Stains a tenant left: what comes out and what you charge for
The question is rarely whether it can be cleaned. It is whether you are looking at wear, which is yours, or damage, which is theirs.
Wear and damage are not the same argument
Hungarian tenancy practice treats normal use as the landlord's cost. A sofa seat that has gone slightly flat and slightly grey after two years is wear. A ring of red wine on the same cushion is not.
The distinction matters more than the cleaning bill, because it decides who pays. A tenant will accept a deduction for something they clearly did and will fight one for something that was going to happen anyway.
So the useful question at handover is not how dirty is this. It is which of these marks would not exist if the flat had been used normally.
What usually comes out
Food and drink spills, including red wine and coffee, if they have not been treated with the wrong thing first. Body oils on the headrest and arms, which is the grey that builds where heads and hands rest. Cooking grease film on kitchen surfaces and inside the oven. Limescale in the bathroom, however grim it looks.
General dinginess from two years of city dust also comes out, and it is the one that changes the flat most in photographs. It is also the one you cannot charge for.
What usually does not
Bleach marks. Household bleach removes the dye, so there is nothing left to clean; the pale patch is permanent and it is damage.
Ink, hair dye and shoe polish on light fabric. Sometimes they lift, more often they lighten and stay visible.
Anything already treated with a supermarket foam and then left. The detergent stays in the fibre and collects dirt, so the treated patch is darker than the fabric around it. That one is worth checking for before you accuse anyone, because it means the tenant tried.
Burns, cuts and melted synthetic fibre. Those are repairs, not cleaning.
What a photo has to show to be worth anything
A close-up of a stain proves a stain exists. It does not prove when it appeared, and that is the whole argument.
What holds up is a pair: the same spot photographed at move-in and at move-out, from roughly the same distance, with something in frame that fixes the location. A corner of the room, the edge of a radiator, the pattern of the parquet. A photograph of a cushion against a white wall could be any cushion in Budapest.
We send a full photo report after every job, and it is dated. Landlords use it two ways: as the after half of that pair, and as the invoice evidence for what the cleaning actually involved.
The cheapest week is the empty one
A flat between tenants can be cleaned properly in one visit: furniture moved, upholstery wet and drying with the windows open, oven apart, no one needing the bathroom. The same work around a living tenant takes longer and is done worse, because half of it cannot be done at all.
It is also the only week when a mattress can be cleaned on both sides, since nobody has to sleep on it that night.
If you know the handover date, booking it before the tenant leaves usually means the flat is photographed clean the same week rather than three weeks into an empty tenancy you are paying for.
Say what happened, not what it looks like
The most useful sentence a landlord sends us is not a description of the mark. It is what the flat was used for. Three students, a family with a cat, a short-let with a new guest every four days, a smoker.
Each of those produces a different problem in the same fabric. Smoke sits in curtains and mattresses rather than on surfaces. Pet urine is a foam problem, not a fabric one. Short-let turnover leaves body oils everywhere and almost no single stains.
Send that sentence with two or three photographs, and the quote you get back will be the one you actually pay.
Common questions
Can you clean between tenants at short notice?
Usually yes, and handovers are exactly when people call. Tell us the handover date rather than a preferred date and we will fit the visit to it.
Do you provide something I can show the tenant?
A dated photo report of the work, and an invoice. We do not assess damage or value it, that is not our trade; we document what we cleaned and what did not come out.
The tenant already tried to clean it. Does that make it worse?
Often, yes. Detergent left in upholstery turns sticky and collects dust, so the treated patch ends up darker than the rest. It is fixable, it just takes longer than the original stain would have.
Can you do the whole flat and the furniture in one visit?
Yes, and it is cheaper than two visits. Upholstery needs four to six hours to dry afterwards, so an empty flat is the easy case.
Handover coming up?
Send the date and two or three photos of the flat. We reply within two hours with a price and an honest note on what will not come out.
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