A two-bedroom in Randwick renting at $1,050 a week loses $150 a day while it sits empty. Three weeks of vacancy is $3,150 gone, and it never comes back. That maths is why between tenancies cleaning for a landlord in Sydney isn't a soft cost — it's the cheapest lever you have on your vacancy period, sitting somewhere between $340 and $780 for most Eastern Suburbs and Lower North Shore properties. We run these make-ready cleans most weeks across Bondi Junction, Coogee, Woollahra, Mosman, Cremorne and Lane Cove, and the pattern is consistent: the places that show well lease in eight days, the ones that smell faintly of the last tenant's dog sit for a month.
This is not the same job as a tenant's exit clean. The tenant is cleaning to a bond standard — pass the exit report, get the money back. You're cleaning to a leasing standard, which is a different bar entirely. Our end of lease cleaning across Sydney covers the first. The make-ready covers what the photos and the Saturday open home will expose.
Why isn't the outgoing tenant's bond clean enough?
Because a bond clean is graded against the condition report from three years ago, not against the shiny refurbished unit two floors down that's also on the market.
A tenant's cleaner passes if the oven is clean, the windows are done and nothing's obviously grimy. Nobody gets marked down for a tired grout line, a yellowed silicone bead around the bath, a wardrobe that smells like mothballs, or three years of hard-water scale on the shower screen that technically "passes" because it was there at entry too. Fair wear and tear is the tenant's friend and the landlord's problem.
Then there's the gap itself. Properties sit empty for one to four weeks between tenants in the Eastern Suburbs and dust settles fast — especially anything within a few streets of Military Road, Anzac Parade or the Warringah Freeway. Painters, handymen and the carpet layer all leave footprints. We've turned up to Vaucluse houses that were professionally bond cleaned eleven days earlier and had a visible film on every dark surface plus a dead skink in the laundry.
The third reason is honest self-interest: whatever the incoming tenant photographs on day one becomes your baseline. A spotless entry condition report is the single best protection you have at the next exit. Landlords who skip the make-ready hand the next tenant a free pass on marks they inherited.
What does a between-tenancies make-ready clean actually include?
We treat it as a deep clean of the whole property with a leasing overlay on top. The core scope:
- Full detail of wet areas — descaling shower screens with a proper acid-based product, not spray-and-wipe. Regrout-look scrubbing on floor and wall grout, and we flag any silicone that needs replacing rather than pretending we can clean black mould out of perished sealant.
- Kitchen reset — oven, rangehood filters degreased in a soak tank, inside all cupboards and drawers, behind and under the fridge cavity, dishwasher filter and seals.
- Odour work — this is the one that decides applications. Pet odour, smoke residue in the ceiling cornices, damp carpet smell, old cooking oil in the rangehood ducting.
- Light fittings, fans, vents and tracks — ceiling fan blades, exhaust fan covers, aircon filters, sliding door tracks, window tracks and flyscreens.
- Walls and skirtings — spot cleaning of scuffs, marks behind door handles, kids' handprints down the hallway.
- Balcony and outdoor — a hosed and scrubbed balcony makes an apartment feel twenty per cent bigger in photos. Our notes on strata rules, bin rooms and balconies apply just as much to landlords as to tenants.
- Final glass — internal windows and mirrors last, after tradies are done, so the photographer isn't shooting through streaks.
Honestly, skip the supermarket degreaser for a rangehood that's had three years of stir-fries. It just moves the film around. We soak filters in a caustic solution and they come out looking like they came out of the box.
How much does a make-ready clean cost in 2026?
Spring 2026 pricing for the Eastern Suburbs and Lower North Shore, based on what we've been quoting through July and August. Every one of these is a fixed price confirmed before we start — no hourly creep.
| Property | Make-ready clean | Hours on site | + Carpet steam clean |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio / 1-bed apartment | $290 – $380 | 3 – 4 | $60 – $95 |
| 2-bed apartment | $340 – $480 | 4 – 5.5 | $95 – $150 |
| 3-bed apartment or semi | $450 – $620 | 5 – 7 | $140 – $210 |
| 3-4 bed house (Mosman, Coogee, Willoughby) | $580 – $780 | 6 – 8 | $190 – $290 |
| 5-bed+ house with pool area | $820 – $1,250 | 8 – 12 | $280 – $420 |
Against a week of lost rent at Eastern Suburbs rates, the whole exercise pays for itself if it shaves even two days off the vacancy. You can sanity-check your own place against our published prices and instant estimate calculator before you ring anyone.
