean too, makes unpacking so much easier.

How clean do you want the place you're moving to to be? Leave your home at least as clean as that.

One of my neighbours hated cleaning but when she sold her house she gave it a deep clean. The first thing that the new owners did was to knock down a wall to make a through room!

I left my house spotless when I moved, but the house we moved into was pretty grim, dirty kitchen cupboards, cooker and dishwasher; filthy laminate floor; socks and underwear behind the radiator and they even left a double bed in the loft because they couldn’t be bothered to dismantle it! Grim.

I want it as clean as possible as I know how it feels so move into a house/apartment and have to be cleaning from the get go, but logistically that will be difficult.

We are already having to repaint a couple of freshly painted walls as tv bracket has come down and food splattered up living room wall (weaning twins 🙄) so I'm just trying to minimise stress where I can.

Contracts usually specify 'swept clean' and free of rubbish. So dusted and vacuumed is the minimum.
Last time I moved I had my cleaner follow me as I emptied each room to do this - dusted the skirting boards, vacuumed inside cupboards, did bathrooms.
I also left a bottle of wine and a list of things like when rubbish was collected, name of local tradesmen and other useful local info.

I was on my hands and knees scrubbing and happy that I left it spotless.
My new house was fucking vile

The last twice I have moved I left my house immaculate and the new place was filthy. Who are these people who think other families want to know that their entire diet consisted of ground coffee, olive oil, tomatoes and lentils? (Going off the crap in the cupboards and the contents of the dishwasher filters). The previous kitchen needed elbow-length gauntlets to deal with the ingrained fatty crud.

😂

How clean would you want your new place to be? Leave it the same.

we just gave ours a superficial clean. This was in part because we knew the new owners were planning to get some work done (we let them come round with a builder and designer to measure up etc so they could get the work started immediately), and although we did not know which rooms would be included in the work, we took the view that they would probably get the whole house cleaned after the work was finished (they were staying in their rental until the work was finished). Plus also the packing up took longer than we expected so we ran out of time anyway! We did leave a welcome bottle of champagne though.

The house we moved into was a similar level of cleanliness. We were also having work done but not immediately, so just got our cleaner to come round for some extra time the first week.

Honestly I would dust, vacuum, mop floors, clean bathroom and kitchen, fridge and empty cupboards. I wouldn't do a deep clean / clean windows / wash walls / clean carpets etc. Life is too short for deep cleaning other people's houses, especially when you already have so much to do and think about.

British Heart Foundation is great for anything that can be donated - check out their website, you’ll be able to easily find out if they’ll collect from you.