Turning a property round between tenancies

The void is the part you can control

Between one tenancy ending and the next one starting, the property earns nothing. You cannot do much about how long it takes to find the right tenant, and nothing at all about how fast a referencing company moves. What you can control is the gap between the old tenant handing the keys back and the property being fit to photograph.

On most of the properties we are called into, that gap is longer than it needed to be, and nearly always for the same handful of reasons. None of them are complicated. It is mostly a question of doing things in the right order and booking them before you need them.

The order, and why it is this order

Each stage has to finish before the next one properly starts.

• Check-out and inventory, with the keys back
• Anything left behind dealt with
• Repairs, replacements and any decorating
• The clean
• Carpets, and upholstery if it is staying
• Photographs, then lock up

The clean goes after the trades, never before

A decorator sands filler. A plumber cuts into a cupboard base. A joiner planes a door to clear a new carpet. All of it makes dust, and that dust is fine enough to hang in the air for hours after the van has gone, then settle on top of doors, inside cupboards, along skirtings and on the light fitting in the room nobody worked in.

If the property was cleaned the day before, it is not clean now. You either pay for a second clean or the new tenant walks into a flat with a grey film on the windowsills and starts the tenancy writing you an email. Book the clean for after the last trade has finished, not the same day.

Where the work has been substantial, a full refurbishment or a loft conversion, dust settles twice. A lighter second visit a few days later is usually the right call and costs less than the first one. Anyone who has done builders cleans will tell you the same.

Carpets go after the clean, not before

Carpet cleaning puts water into the floor. A hot water extraction machine pulls most of it straight back out, but the pile stays damp and the room needs air moving through it for a few hours, longer in winter with the heating off.

Do the carpets first and the cleaner then walks the property in work boots, shifts whatever furniture is staying, and wipes skirtings down onto a damp pile. Do them last and the property is finished the moment they dry, which is usually overnight.

The exception is a carpet that is being replaced. Decide that before anybody cleans anything, because it changes the order. A new carpet goes in after the decorating and before the clean, and the fitters leave offcuts, dust and a smell that wants a day of open windows.

How long each stage really takes

The clean is the one people underestimate least and book latest. Most two and three bedroom properties are a day with a team of cleaners. Larger houses, or anything that has been let for several years, can need two.

Carpets are quick to clean and slow to dry, so plan around the drying rather than the machine. Allow the rest of that day with the windows open.

Decorating is governed by drying time between coats, not by brushwork. A decorator promising a whole flat in a day is planning to cut something short. Repairs are rarely held up by the work itself. They are held up by parts.

Build the schedule backwards from the date you want photographs, not forwards from the check-out. It exposes the tight spot straight away.

Book the clean before the works are finished

The single most avoidable delay is ringing a cleaner on the morning the decorator packs up. End of tenancy cleaners are busiest in the last week of the month and on Fridays, because that is when tenancies end and everybody wants the same three days.

Book provisionally as soon as you have a check-out date, and move it if the works slip. Any cleaner worth using would far rather you moved a booking than never made one.

The five things that add a week

• Waiting on keys. Nothing starts until somebody can get in, and a handover arranged for the Monday after the trades finish has already cost you a weekend.
• Deciding about the carpets late. That one decision sets the order of everything after it, so making it last means re-planning the lot.
• Leaving belongings in the property. A cleaner cannot work round a sofa and three bin bags, and will not dispose of them either, because what the tenant left is not ours to throw away.
• Booking the clean for the same day the trades finish. The most common of the five, and the only one that costs you the whole clean rather than a few days.
• Finding mould at the check-out. Surface cleaning it treats the mark, not the cause, and the cause is a repair with a lead time on it. Get somebody to look at it the day it is found.

What to have ready for whoever cleans it

None of this is much to organise, and all of it costs a day when it is missing.

• Keys, and either somebody to let us in or a branch to collect from
• An empty property, or a written note of exactly what is staying
• Power and water on, and the stopcock location if it is not obvious
• Somewhere to park, or fair warning that there is nowhere
• The check-in inventory, because that is the standard the property gets measured against
• A number that answers on the day, for the questions that only come up once we are inside

If it is going straight back on the market

Photographs come last, after the carpets have dried rather than after the clean. Damp patches photograph grey and no amount of editing makes them look like anything else.

Shoot in daylight with the lights on and the windows done. If the agent's photographer cannot come for a week, take them yourself in the meantime. A week of decent photographs on the portal beats a week of nothing while you wait for better ones.

Rather we did it? Get a price