Pre-listing cleaning in Toronto: what realtors should ask before photos and showings

Why the clean comes before the camera

Photos are the first showing. Buyers scroll past dark, cluttered or dirty rooms. A clean before photos is cheaper than a retouch, and nothing can be retouched at an in-person showing.

The order that works: declutter, clean, stage, shoot. The clean should be the last thing before staging and photos.

Question 1: Is the home empty or lived in?

An empty unit is a full top-to-bottom job: inside every cabinet, every appliance, every closet. A lived-in home is cleaned around the seller's belongings, room by room.

Say which one it is when you ask for a price. It is the first thing that changes the quote.

Question 2: What exactly is included?

Ask for the list in writing. For photos and showings, these are the items that show:

• Inside windows, sills and tracks. Glass shows streaks in every photo with daylight.
• Baseboards, door frames and light switches.
• Bathroom glass, taps and grout: descaled, not just wiped.
• Kitchen: inside the oven and the fridge. Buyers open them.
• Light fixtures and ceiling fans, dusted.
• Floors, edge to edge.

Ask what is excluded too: outside windows, carpet shampoo, wall washing, junk removal. No surprises on listing day.

Question 3: When, relative to photos?

Book the clean for the day before the shoot, or the morning of. Not a week before, when the seller is still packing.

Confirm the time with the photographer and the stager. Ask the cleaner to send photos when they finish so you can check before the shoot.

Leave a buffer. If the stager brings furniture after the clean, ask for a final pass on the floors once everything is in place.

Question 4: Who handles access?

Lockbox code, concierge, elevator booking, parking. In Toronto condos, each one can stall a visit. Give the cleaner one written brief with all four.

Ask who you call if the door doesn't open. You want a name and a number, not a general inbox.

Question 5: How is the price set?

Ask for one flat price per home, agreed before the visit. An open-ended bill is hard to pass on to a seller.

For an empty unit, we use the same flat prices as our move-out cleans:

Standard size, reasonable condition. Anything extra is confirmed before we start. For a lived-in home, or 4 bedrooms or more, we confirm a flat price the same day.

Question 6: What about touch-ups between showings?

A listing that sits a few weeks collects dust, fingerprints and footprints. Ask whether the cleaner can come back for a quick refresh before an open house.

Agree on that scope and price at the start, with the first clean.

Question 7: Lived-in home? Plan around the seller

When the seller is still living there, the clean has to fit their day. Agree on a few things up front.

• Which rooms are in scope, and which closets stay closed.
• Where personal items go during the clean, and who moves them.
• Pets out of the home, or in one room, during the visit.
• What the seller does between the clean and the photos: no cooking, no laundry piles.

A short note to the seller the day before avoids most problems on the day.

Question 8: Who checks the work?

Ask how the cleaner checks their own work before they leave. A written checklist, room by room, is the simplest answer.

Then walk the unit yourself, or have the stager do it, before the photographer arrives. Look at glass in daylight, the shower, the floor edges and inside the oven. Those are the spots that show in photos and at showings.

If something was missed, ask for it to be fixed before the shoot. That is easier to agree on at booking than on listing day.

Proof you can send the seller

Ask for before and after photos, room by room. You forward them to the seller and skip a trip to the property.

We clean for realtors across Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke, Downtown Toronto, Mississauga and Markham.