Commercial exits go wrong in a predictable way. The tenant books a cleaner, the cleaner does a genuinely good clean, and the agent still refuses to sign off - because the lease asked for make good and what was delivered was cleaning.
This is worth understanding before you get quotes, because the two jobs have different scopes, different trades and very different costs.
Make good and cleaning are different obligations
Cleaning returns the premises to a clean condition. Make good returns the premises to the condition specified in the lease, which usually means undoing what you changed.
- Cleaning covers floors, glass, kitchens, bathrooms, dust, marks and rubbish removal. It is a cleaning contractor's work.
- Make good can include removing partitions and workstations, patching and repainting walls, replacing damaged ceiling tiles, removing cabling you installed, reinstating original floor coverings, removing signage and reinstating any services you altered. Much of that is building work, not cleaning.
- The overlap is real - a make good typically finishes with a builder's clean and then a final detail clean, and a cleaning contractor usually does both of those.
If a cleaning quote looks surprisingly low compared with what you were expecting to pay, check whether you were expecting a make good. Contractors quote what they were asked to quote.
Read the clause before you get quotes
The exact wording drives everything, and the standard forms vary. Find the make good or yield-up clause in your lease and note four things.
- What condition is specified. "Base building" or "shell" is a very different obligation to "the condition at commencement, fair wear and tear excepted".
- Whether a condition report exists. An entry condition report with photographs is the single most valuable document you can have. If there is one, get it out now - it is what fair wear and tear will be argued against.
- Whether the landlord has waived anything in writing. Landlords sometimes want to keep fit-out for the next tenant. If yours does, get that in writing before you remove a single partition.
- The date the premises must be handed back. Not the lease expiry - the handover date. They are often not the same, and rent may continue until the obligation is met.
What agents actually inspect
Exit inspections are quick and they follow a pattern. Agents look at the things that cost them money to fix and the things a prospective tenant will notice on a first walk-through.
- Carpet. Traffic lanes, chair-castor wear, stains under desks and at the kitchen. Extraction is usually expected, and stains that predate you are exactly why the entry condition report matters.
- Walls. Scuffs, shadowing where furniture stood, screw and bracket holes, and adhesive residue from signage or acoustic panels.
- Ceiling and lighting. Stained or cracked tiles, missing tiles, diffusers full of dust or insects, and dead tubes.
- Kitchen. Inside and under the sink, the cupboard interiors, appliance interiors, and behind and under the fridge - which is where most inspections actually fail.
- Bathrooms. Grout, sealant, the underside of pans, extraction fan grilles, and mirror edges.
- Glass and frames. Both sides where reachable, plus tracks and sills.
- Floors other than carpet. Vinyl and timber usually need a machine clean, and in some leases a reseal or a polish.
- Storerooms, comms rooms and the back of house. Consistently the last thing anyone cleans and the first thing an agent opens.
- Outside your door. Your loading area, your bin bay, your car park bays and any external signage fixings.
The items that most often fail
Across commercial exits, the same handful of things come back on the report.
- Cabling left in ceiling spaces and under floors after the fit-out is removed
- Adhesive and silicone residue from signage, mirrors and acoustic panels
- Marks and holes patched but not painted, or painted in a colour that does not match
- The inside of kitchen cupboards and the cavity behind the fridge
- Air conditioning grilles and return air vents
- Light diffusers
- Rubbish and old fit-out components left in a store room or on the loading dock
- Keys, swipe cards, alarm fobs and remotes not returned or not accounted for
Timing: the last week is the wrong week
The sequence matters more than the effort. Cleaning before the fit-out strip is wasted, and cleaning on handover morning leaves no time to fix anything the inspection finds.
- Six to eight weeks out. Read the clause, find the condition report, and get scoped quotes for make good and cleaning as separate line items.
- Two to three weeks out. Fit-out removal, patching and painting. This is the noisy, dusty part and it must finish first.
- One week out. Builder's clean, then the detail clean, then carpet and hard floors last so nothing walks over them.
- Two to three days out. Your own walk-through with the scope in hand. Book the agent's inspection with a couple of days still in reserve.
Getting it signed off
Photograph everything when the clean is finished, before anyone else enters. Date-stamped photographs of a completed exit are what resolve a dispute two weeks later when the premises have been walked through by three prospective tenants.
If the agent raises items, ask for them in writing as a list rather than a conversation. Most exit disagreements shrink considerably once the objections have to be written down and matched against the lease clause. If you would like the clean quoted as its own line so you can see exactly what is and is not included, tell us the address and the handover date and we will walk through it.