Cleaning Starts From £7ph In London

Ewelina Zawada

New Cleantalker
How to make a profit?
Some clients even complain on £10ph rate. It's "too expensive" - they say!
No one understands that IT IS a hard job?!
What are rates at your area?
 

Steve Porter

Cleantalker Veteran
Hi Ewelina
£10 per hour is more of a wage as opposed to a business rate, especially now where the employer must pay a minimum of £7.20ph.
We have the housewife come cleaner who touts herself out at £8-10ph but we also have plenty of businesses who charge circa £18ph+

Pick your chosen market & give them value rather than someone elses wage prices!
 

Remus R Lungu

Cleantalk Member
The reason why some cleaners work for 7 an hour is probabil because they are on benefits and want a cash in hand job
At least i cant find a better answer cause at that price minus expences you cant make a living
 

Garry Neilson

Cleantalk Member
Some of them may have been earning that as agency or big company cleaners, hence thinking that is the going rate or got their prices from job adverts for staff of big companies.
 

Florin Titiriga

Cleantalk Member
Ewelina these people are full of b**** !!!! How can you complain to a business that £10 ph is expensive?What do you expect? £3ph??? If you can't afford a cleaner then do it yourself. If I was to do end of tenancy I would charge a flat fee per job.

A friend of mine was working back in 2014 for a cleaning agency and she was sent to a jewish guy to clean a house, the rate was £8ph for the cleaner, she finished cleaning after 4 hours and gives him an invoice of £8x4 hours, he said: But I thought that it's £8 to clean the whole house, not per hour!!! some people....:rofl:
 

Jon Chrimes

Cleantalk Member
The two local business's we recommend here in Ipswich and Hadleigh, when asked for regular domestic cleaning, charge £12 per hour and are both busy.
 

Remus R Lungu

Cleantalk Member
I charge 12.5 per hr for our regular clients
I like to get about 20/25 per hr for eot work,although we charge a fee by size
And 30/50 per hr for carpet cleaning.again i do not charge hourly but that's how it works out

Me and my other half have no problem getting that.Of course some people want to pay peanuts but they are not getting our services
 

Adrian Ridley

Cleantalk Member
Florin is right a flat fee, just give then a price for doing the work
If it's done in two hours great, if the next time you go it takes 1 half hours fine. I no a couple of domestic cleaning companies that do this and there are very busy. I don't understand why cleaning companies still do things by the hour when most service companies now just give a price . Would you have builder come round your house or a plumber and pay him by the hour probably not you get a fixed price.
 

Garry Neilson

Cleantalk Member
The difference between a plumber and a cleaner is that tradesmen will go round and base that price on what they see, giving a fixed price for EOTs unless you have actually viewed a property can be a really bad idea unless you have a suitable sized team, there can be massive variations in the amount of work from 30 minutes of cleaning to 20 hours for a 1 bed, fine you can absorb that if you have a company with multiple teams but if you are a small one or self employed its not that great an idea, on top of that you may be dealing with agencies and specific to clean lists which can be queried by the tenant who gets the bill taken off their deposit and you may have to go get the keys, go to the property and return the keys just to give a quote which can take a few hours of your time straight away. The larger companies I know of doing fixed price EOTs only cover the cleaning of certain things and have a tiered system which is problematic for the agency or the tenant as the stuff they do not do is then recorded on the checkups. Its just as easy to have a minimum charge and a charge per hour for each cleaner plus consumables, that way its the tenant bearing all the costs and if you have to use more expensive chemicals like mould removal you get that back as well.
 

David Kiss

Cleantalk Member
I'm based in London and I'm charging £13.60+VAT/hour for 2 nurserys and no complaints. For end of tenancies I'll charge fix amount same with carpets. You just have to lose those clients who complains at least that's what I did.
 

Neil Jones

Cleantalk Member
Domestic cleaning is a nightmare IMO. High turnover of staff, the worst type of customers, time consuming in relation to the profit you make, I could go on.
To really make it work you need high volumes and a good catchment area.
At the end of the day less affluent areas aren't going to have a cleaner and cleaning will always be the first thing people drop when they need to make cutbacks.
I'm in between two towns that are probably considered poor (in fact, they are), we still have the nice areas but the majority is probably classed as poor. We've got around 40 regulars in 2/3 years and we can charge maximum £12 ph, and get laughed off at that most of the time. A lady friend who lives 35 mins from me in Hale in Cheshire started at the same time as me, she now has 35 staff and is booming, but her market is affluent.
Even When I spoke to the Molly Maids franchise she just said my area was dropped after 8 month because of the lack of customers.

Check your market first and be prepared to work hard and deal with crap staff and picky customers is my opinion.
 

Michelle Hamer

Cleantalk Member
In the area I work in, We have a cluster of towns but I would say are mainly low income. Their is the odd village and housing estate were the more affluent live. I charge a flat hourly rate and then add on travelling costs which I inform the client about when we first make contact.
To add to my income, I have diversified into other areas such as shopping, laundry etc. To be honest and I say this with a firm belief, Our industry ( Domestic cleaning ) is going to become a cheap option for caring for elderly people. With care homes shutting down or the cost of them spiralling. Relatives will look at us as a way of keeping family members at home cheaper. I now have clients who I see daily and we do most things for them on the Domestic side and keep the family update on how we find them. I have taken a course on spotting signs for dementia and first aid.
 
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