RKirwan
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Is there any update about the cleaning company situation?
No doubt I will be corrected if I am wrong but I am sure that some recent winners of ‘Inventory Clerk of the Year’ have openly advertised their own cleaning business and property management services on their websites including a previous head of the AIIC, I just wonder how when in such flagrant breach of the rules you can win such an award.
I’m surprised people are only just waking up to this the AIIC have been pushing courses to agents pretty much as long as I have been a member, I always thought it was odd especially as I have never seen any kind of promotion of the AIIC in the MSM or anywhere else for that matter, still its nice to have their logo on my paperwork…
I won’t do it full stop, in my view, it comes under, ‘Can you carry smoke and carbon monoxide detectors with you just in case… These are all property manager responsibilities, the more of these things we do, the more they will ask us to do, they do little enough as it is.
Hi, Jacqui as far as I’m aware until she has paid you still own the ‘goods’. I have previously told Landlords that I will write to their tenants advising them that due to non-payment, the inventory is null and void, that has so far resulted in sulky payment every time. Its just a cheap try on!
Hi, Simon for what it’s worth I have a client who suggests that leavers pay £85 into an end of tenancy cleaning kitty when they go.
With this type of inspection, I have never found the cleaning to be satisfactory either in the room or common parts, you’ll always get an awkward tenant but most are happy to pay the money, it also helps to maintain good relations with the other tenants many of whom they are friends with already.Absolutely not! That is a job for their property managers and yet another task agents are trying to offload onto us. In most cases, it would require the use of a ladder, completely impractical.
Hi Karen
I use OutSec and find them very reliable
And fastHi Karen
The last house I did of about 6,000 sqft I charged £1500, just off Kensington High St. In my view too cheap, it took an entire day to dictate and another day to put the report and photos together. I was asked to quote on a similar house in SW7 a few months ago and quoted £2,500 TBH I didn’t really want it but if I had to do it I wanted to be properly rewarded, I didn’t get it someone else was prepared to do it for £800, frankly, I wouldn’t get out of bed for that the monthly rent was £36,000 and fully furnished with Waterford Crystal chandeliers which cost £50,000 a go, some serious artwork and designer furniture as well which made me wonder about the level of insurance I was carrying.
At 7,000 sqft that is about the same as 6 victorian terraced houses, I would say whatever you charge for one of those times 6 gives you a baseline price, then any additional rooms, the wardrobes in most of the bedrooms were walk in so I treated them as additional rooms, any staff accommodation? How many kitchens, is the decoration simple i.e cream and white or complex to describe finishes and wallpaper etc, lots of built in cupboards, garage, designer garden? One of the gardens I did had £40,000 worth of bushes which were ruined during the tenancy…! Alternatively how many 1 bed flats could you do in the same time? 7,000 sq is about the same as 15 1 bed flats… about £2,500 there or thereabouts… Also I decided that dictating solidly for a day is a bit of a nightmare and next time I will probably share it with another friendly clerk who I trust, splitting the house in 2 and sharing the dictation…
Hope this helps!I just give the heating a run when I get there as part of what I do in the unlikely event it isn’t working I can inform the agent…
It would depend on who was asking me! Frankly I think it somewhat unreasonable.
I’d stand your ground, its a maintenance problem… Having said that, better to pay the bill than lose a good customer, can’t be more than a hundred quid?
Its clearly fair wear and tear, the landlord accepted a disabled tenant with wheelchair, its like renting to families with children rates of wear are much higher.
Hi Matthew, I’ve had the same! I haven’t been happy about the way the association has been run (Or not run at all really) for sometime, there is never any consultation about the direction and promotion of our work or the rules we should work to, I’m curious as to how it was suddenly decided that we could own cleaning companies and do maintenance… Not suggesting for a minute that senior administrators just so happened to own such companies and then there is the question of how some of them were voted Inventory Clerks of the year… Just saying.
Me either, in fact with the new variant supposedly more infectious I’m being stricter than before. In my view other than handing over keys I see no good reason why tenants should be involved in the process, they aren’t going to convince me something is clean/not their responsibility etc anyway, most of the time they just get in the way and slow things down, more than happy to continue as we are!