MaidBossPro Blog — Offices, Rentals & Move-Outs

Realtors and Move-In Cleaning: Turning Listings and Closings Into Steady Work

Realtors are in and out of homes every day, and nearly every one of those homes needs cleaning at some point: before photos, before showings, after the seller moves out, or right before the buyer moves in. A maid service that makes life easy for a few good agents can pick up a steady stream of one-time cleans, and some of those buyers become recurring customers.

Why Realtors Are Worth Getting to Know

Rush jobs, covered in Same-Day Rental Turnover Cleaning: Fitting Rush Jobs Into a Full Schedule, are common with realtors too. Closings move, and the clean has to move with them.

Unlike a property manager, a realtor usually does not pay for the clean. They recommend you. The seller pays for a pre-listing or move-out clean; the buyer pays for a move-in clean. Sometimes the agent buys a move-in clean as a closing gift. The realtor's value is that they keep sending people your way, so the goal is to make every referral go smoothly.

The Kinds of Cleans Realtors Need

• Pre-listing clean. A deep clean before listing photos and showings. Often priced as a deep clean.
• Seller move-out clean. After the seller moves out, before the buyer's final walkthrough.
• Buyer move-in clean. After closing, before the buyer moves their furniture in.

All three are one-time jobs. Set the cleaning type to Deep Clean or Move-In / Move-Out, enter the bedrooms, bathrooms and square feet, and add extras like inside oven, inside fridge, inside cabinets and baseboards. Those details show on the team's phone under the address.

Who Is the Client?

Because the person paying is often not the realtor, set up the client carefully. The seller or buyer is the client for their own clean, with the home as their address. Use a tag or custom field to record which realtor referred them, so you can see later which agents send you the most work. More on that in Tags and Custom Fields for Commercial Cleaning Accounts.

If an agent pays for move-in cleans as closing gifts on a regular basis, it can make sense to set the agent up as a client with each home as an address and bill them monthly. Either way works; just be clear about who gets the invoice.

Quoting Quickly

Realtors want an answer fast. Build a move-in / move-out service and a deep clean in your service list, priced by bedrooms, bathrooms or square feet, and save estimate templates for common home sizes. When an agent texts “3 bed / 2 bath, 1,800 sq ft, closing Friday,” you can send an estimate in minutes. The buyer or seller approves online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job with the details carried over.

Estimate follow-up emails help with the people who mean to approve but get distracted by the move.

Scheduling Around Closings

Closings move all the time. Ask for the expected date, schedule the clean on the dispatch board, and confirm by text a day or two before. The entry note should say how the team gets in: “Agent lockbox on front door, code in notes” or “Buyer will meet the team at 10am.” If the closing slips, move the job on the board and let the client know.

Before-and-after photos taken by the team and saved with the job are helpful for everyone. The seller can show the home was left clean. The agent can see the house is ready for the walkthrough.

From Move-In Clean to Recurring Customer

A buyer who just moved in is a perfect recurring customer. They have a new home, they are busy unpacking, and they already know your team did a good job. At the end of the move-in clean, leave a card or send a friendly text offering weekly, every-two-weeks or monthly service. Because MaidBossPro remembers each home, a recurring clean at that address fills in from the move-in job: bedrooms, bathrooms, pets and entry details.

If they sign up through your website sign-up form, it lands in Form Responses with their card captured, and one click converts the sign-up into a client.

Keep Realtors in the Loop

The quickest way to earn more referrals is to make the agent look good. A short text to the realtor after the clean (“All done at 214 Oak, the house looks great”) goes a long way. Two-way texting from the office keeps each agent's thread in one place.

To see how realtor work fits with property managers, offices and your recurring homes, visit the MaidBossPro commercial cleaning software page.