“The oven has to smell of oven cleaner or she’ll mark it down.”
That was a letting agent in Bow, said to me in a hallway in front of the tenant, and he wasn’t joking. He’d seen enough check-outs to know that the clerk’s nose does a chunk of the assessment before the torch comes out, and he wanted the caustic smell in the kitchen as a signal that money had been spent.
He was wrong about what’s assessed and right about what gets noticed, which is most of what makes end-of-tenancy cleaning difficult. The answer to the headline question is yes, with one exception I’ll come to and won’t pretend around.
What Is the Inventory Clerk Actually Checking?
The check-in report, and nothing else.
An inventory clerk arrives with a document made at the start of the tenancy, photographs and all, and works through it comparing condition then to condition now. They are not marking your flat against a show home. They’re marking it against how it was handed to you, with fair wear and tear discounted, and that standard is the whole game.
Which means two things. A worn carpet that was photographed as worn in 2023 is not your problem. And a grill pan that was clean at check-in and is now brown is your problem, regardless of how many other things you’ve scrubbed.
Deposit disputes go to the scheme adjudicator — TDS, DPS or MyDeposits — and cleaning is consistently the single most common cause of them. Adjudicators want evidence, and the evidence that wins is a comparison: their photograph from check-in, your photograph from check-out, same angle.
The Photographs That Win Disputes
Take your own, on the day you hand the keys back, after the clean and before you leave.
Every room wide, then the specific items: inside the oven with the door open and the light on, the grill pan, the extractor filters, inside the fridge and the seals, the washing machine drawer and door gasket, under the sink, the bath sealant, the loo, window tracks, and the tops of the kitchen units.
Date-stamped, and emailed to yourself so there’s a timestamp you didn’t create. That takes eleven minutes and it’s worth more than an hour of extra scrubbing.
Which Jobs Do Eco Products Handle Without Argument?
Nearly all of them, and better than people expect once the method changes.
Limescale is the biggest category in a London flat and organic acids do it properly. Citric solution on shower screens, tap bases, the toilet pan, the kettle, the shower head bagged overnight. Clerks look hard at scale because it photographs well and reads as neglect, and it comes off with something that costs pennies.
Grease on hobs, splashbacks, the tops of wall units and the inside of the extractor hood wants an alkali. Soda crystals dissolved in hot water, or a concentrated degreaser diluted properly, left on for ten minutes rather than wiped straight off. That dwell time is doing the work that the harsh product’s strength would otherwise do.
Glass, mirrors, chrome, skirtings, doors, windowsills, inside cupboards, the fridge — plain detergent, hot water, microfibre. There’s nothing in any of that requiring anything aggressive. Carpets need a machine rather than a chemical, and a hot water extractor run with a low-residue solution beats a heavy shampoo, which leaves a sticky film that re-soils inside a fortnight and looks worse at the next inspection than no clean at all.
Time replaces strength. That’s the single adjustment, and it’s why the £6 spray bottle disappoints people who expect thirty seconds.
The Two Hours You Should Spend Differently
Most people clean the visible middle of a flat and run out of energy before the places a clerk goes.
The inside lip of the oven door and the gap between the two panes of glass. The extractor filters, which come out and go in a hot dishwasher. The washing machine drawer, the rubber gasket and the filter trap behind the little flap at the bottom, which will have a coin and a slick of black sludge in it. Window tracks and the drainage holes. The tops of doors and the tops of the kitchen units. Behind the fridge and behind the loo.
Nobody has ever failed a check-out for a slightly less shiny worktop. People fail for the filter trap.
Where Does Eco Cleaning Fall Short at Check-Out?
Carbonised oven grease. That’s the exception, and I’d rather say it plainly than sell you the version where bicarbonate paste works.
Baked-on oven deposit isn’t grease any more. Months of heat have converted it into a hard carbon layer bonded to the enamel, and shifting it needs either a strong caustic — sodium hydroxide — or a dip tank, where the racks and panels go into a heated caustic bath at a specialist’s unit. There is no plant-based product on the market that dissolves carbon at room temperature, and the ones that claim to are asking you to supply the missing energy with a scourer, which scratches enamel.
Bicarbonate paste left overnight does something to light soiling. On a four-year build-up in a rented flat it does very little, and I’ve watched people spend a whole Saturday finding that out.
So the honest answer has an asterisk on it: everything in the flat except the oven cavity, comfortably. The oven cavity, no.
What I Do About the Oven
I outsource it. A dip-tank oven specialist comes in, takes out the racks, panels and fan cover, does them off site, and treats the cavity with a caustic gel under controlled conditions with the extraction running. Somewhere around £70 to £110 in London depending on the appliance.
That’s a strong chemical used once, by somebody with the equipment to handle and dispose of it, rather than a domestic aerosol used badly in an unventilated kitchen by a tenant in a T-shirt. If you’re weighing the environmental arithmetic rather than just the label, I’d argue the dip tank wins that comparison, and I’ve stopped feeling conflicted about it.
Will the Clerk Notice What You Cleaned With?
Only through the smell, and only for about an hour.
The caustic note the agent in Bow wanted is a signal rather than evidence, and clerks who’ve done a thousand check-outs aren’t fooled by it — they open the door and look. What they do notice is a flat that smells of nothing at all, which reads as aired and finished, and a flat that smells strongly of anything, which reads as a cover.
The one that goes against tenants is heavy fragrance over a lingering smoke or pet odour. Plug-ins and scented sprays in an empty flat are a confession. If there’s a smell to deal with, deal with the source — soft furnishings, extractor filters, the bin cupboard, the washing machine gasket — then open every window for two hours and leave it alone.
The Torch and the Knee
A clerk carries a torch and uses it at floor level, because that’s where the evidence is.
Under the kitchen units at the plinth line. Behind the loo where the pipe meets the floor. The corners of the shower tray. Skirting in the hallway. That’s a knee-down job with a damp microfibre and it takes twenty minutes across a one-bed, and it’s the twenty minutes most people skip.
Should You Pay a Company or Do It Yourself?
Here’s the part I’d rather my accountant didn’t read.
For a one-bed you’ve lived in for under two years and kept reasonably, do it yourself. Two solid days, a hired carpet machine if the flat’s carpeted, a dip-tank oven visit booked separately, and your own photographs. End-of-tenancy quotes in London run somewhere around £180 to £350 for a one-bed and a fair proportion of that is a firm doing what you could do with a Saturday and a Sunday.
Pay somebody when the tenancy has run four years or more, when there are pets, when you’re handing back a three-bed, or when you physically can’t get to the flat because you’ve already moved. And pay when you want the guarantee, which is the actual product on sale: a firm that returns free of charge if the clerk disputes something. Get that in writing, ask how long the window is, and ask whether they’ll deal with the agent directly.
The thing I’d push back on hardest is the tenancy agreement clause requiring a professional clean with a receipt. Those clauses have been unenforceable as a blanket requirement since the Tenant Fees Act 2019 — a landlord can require the property returned in the condition it was let in, and can’t require you to buy a particular company’s service to prove it. Agents still put it in. Tenants still pay it. If yours insists, ask them in writing which part of the Act they’re relying on, and watch the tone of the reply change.
I did a check-out in Colliers Wood last summer for a tenant who’d done everything herself and only wanted the oven and the carpets. She passed with no deductions, and the clerk’s note said the property was returned in excellent condition throughout. The only product she’d used on the whole flat besides the carpet solution was a bottle of concentrate and a kilo of citric acid.