Hand the keys back knowing the clean is done, and what it cost

Not automatically. There is no carpet, steam cleaning, fumigation or pest provision anywhere in the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 or the Residential Tenancies Regulations 2021. A full text search of both returns nothing at all. The belief that a pet triggers an automatic steam clean is a New South Wales and Queensland import, and in Victoria a lease term demanding professional steam cleaning is caught by section 27B like any other professional cleaning term. What you do owe is the section 63 standard: the place left reasonably clean, as far as practicable, measured against the condition report from the day you moved in. Carpets can still need a proper clean to meet that standard, and often do. The difference is that it is a question about the state of the carpet, not an automatic obligation.

Residential Tenancies Act 1997, authorised version

Usually not. Section 27B bans a lease term that requires professional cleaning at the end of a tenancy, or that requires the renter to pay for it, unless the term is the one in the standard form. A prohibited term is void, and including one is an offence carrying 25 penalty units. The single permitted version is regulation 12, and it allows professional cleaning to be required in only two situations. The first is where the property was professionally cleaned immediately before your tenancy started and you were advised of that. Both limbs, not just the first, and most letters assert only the first. The second is where professional cleaning is needed to restore the property to its condition at the start, having regard to the condition report and fair wear and tear. If a letter simply asserts that you must produce a professional clean, it is worth reading the clause it relies on.

The legal test is not an agency checklist. Section 63 asks you to leave the property reasonably clean, as far as practicable, and in the same condition as when you moved in, allowing for fair wear and tear. Consumer Affairs Victoria Guideline 2 sets the standard: free of marks, dirt, cobwebs, stains and dust, and in its words it "cannot be further improved by additional cleaning to a reasonable standard", judged by average standards in the community. The same guideline says plainly that it does not mean spotless or pristine, and it treats work at heights as often the provider's maintenance rather than yours. The yardstick is the entry condition report. Anything recorded as marked or stained on the day you moved in was never yours to lift, which is why we ask whether you still have a copy.

We charge an hourly rate for this work, and a standalone visit has a four hour minimum. Both figures are published further up this page, including GST. What we will not do is put a fixed price on a house we have not seen. End of lease is the category where a sight-unseen number is most likely to be wrong, and when it is wrong somebody absorbs the difference. Send us four or five photos and pick a condition level, and you get one fixed price for your house, agreed in writing before anything starts. After that only a change of scope moves it. If we have read the house wrong and it runs long, that is ours to wear, not yours.

We will not give you a number we cannot stand behind, and we do not yet have enough measured end of lease jobs to publish honest hour bands. Every operator who gives you a confident figure for a house they have not seen is guessing, and the two industry figures we have seen for the same job differ by more than double. This is the entire reason we ask for photos and the condition record. Four or five photos turn the answer from a guess into a real read of your house, and a fixed price is what we put in writing.

Yes, and plenty of people should. Regulation 12 refers to professional cleaning "or cleaning to a professional standard", and Guideline 2 describes that standard as one not necessarily performed by a professional cleaner. The test is the outcome, not who did it. Where it tends to go wrong is the things that get inspected and are hard to do without the gear: oven interiors, shower grout, window tracks, rangehood filters, and the tops and insides of cupboards. If you want to do the bulk yourself and hand us the few jobs that need equipment, say so on the call. That is a perfectly sensible use of the minimum.

We clean them, and we are careful about the line between cleaning and marks. Dust, cobwebs, grease, soot and handprints come off and that is our job. Minor scuffs and marks on walls are expressly fair wear and tear under Consumer Affairs Victoria Guideline 3, so they are not something you owe at the end of a tenancy and not something we will price you for. Two honest limits: smoke or soot staining that will not wash out is a repaint rather than a clean, and a hole is a repair. We will tell you which one you are looking at rather than scrub at something that was never going to come off.

Neither is prescribed in Victoria. Consumer Affairs Victoria Guideline 1 puts managing pest infestations on the rental provider, and it lists light globe replacement among the activities not prescribed by the Act or the Regulations. Six of eight agency checklists we looked at demand flea treatment, and that frequency is driven by templates written for other states. Light fittings being clean is a different question and is expected, so we clean them. If a globe is dead we will tell you, because a globe is a globe.