A WA property manager doesn’t inspect your vacate clean against a general idea of “clean.” They inspect it against the Entry Condition Report filled in on the day you moved in, item by item. Most disputes over a vacate clean come down to a short, predictable list: the oven, the range hood filter, mould in the shower silicone, window tracks, and the sliding door tracks that collect sand and salt air across Perth’s coastal suburbs. Work through the checklist below in order and you cover every item a WA final inspection actually checks.
Short answer: a standard WA vacate clean covers the kitchen, all bathrooms, bedrooms, living areas, laundry, and hallways, inside and out, including ovens, range hoods, window tracks, skirting boards and fittings. It does not include carpet steam cleaning, mould that has penetrated silicone, exterior windows at height, or garden and garage areas unless you’ve added them as extras.
What Your Vacate Clean Is Actually Measured Against
The report your property manager completed on your entry day sets the baseline everything else is compared to. If a mark, a stain, or a worn patch of carpet was already noted on that report when you moved in, it isn’t something your vacate clean needs to fix, and it shouldn’t cost you at the final inspection. The problem is that most tenants have never looked at their own entry report closely enough to know what’s actually on it.
Before you book, dig out that report and read it room by room. For the full breakdown of how that report is checked against yours, it’s worth reading alongside this checklist. Providers on the Urgent Pro vacate cleaning network work from the same logic: match the property back to a reasonable standard of clean, not an unreasonable standard of new.
One terminology note, since it trips people up when they’re comparing quotes online: in WA this service is called a vacate clean. “Bond cleaning” is the Queensland term for the same category of job, and “end of lease cleaning” is what Sydney and Melbourne call it. The checklist underneath is largely the same everywhere; the name attached to it, and a handful of the specific fittings agents check, changes by state.
Kitchen
The kitchen is the highest-risk room in a WA vacate clean, and the oven decides more inspections than any other single item. Agents open the oven door and check the racks, the glass, and the door seals, because it’s the easiest indicator of whether the rest of the property received the same level of effort. It’s the same standard applied across Urgent Pro’s cleaning services, whichever state’s terminology you’re booking under.
- Oven: door glass inside and out, racks, trays, and door seals
- Range hood, including the filter
- Stovetop, with burner grates or elements removed and cleaned
- Splashback, degreased thoroughly, particularly behind the stovetop
- All cabinetry inside and out, including hinges and handles
- Drawers removed and the base cleaned
- Sink and tapware, descaled
- Microwave inside and out, including the turntable
- Dishwasher filter, door seals and spray arms
- Exterior of the fridge and dishwasher (interior only if the property is vacated)
- Benchtops wiped and polished where applicable
- Floor mopped
Bathrooms
Bathrooms fail almost as often as kitchens, and the cause is nearly always the same: soap scum and mould left in the grout lines rather than fully treated. A quick wipe with a general spray isn’t enough for heavy build-up in a shower that’s been used daily for a year or more; it needs the right product and enough time to actually lift it.
- Shower screen: soap scum and calcium build-up fully removed
- Shower tiles and grout, with mould in the grout lines treated properly
- Shower base and drain, cleared and cleaned
- Bath and vanity, inside and out
- Mirror, tapware and drains
- Toilet: bowl, seat, base and behind
- Exhaust fan: cover removed, blades cleaned
- Tiles, floor and towel rails
One limitation worth knowing before your final inspection: mould that has penetrated the silicone sealant around a shower or bath can’t be fully removed by cleaning. It needs re-siliconing, which is a separate job. If your bathroom silicone is already discoloured, it’s worth raising with your provider before the clean so the agent’s expectations are set correctly too, rather than everyone assuming a scrub will fix something a cleaning product physically can’t.
Bedrooms
Bedrooms look straightforward but agents check beyond the obvious, particularly in wardrobes and around window fittings that are easy to skip when you’re moving quickly.
- Wardrobes inside and outside, including mirrored doors and tracks
- Skirting boards, doors and frames
- Light fittings, ceiling fans (blades front and back), switches and vents
- Window tracks and sills
- Blinds, each slat wiped
- Fly screens, removed, shaken or vacuumed, then the frame wiped
- Carpet vacuumed (steam cleaning is a separate add-on, covered below)
Living and Dining Areas
- Skirting boards, doors and frames
- Light switches and power points
- Ceiling fans and air-conditioning vents
- Windows internal, tracks and sills, blinds
- Walls, spot-cleaned for marks only. Fair wear and tear is not your responsibility, but a scuff you caused is
- Cobwebs cleared from corners and high ceilings, a detail agents check throughout the property, not just in one room
- Floors vacuumed and mopped
Laundry, Hallways and Stairs
The laundry and hallways are where the most points get missed simply because they’re the last rooms tenants think about.
