Student accommodation

[Mark Irving]

Does anyone work on student accommodation for universities or private landlords student hmo"s doing weekly/fortnightly communal area cleans and end of tenancy cleans?
Could you let me know the pro"s and con"s of this market?

 

[Jacob Ward]

It's a race to the bottom on price and service

The only thing that goes up is the stress level

J

 

[Dave Atkins]

some cleaning companies pay the students themselves to do the cleaning (keeps it cheap)

 

[Darren Paterson]

We have 10 HMO properties
all with the a local management company
carpet cleaning communal areas staircases landings and kitchen areas etc usually every 3 months..

Had these for about 6 or 7 years
all large townhouses converted
With mostly a rotation of students or young adults accommodation..

On the plus side it very local to us less than 5 minutes away and the properties are all in a row and opposite each other on the same street so all very convenient !
They pay what we ask every year and more importantly on time !

We also have a few smaller hmo jobs dotted around Buckinghamshire
For a different company
(actually just a bloke)
who owns 3 properties (townhouses) with every inch of the properties converted into rooms loft rooms etc..
these are further away so not as convenient or regular 6/12 months usually this one always get a load of quotes (apparently) and then sends them to us to see if we can beat them
Which we never can
Pointless exercise really he always books us in the end and pays on time with little fuss

we always have strict instructions
for all the hmos to not clean any of the rooms if the tenants ask us
(which they do) not sure why
all in all decent well paid regular work in our experience so no negatives..

 

[Paul Mayer]

Cons it's cheaper work, harder work, with often greater expectations.

If you think about the tenant who's leaving a property they have been in 2/3/4 years.

They are having to pay to clean something they will never use again. They forget its their dirt.

They just want to get their deposit back so want the best result possible.

They don't want to pay to clean something they don't own/won't use.