What the Landlord and Tenant Board says
Two pages from the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) cover the ground: A Guide to the Residential Tenancies Act and the brochure Information for New Tenants. Both are worth reading in full. Here are the lines that bear on a changeover.
Cleaning, during the tenancy, is the tenant's job. The guide sets the bar at “the standard that most people would consider ordinary or normal cleanliness.” Repair is the landlord's. The property has to be kept in good repair, and the landlord has to meet the health, safety, housing and maintenance standards set by provincial and municipal law.
Damage sits between the two. The guide says a tenant repairs or pays for damage caused by the tenant, a guest or anyone else living in the unit, whether on purpose or by not being careful, though not for normal wear and tear, and that a landlord can apply to the LTB when the tenant has not repaired the damage.
The brochure adds one item to your list. For most tenancy agreements first entered into on or after April 30, 2018, it says the landlord must use the standard lease form. If a standard lease form is not used, the guide says the landlord must give the new tenant information about landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities on or before the start of the tenancy. The brochure is the LTB's handout for that.
This is general information, not legal advice. For a question about your own tenancy, contact the LTB.
Budget the changeover clean
The rent deposit will not pay for it. Under the LTB's guide, a rent deposit can be no more than one month's rent, or one week's where rent is paid weekly, and it goes toward the rent for the last month or week before the tenant moves out and toward nothing else. The guide's own example of what it cannot pay for is repairing damage.
So plan the clean as part of the gap between tenants. It sits beside the paint and the repairs. Think a former tenant owes you money? Ask the LTB, not a cleaner.
The changeover order: walk through, repair, clean, re-check
Four steps, in this order. Each one protects the next.
- Walk through as the keys come back. Photograph every room. Open the appliances and the closets and photograph inside them too, before anything is touched.
- Repair. Painting and trade work finish first. A clean booked before the painter leaves is a clean booked twice.
- Clean. The unit should be empty. Anything left behind, a box or a drop cloth, gets cleaned around, and the floor under it stays as it was.
- Re-check. Walk it again the way the new tenant will on day one, cabinet doors open, before the new keys go out.
What the clean between tenants covers
A changeover in an empty unit is the same work as a move-out clean, quoted on scope once the condition has been seen, and the page on move-in and move-out cleaning in Vaughan and Concord lists every part of it room by room, from the inside of the oven to the closet floors. In short:
- Inside the oven and the fridge, door seals included, plus the cooktop and the range hood.
- Inside cabinets, drawers, pantry shelves and closets, down to the shelf corners.
- The edges: baseboards, door frames, switch plates, the vanity light fixture, blind slats and window tracks.
- Wall marks and scuffs, treated as gently as the paint allows. Anything that needs paint is flagged instead.
- Bathrooms, kitchen surfaces and floors last. The unit is left dry and ready to inspect.
Some things sit outside it. Carpets are vacuumed, but carpet extraction is not offered. Windows are not washed, inside or out. Repairs are not cleaning at all.
A changeover is also not a turnover, which is the checkout-to-check-in reset between short-stay guests and belongs to Airbnb cleaning and short-term rental cleaning in Vaughan and Concord.
If you rent out a basement suite
Count the suite as a home of its own in the request. If it has its own kitchen, that is a full kitchen to clean, appliance interiors included. Its bathroom gets the same work as any other. Name the entrance the suite uses, and where a car can stop near the house.
The pages for house cleaning in Maple and house cleaning in Woodbridge already count a finished lower level as rooms in the quote, a basement kitchen included, so a rented suite downstairs is quoted the same way, with keys or entry for it settled before the day. Are the main floors lived in? Say so.
If the unit is a condo suite
In a condo, the building's rules come first. The elevator booking, the service entrance, the loading-dock window and parking shape the day, and the incoming tenant's move will want the same elevator, so book the clean after the outgoing move and send the building's rules along with the unit details.
For a suite in the towers around VMC station in Concord, add the concierge sign-in. The page on condo and apartment cleaning in Vaughan covers how building access is planned.
Mould and damage go on the repair list
A clean removes soil. It does not repair. Surface mildew on tile and fixtures is cleaned. Mould inside a material is not, and neither is water damage: both are flagged as repairs along with failed caulking, so the list of what to fix is in your hands before the new tenant arrives, and no one expects a clean to reach what sits inside the material.
Heavy buildup is different. It is soil, so cleaning can reach it, but it takes time. Oven or shower glass in a bad state? Send photos. The page on deep and spring cleaning in Vaughan and Concord explains how heavier buildup is handled.
Fitting the clean between two dates
Work forward from the day the outgoing tenant hands back the keys, and back from the day the new tenant moves in, because the clean has to land after the repairs and before your re-check, with enough room left for the floors to dry and for you to walk the unit at a calm pace instead of at a jog.
Send both dates as soon as they are fixed. Availability is confirmed before booking. We work every day, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
What to send for a changeover quote
Both dates come first. Then the unit type, with its bedrooms and bathrooms. Add photos of the worst spots. Building rules too, if any. The scope and price are confirmed before you book, through the quote request.
The outgoing tenant has a list too. Our move-out cleaning checklist for tenants is their side of the same handover, room by room. Pass it on with the move-out date.
