Cleaners in Balham

Balham is SW12, one stop north of us on the Northern line and a walk straight across Tooting Bec Common when the weather allows it. We are in SW12 most weeks. Prices are exactly what they are on our own side of the Common: £36 a bedroom carpet, £207 for a one bed move-out clean, £77 for a single oven.

Mansion flats and lets above the shops

Two kinds of building make up most of our Balham work. There are the 1930s purpose-built mansion flats fronting Balham High Road, with their small square kitchens and communal stairs that nobody has ever claimed responsibility for. Handsome halls, though. Then there are the single-let flats above the shops. Those turn over faster than anything else we clean in either postcode, and a tenant of eleven months counts as settled up there. Fast turnover means move-out cleans, and it means them at short notice, usually on a Friday.

What Balham books

End of tenancy work first, by a distance. The fixed move-out prices run from £156 for a studio to £425 for a four bed, and the flats above the High Road are nearly all studios and one beds. Ovens come second. Those mansion flat kitchens hold a lot of freestanding cookers that have sat in place for years without the door ever coming off, and a single oven at £77 is the commonest one-item booking we take anywhere in SW12. A double is £110 and a 90cm range £114, though a range in a mansion flat kitchen is a rare sight.

Two railways, so nobody is home

Balham station carries the Northern line and Thameslink, so trains from here reach Blackfriars and St Pancras as well as the West End. Plenty of our customers commute rather than work locally, which shapes how the jobs run: keys and key safes instead of doorstep handovers, and cleaners letting themselves in mid-morning. Nobody minds. The 155 and 355 both run the length of Balham High Road for anyone coming in by bus. If you want to be there yourself, ask for the first slot of the day.

Communal carpet in the blocks

Stair carpet in the mansion blocks is a standing argument. It usually belongs to the managing agent, it usually gets done once every few years, and by then the wool has two grey traffic lanes worn down the middle of it. We will quote landings and stairs at £41 a flight where an agent or a residents’ company instructs us, and we have done a few in SW12. Inside the flats it is £36 a bedroom and £43 a living room. Access to a tap and a socket is all we need. That is it.

North-west of here is Wandsworth Common, a separate open space with a separate set of houses around it. Different job again. The rest of what we do sits on the main page at the same prices.

Questions we get asked

Do you charge extra to come to Balham?

No. SW12 runs on the same price list as SW17, with no travel charge. The only minimum is the £67 that applies to any one off job wherever it is.

Can you clean a flat above a shop on Balham High Road?

Yes, and we do them often. Tell us whether the access is the street door or round the back, and whether there is anywhere at all to stop the van for ten minutes while we unload.

How quickly can you turn round a one bed for a check-out?

Usually two or three days, longer between June and September when the local tenancies all end at once. A one bed is £207 and takes most of a morning.