We are renting our apartment for the winter once again. In the past we've put into the lease that they must clean once a month but they never did... they just used it for 4 months straight and we had a mess to cleanup a the end. We would charge them for it but still...

This time, we are going to hire a cleaning service and include that in the rent right up front. The question I have is what to put in the lease to make sure that the place is still kept reasonably clean. What I'm afraid is that now that the cleaning will be included there will really be no incentive to keep the place clean at all. And the poor cleaning lady will have a mess to deal with every month.

How do I create an incentive to still keep the place reasonably clean each month even WITH the cleaning service in place?!

Thx,

James

We charge a Non-Refundable Exit Cleaning Fee $200 at move-in. I have collected the cleaning fee before I give the key.

I don't know how you could properly enforce monthly cleanings.

If you state it in the lease but do not enforce it during the lease, a legal beagle coudl prove your "standard practice" was to allow non-clean homes.

Some posters make a weekly housekeeper part of the rent, citing that appliances, etc look better longer and moveouts/turnover are simpler because they don't have to catch up.

Overall, I don't care how they live (within reason) but it MUST be clean at moveout.

"Clean" is also very subjective - hard to define and quantify.