Move-out / move-in cleaning in San Francisco

What’s included in a move-out clean

This is the scope every cleaner offering the package on SanCrew works from — the same checklist they see in their own app.

• Dust, wipe & tidy all surfaces — desks, shelves, tables, bins & window sills
• Vac-dust doors, baseboards, blinds & vents
• Vacuum & steam-mop all floors
• Scrub & wipe baseboards, floors, doors & interior windows
• Full Bathroom Cleaning — toilet, tub/shower, sink & mirrors
• Kitchen Deep Touch-Up — microwave, stovetop, counters, sink, appliance exteriors & cabinet doors
• Inside cabinets, closets, oven, fridge, dishwasher & range hood
• Spot cleaning on walls included
• Switch plates & door handles sanitized
• Donation coordination available with cleaner after booking

Want the room-by-room version, with what is and is not covered explained? Read what a move-in/move-out cleaning includes.

What’s not included

• Home must be empty for full move-out cleaning
• Heavy buildup may require painting
• Wall & ceiling washing (available as an add-on)
• Carpet washing (available as an add-on)
• No packing or moving boxes
• No furniture moving

What is a move-out clean, and how is it different from a deep clean?

A move-out clean happens in an empty home. A deep clean happens in one you are still living in. That single difference drives everything else. On a deep clean the cleaner works around your belongings — dusting and wiping surfaces, steam-mopping hard floors, scrubbing baseboards, window interiors, cabinet doors, the oven, dishwasher, fridge and range hood filters, and cleaning behind and under movable furniture where it is genuinely accessible. There are limits, and they are deliberate: no deep scrubbing inside cabinets, nothing lifted over 30 pounds, and no vacuuming under furniture with less than five inches of clearance. That is the reasonable-effort standard most people book seasonally.

A move-out clean drops those limits because there is nothing to work around. The standard becomes ready for the next tenant: inside and outside of every cabinet and closet, inside the oven, fridge, dishwasher and range hood, interior windows, and every floor. Nothing gets worked around, so nothing gets skipped.

How much does a move-out clean cost in San Francisco?

Every crew on SanCrew sets their own rate, so the answer is a range: across the 11 crews currently quoting San Francisco homes, listed prices run from $170 to $1046, covering homes from a studio up to a 3 bed / 3 bath. The average of those listings is $297 for a studio and $676 for a 3 bed / 3 bath. Those are the crews' own numbers, averaged for reference only — SanCrew does not set, suggest or cap what any crew charges.

The spread is real and deliberate. Each crew is a separate business pricing their own experience, insurance, equipment and team size against the size and condition of the home in front of them, so two honest quotes for the same address can sit far apart. The figures above move whenever a crew changes their own rate. Enter your address, pick this service, and you see each crew's own price for your home before you book.

How long does a move-out clean take?

Most San Francisco move-out cleans run between two and a half and four and a half hours, and home size is what moves the number. A studio is typically 2.5–3 hours, a one-bedroom 3–3.5, a two-bedroom with one bathroom 3.5–4, and a two-bedroom with two bathrooms 4–4.5.

Notice that the second bathroom adds about as much time as an extra bedroom. That is because a full bathroom clean is slow work: the toilet inside, outside, around the base and behind it, the shower or tub including doors and tracks, mineral deposits and soap scum, mirrors, and the vanity inside and out. Condition matters as much as size — a home that has been cleaned regularly moves faster than one where the oven has not been touched in three years. And because the home is empty, none of that time goes on shifting furniture or working around belongings.

Do I need to be moved out completely first?

Yes. If you want the home ready for the next tenant, it has to be completely empty first. This is the one requirement in the move-out package that is not flexible, and the reason is practical rather than bureaucratic. The things that make a move-out clean different — inside every cabinet and drawer, closet shelves down to the bare wood, inside the fridge and oven, the floor where the sofa was standing — simply cannot be done with your belongings still in the way.

