A Halstead check-out, room by room
Halstead’s rented homes run from old houses on the hill above the River Colne to new estates on the edge of town, and a check-out clerk walks them all the same way: door to door, holding the check-in report. We clean to that report for a fixed price by bedrooms, from £176 for a studio to £445 for a four-bedroom house.
Last updated October 2026.
Here is a typical clerk’s route, and what each room is marked on. Our cleaners follow the same route on our 57-point checklist, so nothing on the report is left to chance.
- Front door and hall
- Door and frame both sides, letterbox, light switches, skirting, the bottom stair and the hall floor.
- Kitchen
- Inside every cupboard and drawer, worktops, tiles, the hob, the extractor filter, the sink and taps, the fridge and its door seals, the washing machine drawer, and the floor where the cooker or fridge stood. If the inventory lists an oven as clean, the clerk opens it.
- Bathroom
- Limescale on taps, shower head and screen, grout, the toilet base and behind it, the bath panel, the extractor grille. With Halstead’s hard chalk water, scale is the thing clerks look for first.
- Living room
- Skirting, sills, radiators, sockets, the inside of the windows, and the carpet, which the clerk compares with the check-in photos for stains.
- Bedrooms
- Inside wardrobes and drawers, shelves, curtain rails, window sills, mirrors, and marks on walls by the bed.
- Stairs and landing
- Banisters and spindles, the treads, and the dust on top of door frames, which a clerk can reach and most tenants forget.
When the cleaners leave, every line of the check-in report should have a clean surface to match.
Prices in Halstead
The fixed price covers every room above, set by the number of bedrooms.
| Property | Price |
|---|---|
| Studio | £176 |
| One bedroom | £227 |
| Two bedrooms | £263 |
| Three bedrooms | £359 |
| Four bedrooms | £445 |
| Five bedrooms or more | quoted from the room count |
| Part of a home or a single room | £30 per cleaner per hour |
The hourly rate is for part jobs and unusual layouts only, such as a room in a shared house or a flat with an annexe. For everything else, use the calculator at the top of the page to get the fixed figure for your home.
Oven and carpet add-ons
Ovens are always extra, never part of the fixed price. With the clean they cost £31 for a single or a single wide oven, and £62 for a double or a 90cm range cooker. The oven cleaning page covers ovens booked on their own.
Carpets cost less when added to the clean: £29 a bedroom, £36 a living room, £47 a through lounge, £35 a flight of stairs, £20 a hallway, £8 a landing. Read your tenancy first, since some ask for a professional carpet clean at the end and some do not. More on the method is on the carpet cleaning page.
Old mill town, new estates
Halstead grew on the hill north of the Colne, round the wide High Street and St Andrew’s Church, and some buildings on Market Hill contain work from the 14th century. In the 19th century it was a silk town.
Samuel Courtauld’s company took over Townsford Mill, which spans the river at the foot of the town, in the 1820s, and in 1901 much of the black crêpe for Queen Victoria’s funeral was made there. Most of the factory was pulled down in the early 1980s, but Factory Terrace, the Victorian townhouses built for Courtauld’s managers, survives and is listed Grade II*. The mill itself is now an antiques centre.
Old homes near the centre can bring old-house work: uneven floors, deep sills, open fireplaces, steep cottage stairs and kitchens fitted into small rooms. Factory sites have since become housing too; Evans Court, on Colchester Road by St Andrew’s, stands on the old Evans Electroselenium works.
On the edges of town the stock is new. Hopkins Homes is building Bournewood Park, one- to four-bedroom houses on the outskirts with the CO9 1GE postcode, and Braintree District Council’s draft updated Local Plan puts forward land north east and south east of Halstead for up to 2,850 homes, tied to a possible bypass from the A131 to Colchester Road.
A first-time let on a new estate is a lighter clean, but clerks check new homes closely because the check-in report describes everything as new.
There has been no railway since the Colne Valley line closed to passengers on 30 December 1961, so tenants commute by road or from Braintree or Colchester stations. We also clean in Coggeshall, a few miles south.
Chalk water from the local boreholes
Anglian Water supplies Halstead. Its drought plan describes the Central Essex water resource zone, about 314 square kilometres based on the Halstead supply system, as taking all its water from boreholes in the Essex Chalk, including a pumping station at Halstead. Groundwater from chalk is hard, and it leaves scale on kettles, taps and glass shower screens.
We descale as part of every clean: taps, spouts, shower heads, screens, tiles and the sink. On older chrome and enamel the cleaner uses a milder product and more time, so the finish survives.
Rents, deposits and licensing in Braintree district
The Office for National Statistics put the average private rent across Braintree district at £1,213 a month in August 2026. By size it was £850 for one bedroom, £1,099 for two, £1,354 for three and £1,970 for four or more. A deposit is capped at five weeks’ rent where the yearly rent is under £50,000, so on an average three-bedroom house about £1,562 depends on the check-out.
On an average three-bedroom house in the district, about £1,562 of deposit depends on the check-out.
Braintree District Council licenses houses in multiple occupation only where five or more people from two or more households share facilities, the national mandatory rule. It runs no selective or additional licensing, so most Halstead family lets need no licence at all. Your clean is judged against the inventory, with fair wear and tear allowed, and a landlord cannot make a professional clean a condition of the tenancy.
Parking and booking
Halstead Town Council runs two pay and display car parks, Butler Road with 42 spaces and Chapel Street behind Sainsbury’s with 110, charging from 8am to 3pm Monday to Saturday. On-street parking is managed by the North Essex Parking Partnership. For a town-centre flat we use the nearest car park and carry the kit in.
Call 0333 555 2076, 8am to 7pm, seven days a week, or book through the calculator. We have traded since 2014 across London, Liverpool and Manchester and the areas around them, including Essex. More than 300 letting agents use us, tenants have won back £1.2m in deposits, and we are rated 4.7 on Google.
Every cleaner is interviewed in person, insured and trained on the checklist. If the agent or clerk flags anything within 48 hours, we come back and clean it again free of charge.
Halstead end of tenancy FAQs
I rent a cottage near the High Street with a fireplace and steep stairs. Does that cost more?
No. A two-bedroom cottage is £263 and a three-bedroom one £359. The fireplace surround, hearth and stairs are in the clean.
We are leaving a new-build at Bournewood Park after one year. Do we need a full clean?
The check-in report will describe the house as new, and the clerk marks against that. A full clean is the safest way to match it; a three-bedroom house is £359.
Where will the cleaners park for a flat in the town centre?
Usually in Butler Road or Chapel Street car park. Any parking we have to pay for is added to the quote at what it costs us.
Does my landlord need a licence from Braintree council?
Only if five or more people from two or more households share the home. Ordinary family and couple lets in Halstead need no licence.
The kitchen has a range cooker. Can you clean it?
Yes. A 90cm range cooker is £62 when booked with the clean, and a standard single oven is £31.
