Cleaning -- yeah, not my favorite thing.
May 10, 2010 2:09 PM   Subscribe

How much would it cost to have a 1400 square foot condo in the Los Angeles/Orange County area thoroughly cleaned?

We purchased a condo. It was a short sale, so we bought it as-is. We now have have to clean it after the previous owners have vacated.

The place isn't destroyed, but it is quite dirty. They carpet, which covers almost the entire condo, needs a very thorough cleaning, and in places is very stained. We probably can't afford to replace it. The whole place needs a good scrub down in general.

Any idea how much this would cost? I'm not looking for like-new condition, but definitely livable.
posted by SpacemanStix to Home & Garden (7 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
We used to have our place in the LA metro area cleaned twice a month and then every time we moved for move-out cleaning. The move out was generally $100 plus tip--that doesn't include carpet cleaning though (that will be a separate charge no matter what) and our places weren't incredibly dirty since we had regular maintenance cleaning though. Typically they charge for the number of hours it takes to clean the place.

One thing you have to watch out for in LA if it is important to you are companies that don't pay a living wage. When you're pricing out companies, I would hesitate to go with the lowest prices if I were you or at the very least tip really big.
posted by Kimberly at 2:26 PM on May 10, 2010


Response by poster: Do you know how much the carpet cleaning would be?
posted by SpacemanStix at 2:31 PM on May 10, 2010


You know typically what we would do is go through the valuepak coupons. At least half of them is for carpet cleaning. It really depends on what level of service you want, but figure at least another couple hundred dollars unless you can find a discount somewhere. You could always google and get estimates from a bunch of places. They usually go by square footage (1400 sq ft is not terribly big) or number of rooms and then number of stairs.
posted by Kimberly at 2:47 PM on May 10, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks, that's very helpful!
posted by SpacemanStix at 2:49 PM on May 10, 2010


In SB we pay $100 for cleaning and we got a steam clean that was $200ish.
posted by k8t at 2:58 PM on May 10, 2010


In L.A. -- I have a 1400 square foot house. I pay a cleaner $15/hr. 4 hours gets me a really clean kitchen & two really clean bathrooms, and the rest of the house is tidy, carpet is vacuumed, surfaces are wiped, etc . 6 hours gets me nice and sparkling clean all around, minus the windows.

If you're looking to save money you can rent a carpet steam cleaner at Home Depot. We did, and were quite pleased with the results.

Since your place is empty now, i'd suggest finding a cleaning service off craigslist. The main worries that people usually have about using a new cleaner -- the cleaner will steal or break something -- seem unlikely to happen in a totally empty place.
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:02 PM on May 10, 2010


The rentable rug doctor out-washed the pro's with our carpet. Sure, we went over each section several times, but, it was quite worth the time invested.
posted by mmdei at 5:07 PM on May 10, 2010


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