The Complete End-of-Lease Cleaning Checklist for Melbourne Renters
Your bond is probably worth a full month’s rent, it sits with the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority rather than your agent, and one final inspection decides how much comes back. Most renters who lose bond money don’t lose it to damage. They lose it to cleaning. The oven, the shower screen, the window tracks. Small things, found in twenty minutes by an agent with a torch.
The law asks for one thing: leave the place ‘reasonably clean’, matching your entry condition report, fair wear and tear excluded. This guide turns those few words into a working end of lease cleaning checklist for Melbourne renters, plus the paperwork habits that protect your refund. Call it bond cleaning, vacate cleaning or the big final scrub. The job is the same.
What ‘reasonably clean’ means for Melbourne renters
You don’t have to hand back a display home. The government’s renting guidelines describe the test plainly: no marks, dirt, dust, cobwebs or stains, clean to the point where more scrubbing wouldn’t help. Your entry condition report is the benchmark.
Yours to fix before you leave | Fair wear and tear, not your problem |
|---|---|
Grease film on the rangehood and splashback | Carpet pile flattened under furniture |
Scuff marks a sponge and sugar soap will shift | Paint or curtains faded by sunlight |
Mould on shower grout and silicone | Hairline cracks from the building settling |
Pet hair and lingering odours | Doors and hinges loosened by normal use |
The same standard applies in every Melbourne suburb, Brunswick to Berwick.
The room-by-room checklist
Clean each room from the ceiling down, because dust falls, and leave the floors until last.
Kitchen
Budget a third of your time here. The oven is where renters give up.
- Oven first: racks out, cleaner on, half an hour to work. Glass, seals and roof element included.
- Soak the rangehood filters in near-boiling water and dishwasher powder.
- Wipe cupboards and drawers inside, outside and on top, and degrease the splashback.
- Descale the sink and taps, clean the dishwasher filter, then run it empty and hot.
- Vacuum and mop where the fridge stood.
Bathrooms
- Scrape shower screens with a glass scraper and descaler, both sides.
- Treat mouldy grout with bleach gel, and never paint over it.
- Toilet: bowl, rim, cistern, seat hinges, and behind the base.
- Wash the exhaust fan cover. Agents look up.
- Clear hair from the drains, then polish mirrors and taps.
Bedrooms and living areas
- Sugar soap takes scuff marks off walls. Test a hidden patch first.
- Wipe skirting boards, doors, handles and wardrobe tracks.
- Empty insects from light fittings; dust fans and air conditioner filters.
- Clean window glass, vacuum the tracks, brush the flyscreens and dust every blind slat.
Laundry, floors and outside
- Wipe the washing machine’s drawer, filter and seals, empty the dryer’s lint filter, scrub the trough.
- Vacuum carpets twice in two directions, and mop hard floors, including under where furniture stood.
- Treat carpet stains the week before you leave, not on inspection morning.
- Outside: mow, weed, sweep, de-cobweb the eaves and letterbox, wash the bins, degrease the driveway.
The five things property managers check first
We’ve done enough of these to know the order. The oven, always, so do it two days early and the smell is gone by handover. The shower screen, wearing a soap film you stopped seeing years ago. Window tracks, which photograph terribly and take five minutes to fix. Rangehood filters: hold them to the light. And skirting boards, because one grey dust line undoes a clean room.
Your countdown
- Two weeks out: book any professional clean, treat carpet stains, wash curtains, declutter.
- One week out: outside jobs, wall marks, and cupboards as they empty.
- Last 48 hours: kitchen and bathrooms once the appliances are out, then every floor, towards the front door.
- Handover day: a final walkthrough with this checklist, photos of everything including meters, every key and fob returned.
How to get your bond back: the paperwork half
A spotless flat with no evidence still loses arguments. Five habits protect the money.
- Find your entry condition report. Every deduction must be argued against it.
- Clean to the report, not to your own standard. Day-one damage isn’t yours to fix.
- Photograph the empty, clean property: wide shots of every room, close-ups of the oven, shower and carpets, timestamps on.
- Keep receipts. A dated invoice with a re-clean guarantee makes a ‘premises not clean’ claim hard to run.
- Know the clock. Agreed claims are usually paid by the RTBA within a business day or two. Lodge the claim yourself and the rental provider has 14 days to dispute it through the free rental dispute service, or the bond releases to you.
Cleaning it yourself versus paying someone
A three-bedroom house takes 12 to 20 hours of genuine scrubbing, a long weekend you may not have between homes. DIY suits small units, short tenancies and tidy habits. A professional vacate clean earns its keep when there are carpets, pets or years of tenancy behind you, and it buys a paper trail your agent will take seriously.
Renter FAQs
What’s included in an end of lease clean?
The full interior to inspection standard: kitchen with oven and rangehood, bathrooms descaled and de-moulded, walls spot-cleaned, windows inside with tracks and flyscreens, skirting boards, fittings and floors. Carpet steam cleaning, blinds, balconies and garages are usually extras; ask for the inclusion list in writing.
Is carpet steam cleaning compulsory?
Not by default; the same 2021 rules apply. In practice, pets, spills and years of foot traffic often make it the only way back to reasonably clean, and it costs far less than a bond deduction.
What if the agent isn’t happy with the clean?
Ask for the problems in writing, with photos. Use your cleaner’s re-clean guarantee (ours includes one), or fix what’s listed and re-photograph. The agent can’t simply keep your bond: deductions you haven’t agreed to go through the free rental dispute service or VCAT, where photos and receipts do the talking.
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