Rental Property Cleaning for Landlords and Listings in Central Florida

How This Differs From a Move-Out Clean or a Vacation Rental Turn

Our move-in and move-out cleaning page is written for the person moving: a renter trying to get a deposit back, or a homeowner leaving a house they sold. This page is the owner's side of the same moment. You need the unit rent-ready, documented and finished on a timeline that fits your painter and your next tenant's move-in date.

It's also a different job from short-term rentals. Vacation homes in the Disney-area belt turn over between guests every few days, with linens, staging and restocking. If that's your property, our page for vacation rental property managers covers it. A long-term make-ready happens once per tenancy and goes much deeper, because a year or more of daily living leaves grease, scale and grime in places a guest turn never lets build up.

Our Make-Ready Cleaning Checklist

This is the room-by-room list we work from on an empty rental. Your unit may need more or less, and we'll adjust it when we see the photos or walk it.

People touring a rental open the fridge, the oven and the cabinet under the kitchen sink. Those three spots set the tone, so they get the most time. If you'd like a printable version to compare against, our move-out cleaning checklist for Florida lines up closely with what we do.

• Kitchen: inside the oven and broiler drawer, the range hood and its underside, inside the fridge and freezer with drawers pulled, every cabinet and drawer, the sink and faucet base, dishwasher door edges and gasket
• Bathrooms: toilet base and bolt caps, tub and shower walls descaled, glass and fixtures, vanity drawers and the cabinet under the sink, mirror, exhaust fan cover
• Every room: baseboards, door faces and top edges, switch plates and outlet covers, window sills, blinds, ceiling fans and light fixtures
• Air return grilles and supply vents wiped (the filter swap itself is yours or your HVAC tech's)
• Closets: shelves, rods and floor corners
• Sliding glass doors: track vacuumed and wiped, interior glass cleaned
• Floors: hard floors vacuumed and mopped edge to edge, carpet vacuumed
• Final walk: lights on, every cabinet opened, every drawer checked, trash out

Timing Between Tenants: Where the Clean Fits

Book the clean as soon as you have the move-out date, not once the unit is empty. Buildium's tenant turnover checklist makes the same point about vendors in general: wait until the unit is vacant and scheduling conflicts can cost you a week. Most make-readies are done in a single visit. A unit left in rough shape can need more hours or a second day, and we'll tell you which once we see photos or walk it.

The clean itself should come after the messy work and before the finishing touches. This is the order that saves the most rework:

• Move-out inspection and dated photos, with the tenant present if you can
• Junk or abandoned item removal, if needed
• Repairs, drywall patching and paint
• Make-ready cleaning, which also picks up paint and sanding dust
• Carpet steam cleaning by a carpet company, last, so nobody walks on wet carpet
• Your final walk-through, lock change and listing photos

Photo Documentation and Deposit Disputes

If you plan to keep part of a deposit for cleaning, you need proof the unit was left dirtier than normal wear and tear. Florida's security deposit statute (Section 83.49) gives a landlord 30 days after the lease ends to send the tenant written notice of a claim, and missing that deadline forfeits the claim against the deposit. So your documentation has to exist before we clean, not after.

Take your own dated move-out photos first, or ask us to photograph each room when we arrive, before anything gets touched. After the clean we can send room-by-room photos and a short note on anything we noticed that isn't a cleaning issue: a cracked tile, a drip under a sink, a burn mark on a counter, broken blind slats. Those go in your file next to the move-in photos.

A fair word from the cleaning side: ordinary dust and a few scuffs after a year are wear and tear, and a routine make-ready generally isn't something you can bill back to the tenant. A greasy oven, a fridge left full of food, pet hair matted into every corner or a bathroom with months of buildup is a different story. For the renter's view of the same rules, see our post on security deposits and move-out cleaning in Florida. None of this is legal advice, so check the current statute or ask your attorney before filing a claim.

Lockboxes, Vacant Homes and Owners Who Aren't Local

Most of our rental work happens with nobody home. Give us a lockbox or keypad code and we'll let you know when we're in and when we're done. Confirm the water and power stay on after the tenant's accounts close, because we can't clean without running water and lights.

Tell us about anything unusual before we arrive: a community gate code, an alarm, a pool with a safety fence, or a neighbor who keeps an eye on the place. If the HOA has rules on where contractors park or what hours they can work, pass those along too. Plenty of owners with rentals in Davenport, Kissimmee and ChampionsGate live out of state and never see the house between tenants, so the end-of-job photos are how they know it's done.

Florida Vacant-Home Problems: Humidity, AC and Mildew

Central Florida is hard on an empty house. Shut the AC off to save on the power bill, and a few weeks of summer humidity can leave you with a musty smell, mildew on bathroom ceilings and caulk, and spots on the back walls of closets. FPL's advice to seasonal residents is to leave the thermostat around 80 degrees and keep indoor humidity below 60 percent, and the same logic fits a rental between tenants. Leave the fan on AUTO rather than ON so the system actually pulls moisture out.

Other things we find in vacant Florida homes: toilet rings where still water evaporated and left a hard-water line, dry drain traps that let sewer smell into a bathroom, dead bugs on sills and inside light covers, and pollen packed into sliding-door tracks. Running every faucet and flushing every toilet once a week keeps the traps full. Our clean handles the rings, sills and tracks, and our guides on a musty smell in a Florida home and hard-water stains in Central Florida go deeper.

Where we stop: we clean surface mildew on tile, grout, caulk and painted bathroom surfaces. Mold growing in drywall, under flooring or across a large area needs a mold remediation company, and usually an AC or plumbing fix first. We'll tell you if what we see is past cleaning.

Listing and Showing Prep for Realtors

A listing gets one shot at first photos. We clean before the photographer, with extra time on the kitchen, the primary bathroom and anything that catches a flash: stainless appliance fronts, mirrors, chrome and glass. Vacant listings gather dust and dead bugs fast, so if a home sits on the market, a touch-up before an open house or every couple of weeks keeps it showing well. Give us the photo date and we'll plan back from it.

Ongoing Arrangements for Small Landlords

If you own a few doors, you probably don't need a cleaner every week. You need one who answers when a tenant gives notice. Small landlords often set up a standing arrangement with us: the same checklist on every turn, the same team whenever we can schedule it, and photos in the same format so every unit file looks alike. For a vacant listing or a unit between leases, a recurring schedule of biweekly or monthly touch-ups keeps dust, bugs and humidity from piling up.

To get a quote, request a free estimate or call 877-754-5614 with the general area, bedroom and bathroom count, move-out date and a few photos of the kitchen and bathrooms. If something isn't right after a clean, tell us within a day and we'll come back and redo it free.