A move-out clean of a half-packed home is a regular clean with obstacles, and it will not pass a landlord walkthrough. Cleaners do not pack, do not move boxes and do not move furniture, so anything still there stays where it is and the surface underneath it does not get cleaned. Book the clean after the movers have finished, not before.

Will a move-out clean get my security deposit back?

Cleaning is the biggest part of this you control, but no cleaner can guarantee a deposit. Landlords withhold deposits for several reasons and cleanliness is only one of them — walls that need repainting, a broken appliance, damage beyond normal wear, or unpaid rent all come out of the deposit no matter how spotless the place is.

What a move-out clean does is remove the one category that is entirely fixable. If the home is empty and the full checklist is completed — inside cabinets and closets, appliances inside and out, interior windows, bathrooms, floors — the cleaning portion of the inspection should not be where you lose money. What it will not fix is condition. If a wall has more marking than spot cleaning can handle, that wall needs painting, and scrubbing harder will not change the outcome or the deduction.

What are the add-ons, and when do I actually need them?

There are two, and only one is usually worth buying. Carpet washing is the common one. The base move-out clean includes a thorough vacuum of carpets; it does not include washing or steam-extracting them. If your carpet only needs to look vacuumed, you are already covered. If your lease requires professionally washed carpets — plenty of San Francisco leases do — add carpet washing when you book and confirm it with your cleaner up front.

Wall and ceiling washing is the add-on people buy when they should not. Spot cleaning walls is already included in the base clean: scuffs, fingerprints, the odd mark. If the walls have more marking than that, the honest answer is that they need painting, not washing. Paying someone to scrub a wall your landlord is going to repaint anyway is wasted money. Ask your cleaner to look before you add it.

Moving out of a San Francisco apartment

The clean is the last thing that happens in a tenancy, and in this city the building usually decides how long it takes. Three things are worth sorting before you book.

Ask for the inspection first

California lets a tenant askfor an inspection before the tenancy ends — it only happens if you request it. The landlord then has to carry it out at a reasonable time, no earlier than two weeks before the end date, tell you in writing that you can request it and that you can be there, and give you an itemised statement of the repairs or cleaning they intend to deduct for.

That statement is the most useful thing you can hand a cleaner. It is the landlord’s own list of what is wrong, in writing, with time left to fix it. Where your belongings were not in the way at the inspection, the landlord cannot use the deposit for cleaning that was not on that list — though the list is not a cap: anything that happens between the inspection and handing back the keys, anything your possessions were hiding at the time, and anything on the list you did not actually fix can all still be deducted. Book the inspection, get the list, then book the clean around it — after the movers, so nothing is blocking the surfaces either time.

A summary of California Legislature, Civil Code section 1950.5(f), the initial inspection, not legal advice.

The building sets the timetable

Plenty of flats here are in walk-ups, and a crew carrying a vacuum, a mop bucket and supplies to a third floor loses that time from the visit, not from their own day. If there is a lift, many buildings want the service lift reserved and a certificate of insurance filed with the management company before anyone works in the building — the same hoop your movers go through. Book that slot when you book the movers, not the night before.

Then settle who opens the door. A key left with a neighbour, a lockbox code, a building code that changed last month, or a landlord who said they would be there and is not — each of those is a crew standing on the step. Put the floor, whether there is a lift, and exactly how they get in in the note when you book.

Kitchens and bathrooms take the longest

An empty home is what makes a move-out clean different: the work moves inside things. Inside the cabinets and drawers, inside the oven, inside the fridge. Those interiors are most of the difference between this and a deep clean, and they are slow — degreaser needs time to sit before anything lifts, and nobody can hurry that along.

In an older flat, expect some of it to come back only so far. Grout that has never been sealed, a bath with worn enamel, cabinet paint gone through at the handles: cleaning takes the soil off, but it cannot undo wear in the material underneath. That distinction matters at an inspection, because wear and tear is not what a cleaning deduction is for. Two practical ones: empty the fridge and freezer yourself, and if the power is going off behind you, defrost it with the door propped rather than leaving it shut.

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