Property Condition Report – Cleaning Tips
Centurion Real Estate – Property Management – Property Condition Report Cleaning Tips
The Importance of Property Condition Report
Hi, it’s Justine Valender and Annette Buratovic from Centurion Real Estate. We’re here today to conduct a cleaning video on preparing your property for a ‘Property Condition Report’.
Justine: I meet with landlords all the time and we talk about the “importance of a property condition report” and the importance of handing over the property to a standard in which we can document it and ensure that it comes back to us. Here at Centurion, we like to do things a little bit different, and we actually do a video walkthrough as part of our property condition report.
What we find is that before we carry out this report, I’ll organize a cleaning quote, etc but we do have some landlords that like to undertake the cleaning themselves, and so we thought we would make this video on “some top tips” that we find sometimes can get missed and also for tenants when you’re vacating the property, so watch this video and hopefully it will just help to get into those tricky cleaning spots that somethings get missed.
Our Top Cleaning Tips for a Property Condition Report
Annette: Some of the main things that missed when owners come in to clean their property or tenants in vacating; are windows, all-glass doors with the frame, window tracks, door tracks and also blinds especially when the blinds are up all the time, the collection of dust.
What we do is start off with vacuuming the tracks. Some of the tools that I tend to use is the ‘tip brush’ or ‘toothbrush’ as these will loosen all the dirt in the tracks. You can see in those corners, it is bringing out all the dirt and sometimes if you need something a little bit smaller, tip brushes are really great.
After vacuuming the tracks, you can actually see there’s still not clean so what we going to do now is use ‘spray wipe’ in the tracks to soften it up and then we’re gonna clean it. Some of these scuff marks that you get from your shoes, you can actually use something like ‘Gumption’ and you can see that I’ve done a section through here and that’s what scuff marks prior. Same with the tracks, I get a toothbrush about that size so that way you just picks up any of the dirt and you can see there’s one that’s being done but this one hasn’t so you can see the difference once you’ve actually cleaned it after vacuumed so it makes a big difference.
Justine: Annette, can you just explain to the landlords in terms of when you carry out a property condition report, how would you class the tracks in terms of when they’re just hoovered but not scrubbed versus hoovered and scrubbed?
Annette: So when they’re just hoovered, you still have dirt in it so it’s actually classed as “not clean” so what you need to do is you need to hoover your tracks and then you need to clean them to be classed as “clean”. If you don’t do that, THEY ARE NOT CLEAN.
Doing the glass, you don’t need to use a detergent as such because it actually does a residue and smear marks so I tend to use as a tree cloth as they have A little buckles on them and what it does, it gets off any dirt supplied debris that you get from the insects and just basically washing it down with water and vinegar and just giving you a good rub.
Annette: We use our squeegee so this is the end product, both sides need to be cleaned when you do the windows and when you’ve got the fly screen, you need to remove those fly screens unless they are fixed security screen. So for using your squeegee, a clean cloth, water, and vinegar, you have no smear marks. So with the blinds, depending on the fabric, you have to be careful what you used this as this is more like a plastic so it’s not gonna leave any water stains, If it’s a material, it will leave water stain so you need to be careful what your actually using especially some of the Holland blinds where they’ve got cardboard inside, the fabric will end up becoming like paper mache if you were wet them so what we are going to do this one because it’s just a plastic, just spray along and just holding them and use your damp clean cloth. You might have missed a couple of times so you can see that dirt is coming off and it’s going off on the blind so we’re gonna have to clean the blind as well.
Don’t forget there are two sides, so both sides need to be cleaned. If it’s something that you don’t want to do yourself, there are people like ‘Amazing Clean’ and they are very good at what they do and they’re very reasonable in price as well, they also fix blinds that are broken.
So this is the end result after using ‘Gumption’ on stainless steel. We had a build-up of calcium because some have a dish rack that’s left here to do the dishes and the water just sits there so we end up with the calcium buildup now. Now we’ve removed that and they pretty much if you do it once or twice a week it just keeps those watermarks away. So we used the same product the gumption, inside the melamine shelves, people vacate and they take all their clean products under the shelves and it leaves the wing marks, same with the edges of the cupboards. This is normal wiping over doesn’t always get that off but it pretty much gets it up straight away same with the edges of your cupboards, so you’ve got your dirt and this is all clean here.
Another form that we come across is the calcium on the shower tiles and the shower screen. This is white calcium that actually clings to the glass and doesn’t matter how much scrubbing and bleach you use on there so you won’t get it off. A really good product is CLR, you can buy this from Coles or Woolworths. All you do is you get a sponge, you actually wipe it over, let it sit for a couple of minutes as it’s really heavy and buildup, you might have to do a couple of applications, and then you pretty much just wipe it off and rinse it off with water and just use your squeegee and then that’s all done. Just make sure that when you and using this, you do to ventilate your bathroom because it is a little bit breathtaking.
Another one is toilet seats, they tend to wipe over the toilet the same with the seating and then underneath through here. But what happens is if we get a lot of urine tract underneath, a lot of people don’t realize that underneath we have these wingnuts so all you do is you undo these wingnuts, take the whole seat off, put some bleach over it while you’re in the trough and it gives you the opportunity to then have the bare China bowl that you actually wipe and clean it yourself. Another area that’s commonly messed is through here, a lot of people take a wipe around their toilet bowl so you can see we can actually put our name in there. And also, all this dust, so again it’s all wet areas it’s probably easier to use a sponge to be able to wash your floors rather than using a mop.
If your grout starts to get a little bit discolored, things like ‘Sugar Soap’ are really good, you just get a soft brush, and just start of rubbing it into the grout and then take off all this discoloration and bring your tile grout back to being clean.
Justine: Hi guys, so I really hope you enjoyed watching this video with top tips for cleaning. Look, we always send you off a cleaning checklist as well and if you’ve never sure, always give us a call especially Annette, she’s absolutely incredible with our cleaning products and things like that. So Annette, let everyone know, why do we find this so important and why is an important aspect of renting out your property?
Annette: The reason why we are going to conduct the property condition report and when the tenant leaves, there are often disputes about what is clean and what isn’t clean and basically it’s black and white, yes or no. So, if an owner feels that their property was clean prior to the tenant moving in and then at the end, I’ve got on there and it’s not, I don’t have to try to be the mediator to try have both sides agree so if it doesn’t come to an agreement then we have to in front of a magistrate. When a magistrate looks at their property condition report and he sees on there with photos to back up that it’s not clean then it’s pretty much black and white so that’s why we can’t stipulate enough that clean has to be cleaned, it tracks are vacuums and they’re not clean because it’s not actually classed as clean so by doing this, which will help the owners prepare their property to be clean and ensures the property comes back clean. If it doesn’t, it taking out the tenants bond and we see in clean so they get their property back the same way.
Justine: Brilliant guys! Thanks again for watching, I hope you enjoyed it and if you’re looking obviously for an experienced property management team in High Wycombe, we would love to help as well. Have a great day!