Two things push a quote up: pets and painters. A property that housed a large dog needs carpet extraction plus enzyme treatment, and if the painters have been through, expect paint speckle on tile, glass, tap ware and skirtings that has to be scraped off by hand. Budget an extra $120–$200 for a post-trade detail on top.
Book the clean for the day after the last tradie leaves, not the day before. We've lost count of the Woollahra jobs where a handyman turned up at 4pm to hang a blind and left drill dust across a freshly detailed sill. If the timing slips, tell us — our 72-hour free re-clean covers agent-flagged items on exit cleans, and for landlord make-readies we'll come back within the week to redo anything a trade undid.
When should landlords schedule it around photos and opens?
The order that works, and we'd argue it's the only order that works:
- Day 0 — outgoing tenant hands back keys. Do your outgoing inspection immediately, while their bond clean is still fresh, so any claim is defensible.
- Days 1–5 — repairs, painting, carpet replacement, blind cleaning, smoke alarm and pool certificate checks.
- Day 6 — make-ready clean plus carpet steam cleaning. Carpets need 2–4 hours to dry in spring, longer if the place is south-facing and closed up.
- Day 7 — photography and floor plan. Listing live that afternoon.
- Day 10–11 — first open home, ideally a Saturday.
September to November is our busiest window in Sydney, the same peak that catches renters out — we've mapped the crunch in the spring booking calendar for September to November. If you're turning a property over in October, lock the clean in when you receive the tenant's notice to vacate, not when the keys land. Two weeks' lead time gets you the slot you want. Two days' lead gets you whatever's left.
One more scheduling note specific to apartments: Lower North Shore strata buildings often restrict lift bookings and trade access to weekdays between 8am and 4pm. If your Cremorne block needs a lift booking for the carpet gear, that's a call to the building manager the week before.
Does the clean actually affect the rent you achieve?
Agents we work with in Bondi Junction and Neutral Bay are blunt about it. A presented property gets more applications, and more applications means you can choose on quality of tenant rather than on desperation — and it means holding your asking price instead of dropping $25 a week in week three.
The things applicants notice on a five-minute walkthrough are almost never the things landlords worry about. Nobody inspects the inside of the oven at an open home. Everyone notices:
- Smell, within four seconds of the door opening.
- The shower screen and the grout.
- Whether the windows are clear or hazy.
- Marks on the walls at eye height.
- Cobwebs in corners and on the balcony ceiling.
That's a short list, and every item on it is a cleaning problem rather than a capital works problem. If you want to see the difference in practice, the before-and-after photos from real jobs are mostly kitchens and bathrooms, because that's where the gap is widest.
Carpets, mould and the two things landlords underestimate
Carpet first. Replacing carpet in a three-bedroom unit runs $3,500–$6,000 in 2026. Hot water extraction on the same carpet is a couple of hundred dollars and will often buy you another two tenancies. We use truck-mount or high-powered portable extraction rather than a shampoo pass, which matters because a surface shampoo leaves detergent in the pile and the carpet re-soils within a month. Our carpet steam cleaning includes a written receipt, which is worth keeping on file — it becomes evidence at the next exit if a tenant argues about carpet condition.
Mould second. Eastern Suburbs apartments built between 1960 and 1985 with a single bathroom exhaust and no window are a standing invitation to mould, and a vacant property with the windows shut for three weeks in a wet September gets worse, not better. We wipe with a diluted bleach solution on hard surfaces and treat the ceiling paint, but if it keeps coming back the answer is ventilation, not cleaning. There's detail on what works and what doesn't in our piece on removing mould before an inspection.
The thing most landlords underestimate? Time. A four-bedroom Mosman house isn't a two-hour job because it has "only a bit of dust". Floor area, stairs, wet areas and glass all multiply — the same reason a house takes about three hours longer than an apartment.
How do you book one, and what do you need from us?
Give us the address, bedroom and bathroom count, whether there's carpet, whether pets lived there, and your photography date. That's enough for a fixed quote, usually back the same day. Our cleaners are police-checked and insured, we carry our own equipment and chemicals, and if you can't be there we work from a lockbox or the agent's key with no fuss — we do it on most of our Lower North Shore jobs.
Landlords with more than one property tend to move onto a standing arrangement: same crew, same scope, invoiced to the managing agent. It's the least stressful way to run a turnover. If that's you, mention it and we'll set it up.
Vacancy is the expensive part, not the clean. Send us your turnover date and we'll put a fixed quote together so the property is photograph-ready the week the keys come back.
More on this: End of Lease Cleaning in Sydney.
