Who do I pick for a move-out clean before closing?

The truck leaves on a Thursday, the walkthrough is Friday morning, and you close Friday afternoon. Somewhere in that gap the house has to be clean enough that the buyer does not stand in the empty kitchen making a face.

So you search, you call three companies, and you get three numbers that are nowhere near each other. That spread is not a market failure. It is three crews quoting three different jobs, because nobody told them which job.

What a move-out clean actually covers

A recurring house clean assumes the furniture is in the way. A move-out clean assumes it is not, and that is the entire difference: the work is the surfaces you have not been able to reach for as long as you have lived there.

• Inside every cabinet, drawer and closet
• Inside the oven, the refrigerator, and behind both
• Baseboards, door frames, switch plates and vents
• Window tracks and sills — the thing buyers check first, for some reason
• Bathroom grout, and hard-water scale on glass and fixtures
• Wall marks where furniture stood, and where children stood

Whether it also covers carpets, interior windows, the garage, or the basement is exactly where quotes diverge. None of those is standard.

A real posting, and why it is written the way it is

Here is an actual request from Oak Park, and it is a good one because it answers the questions a crew would otherwise have to guess at:

Closing on the 28th and the buyer wants it broom-clean plus appliances. 1,650 square feet, hardwood throughout, one cat lived here for nine years. Basement can be a quick pass.

Square footage, floor type, pets, and the deadline. That is enough for a cleaning company to price the job properly instead of pricing the risk of the job — and pricing the risk is why vague requests come back expensive.

• Square feet: 1,650
• Bedrooms / baths: 3 bed, 1.5 bath
• Pets: One cat, nine years
• Needed by: August 27, 2026

The five questions that make quotes comparable

1. Appliances — inside as well as out? Oven and refrigerator interiors are the single most common exclusion, and the single most common complaint at a walkthrough.
2. Carpets: vacuumed, or cleaned? Two entirely different line items, and often two different companies.
3. How many people, for how long? A flat price hides the crew size. Two people for six hours and four people for three hours are the same labour and very different finishing times, which matters when the walkthrough is at nine.
4. What happens if the buyer finds something? Ask whether a return visit within a day or two is included. The good crews offer it before you ask.
5. Are they insured, and will they show you? They are working in an empty house you no longer live in, sometimes with a lockbox code.

Then look at the volume behind the rating

A company with a perfect score from four jobs has told you almost nothing. A company at 4.6 from two hundred has told you a great deal, including how they behave when something goes wrong — which for a job with a hard deadline is the thing you are actually buying.

This is why every rating on WhoIPick is shown with the number of reviews behind it, and why a score from fewer than five jobs is labelled as new rather than dressed up as excellent.

Post it once instead of calling five people

Deep & Move-Out Cleaning is one of the categories we are opening first, because a closing date is a real deadline and open bidding is at its best when the deadline is real. You post the job once — square footage, floors, pets, date — and crews near you come back with what they will do and what it costs. Posting is free and always will be.

Join the waitlist and we will tell you when your area opens.