- Laundry: sink, taps, splashback, cupboards inside and out, the dryer’s exterior lint filter, behind appliances where accessible, and the floor
- Hallways and stairs: skirting, banisters, light fittings, switches and carpet
The Perth Detail Most Checklists Miss
Generic, national vacate cleaning checklists tend to stop at “windows and tracks.” In Perth specifically, sliding door tracks and fly screens need extra attention, because coastal dust and fine sand build up in these tracks in a way that inland-only checklists don’t anticipate. It’s a small detail on paper, but it’s one an agent inspecting a coastal or near-coastal Perth property will check without being asked.
If you’re arranging vacate cleaning services in Perth, mention this directly when you book rather than assuming it’s covered under “windows.” A track that looks clean from a standing height can still have a visible line of grit when an agent runs a finger through it at inspection height, and that single detail has been enough on its own to turn an otherwise thorough clean into a flagged item on an exit report.
This is also where a fixed-price quote matters more than it might seem. A cleaner working to a generic national checklist has no reason to budget extra time for tracks and screens; a provider quoting for a Perth property, aware of the local standard, will.
What’s Not Included in a Standard Vacate Clean
A vacate clean is a cleaning service, not a maintenance, repair or renovation service. The following are outside the standard scope, and worth confirming as add-ons if you need them:
- Carpet steam cleaning: a separate service, and whether your lease can actually require it is contested and varies by state. See the WA legal requirement for vacate cleaning for the detail
- Mould that has penetrated silicone or grout (needs re-siliconing, not cleaning)
- Exterior windows at height
- Specialist blind treatment
- Curtains: a standard clean covers blinds, not fabric curtains, which usually need separate laundering or dry-cleaning
- Pest treatment, if pets were kept at the property: this is a licensed pest control service, not something a cleaning provider performs
- Behind or under items over 5kg that you haven’t moved yourself
- Walls beyond spot-cleaning marks and scuffs
- Garage interior
- Garden and lawn
Anything not listed here and not added as a separate line item in your quote is not included in a standard vacate clean. Most of these, carpet steam cleaning especially, are booked as add-ons at the same time as your vacate clean, so they’re scheduled together rather than as a separate job later. If your property has a specific issue, such as heavy pet odour or embedded stains, raise it before the clean so it’s quoted properly rather than discovered on the day.
What’s on You Before the Cleaner Arrives
A vacate clean assumes the property is empty and ready to work in. A few things sit with you, not the provider:
- Remove all belongings before the clean starts
- Defrost the fridge if it’s being vacated
- Make sure power and water are still connected
- Move any item over 5kg yourself if you want the space underneath or behind it cleaned
- Secure pets elsewhere for the day
- Have your Entry Condition Report on hand to compare against
- Empty and present your council bins for collection if that’s expected of you locally
Skipping any of these usually means the provider either can’t complete that part of the job, or it gets logged as outside the original scope, which is the fastest way to end up in a dispute that has nothing to do with cleaning quality.
If the property is furnished, treat this as two separate checks. The clean covers the condition of the furniture; it doesn’t confirm every item on the property’s inventory list is still there and undamaged. Do that check yourself against the inventory before handover, separately from booking the clean.
Most tenants are booking this alongside the rest of the move. If you’re also arranging removalists, it’s worth timing the two together. What Perth removalists actually cost covers how to sequence a removalist booking around your vacate clean and final inspection date.
If the Agent Flags Something After the Clean
If the property manager’s exit report lists an item that was within your original booking scope, that’s what the 14-day re-attendance warranty exists for. A re-clean within the warranty period is the standard remedy, arranged through the original provider rather than a new booking.
It’s worth being clear about who decides what happens to your bond, because it isn’t the cleaner. The bond is released when you and the lessor or agent agree, or through WA’s dispute process, currently run by the Commissioner for Consumer Protection, if you can’t agree. The cleaning covers the cleaning portion of your obligations. It doesn’t override an inspection outcome either way. Once you’ve worked through the checklist above, you’ll have covered the items that decide most WA final inspections, whether you book a vacate clean through Urgent Pro or work through it yourself.