Apartments

Two different jobs, and most communities need both: make-ready cleaning of units between residents, and the recurring clean of the corridors, lobbies, laundry, fitness rooms and amenity space that every resident walks through twice a day.

What it is

Apartment work splits into two halves that get confused with each other, and a community that only buys one of them usually has a problem it cannot explain.

The turn is the clean between one resident moving out and the next moving in. It is unpredictable, urgent, and it has a hard deadline: a lease start date that will not move. It is also the single thing a new resident judges the whole community on, because it is the only part of the building they have seen up close before they sign the lease.

The common areas are the opposite: predictable, recurring, and invisible when they are done properly. Corridors, stairwells, lobbies, mail rooms, laundry, fitness rooms, clubhouses, elevators, trash rooms. Nobody compliments a clean hallway. Everybody notices a dirty one, and it turns up in reviews and at renewal.

We do both, with different crews and different scheduling, because they are different work. Turns need a crew that can be called on Thursday for a Friday lease; common areas need a crew that comes on the same day every week and knows the building.

And they are our own people.

Unit turns — make-ready

A turn clean is not a house clean done faster. It is an empty unit, no furniture in the way, and every surface in play at once — and because the unit is empty, every mark shows.

What a turn covers

• Kitchen: inside and outside every cabinet and drawer, oven interior, racks and broiler pan, stovetop and drip pans, range hood and filter, refrigerator inside including seals and the coil area behind, dishwasher interior and door edge, sink and taps, splashback, counters
• Bathrooms: tub and shower surround descaled, grout scrubbed, toilet inside and out including behind the base, vanity inside and out, mirror, medicine cabinet, exhaust fan cover, taps polished
• Throughout: all floors swept, mopped or vacuumed; carpet vacuumed and spot-treated; baseboards, door frames, doors and handles wiped; light switches and outlet covers; window sills and tracks; blinds dusted or washed; closet shelving and rods
• Windows: interior glass cleaned, tracks cleared, sills wiped. Exterior glass on request
• Finishing: light fixtures and globes cleaned of insects, vents dusted, cobwebs removed, and the unit left smelling clean rather than perfumed
• Final walk: a check against the make-ready list, so what the leasing agent sees is ready to show

Turnover extras, priced separately

• Carpet deep cleaning where the carpet is staying
• Heavy-soil and hoarding cleans, which are a different job and are quoted as one
• Smoke and odor treatment
• Post-renovation clean-up where maintenance has been in — paint dust, adhesive, sawdust
• Balcony and patio sweep-down

Common areas — the recurring work

This is the half most communities underbuy, and it is the half that shows up in online reviews. A prospect walking to the model unit forms an opinion in the corridor, not in the apartment.

Every visit

• Corridors and stairwells: vacuumed or mopped, spot-cleaned, railings and handrails wiped, cobwebs down
• Lobby and entry: glass doors de-printed, entry mats straightened or swapped, floors cleaned, furniture wiped and straightened
• Elevators: floors, walls, rails and buttons — the buttons are the most-touched surface in the building
• Mail room: floor, counter, junk-mail bin emptied
• Laundry room: machine tops and fronts wiped, lint collected, floor mopped, folding counter cleared
• Fitness room: equipment wiped down, mirrors, floor, sanitizing wipes restocked
• Clubhouse and leasing office: cleaned to office standard, including the model unit if you want it show-ready daily
• Trash and recycling rooms: chutes wiped, floors washed, bins pressure-rinsed on a schedule
• Restrooms in amenity areas: full clean and restock

On a longer cycle

• Corridor carpet deep-cleaned, and traffic lanes maintained between deep cleans
• Hard-floor lobbies scrubbed and refinished — see floor strip & wax
• Interior and exterior window cleaning, including the lobby glass that makes the first impression
• Power washing of entries, breezeways, dumpster enclosures and garage decks — the dumpster enclosure is where most pest and smell complaints start
• Light fixture cleaning and high dusting in corridors and stairwells

How often it's really needed

New, premium, or actively leasing. Every prospect tour goes through the same corridor, and the amenity space is the product you are selling.

Verdict: daily. The cost of a corridor that lets down a tour is a lease you did not sign.

Stabilized occupancy, steady renewals. The work is about keeping residents rather than winning them.

Verdict: three times a week, with the trash rooms and elevators every visit.

Student housing. Heavier use, harder wear, and a turn season that is not spread across the year but lands in a few weeks.

Verdict: daily in term, and plan the turn season in the spring, not in July.

What to expect

• Walkthrough. With your property manager: unit types and counts, an average unit and a bad one, the common-area route, amenity hours, trash and dumpster arrangements, key and access control.
• Two written scopes, one proposal. A per-unit turn price by unit type, and a monthly price for the common-area route. Separated so you can see them, because they move independently — turns follow occupancy, the route does not.
• The crews. A common-area crew on a fixed day and time, and a turn crew you can call. Both trained on the property; keys and access logged.
• Ongoing. Supervisor inspections on the route, scored and logged. Turns confirmed as they complete so leasing knows the unit is ready. One account manager for both.

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