Hoxton Square’s end of tenancy cleaning team

Hoxton Square is the leafy garden square at the middle of it all, one of the oldest in London, and the flats that ring it are nothing like each other. A converted print warehouse on one corner, a tall Victorian building split into flats on the next, an ex-council block a street over. A check-out clerk who works N1 6 knows the difference on sight and cleans their eye accordingly, which is exactly why a single generic clean does not pass here. We are Monster Cleaning Ltd (Companies House 9919639), a family firm working London since 2014.

Last updated June 2026. We cover the square and the N1 6 grid around it, plus the N1 and E2 streets that spill toward Old Street and the Shoreditch border. This page sits inside the borough directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Hackney.

The check-in report is the exam paper, and nobody reads it twice

Start with the mechanism, because it decides everything and almost nobody looks at it until the deposit is already in dispute. When you moved in, a clerk walked the flat and wrote an inventory: every surface described, most of them photographed, the kitchen and bathroom logged as “clean” or “as new” because the flat had just been done professionally. At check-out a clerk walks it again and compares the two, line by line. Anything worse than the check-in entry, past fair wear and tear, comes off your deposit. You are marked against a professional clean. A mop and a spare Saturday rarely reaches that bar.

The money is not vague. On the Hoxton DIY check-outs we get called in to rescue, deductions land in a pattern: sixty to a hundred and twenty on the oven, seventy to a hundred and fifty on grout and scale, sixty to a hundred for the gaps behind appliances, well over a hundred on carpets, and a nasty one specific to the lofts, degreasing the polished-concrete floor where it has filmed under the kitchen. Put that against a deposit north of two grand and the maths writes itself. Most people run it only after they have failed the first check.

Why is the clerk so thorough here? Because Hackney rents are high, the deposit is real money the agent has to account for to a scheme, and the inspection is genuinely adversarial. The clerk is paid to find faults. That is not unfair. It just means you arrive with evidence rather than optimism.

One thing in law is worth knowing before you book anyone. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 means a Hackney landlord cannot write professional cleaning into the contract as a condition, so nobody can force you to hire us. You hire us because matching the check-in standard without professional kit is hard, and because a documented clean settles the deposit conversation fast.

What a warehouse conversion hides that a clerk always finds

The hook for this postcode is the warehouse-to-loft flat, and it fails a lazy clean in ways a standard flat does not. Hoxton and the Shoreditch fringe were light industry and print works until the creative scene moved in during the nineties, and much of that stock is now flats: exposed brick, polished or sealed concrete floors, steel-framed Crittall-style windows, ducted extractors venting through the old wall openings, and an open-plan kitchen that runs straight into the living space.

Each of those is a deduction waiting to be written. Exposed brick takes pencil scuff and furniture marks that a domestic spray smears rather than lifts. Concrete films with cooking grease under the island and needs a proper degrease and buff, not a mop and a hope, or it dries with a grey cast the clerk photographs. The ducted extractor over the hob is usually thick with grease at the vent because nobody cleans up there. The Crittall glazing bars hold a year of dust along every edge. We clean these to the surface: a soft approach on the brick, a degreaser and buff on the concrete, the extractor stripped at the vent.

Concrete films with cooking grease under the island and dries with a grey cast the clerk photographs.

Then there is the period flat, the other half of the square. Tall Victorian-age buildings carved into flats, some with picture rails, panelled doors, and older timber windows that need slow careful work rather than a wet cloth. Picture-rail dust sits on top where you cannot see it without a stepladder, and it is one of the most reliable flags on a Hoxton inventory. The clerk runs a finger along the back edge and the deduction is on the email that afternoon. We do all of it.

Where Hoxton sits in Hackney’s 1 May 2026 licensing map

Hackney brought in new landlord licensing on 1 May 2026, and Hoxton sits in an unusual spot on the map, so it is worth getting right. The council’s selective licensing scheme covers most privately rented homes across 17 of the borough’s 21 wards. Four wards are left out of that selective scheme, and two of them are ours: Hoxton West, and Hoxton East and Shoreditch, which is the ward the square itself falls in. Haggerston and Woodberry Down are the other two.

Being outside the selective scheme does not mean no licensing at all. Hackney’s additional HMO scheme runs borough-wide, so a shared house or a flat let room by room to three or more people who are not one household still needs a licence here, and mandatory HMO licensing for larger shared houses applies on top. Given how much of Hoxton is young creatives and tech workers sharing a converted flat, plenty of local addresses land in the HMO net.

What does any of this mean for a tenant handing keys back? Indirectly, quite a lot. A licensed landlord has the council reading their paperwork, so they read the inventory harder in turn, and a shared-house hand-back gets picked over more carefully than a single let. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live the same day: Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone and old fixed-term tenancies have converted to periodic, so notice is more flexible. The cleaning duty at the end did not change one bit. What changed is timing, and in a high-churn pocket like this that means move-outs are more frequent and less predictable. The rules on shared houses sit on the gov.uk guide to houses in multiple occupation; Hackney’s own licensing pages block automated visits, so check them in a normal browser.

The 57 things, and the ones this postcode fails on

Every booking runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist built over a decade of local check-outs and tuned to what N1 clerks actually flag. Here is the shape of it, room by room.

The kitchen, where most of the deposit is won or lost

The oven is stripped, not wiped. Racks go in a soaking tank, the door glass is split apart so the brown film between the panes comes out, and the interior, fan, element and seals all get done. Hob rings and burners lift off, control knobs off and washed, induction in the new-builds and gas in the older flats each handled its own way. The extractor hood is degreased inside and out and the filter soaked or swapped, and on the ducted units the vent itself gets wiped where the grease collects. Every cupboard inside and out, hinges included. Fridge and freezer cleaned through once defrosted, seals too, and the integrated units in the new-build blocks have their own quirks we already know. Appliances pulled out so the gaps behind the fridge, dishwasher and washing machine are done, then put back. The washing machine drum, the detergent drawer scrubbed, and the door seal, which is the first thing a clerk opens. Sink, taps, drainer and aerator descaled, because the hard water never misses that. Tiles and grout scrubbed. Bins washed. Floor pulled back where it lifts, and on a concrete loft the degrease-and-buff under the island.

Bathrooms, the other place it goes wrong

Scale comes off the taps, shower head, screen and tiles first, then the rest in plain order.

• Toilet done properly: inside, under the rim, base, cistern, hinges, and behind the pedestal where only the clerk looks
• Shower screen both sides, the frame, tracks and the sealant bead
• Bath, taps, the underside of the taps, overflow and plughole
• Mirror and cabinet, inside and where it comes off the wall
• Extractor fan grille off, washed, back on
• Floor into the corners, behind the loo, under the basin

Bedrooms, living rooms and the rest

Picture rails where present. Window reveals top to bottom, and the steel Crittall bars in the lofts along every edge. Skirting on every wall. Inside wardrobes, on top, and behind the door swing where dust gathers. Sockets and switches wiped. Light shades off, wiped, back on. Radiators front, the reachable back, and the bracket. Carpet hoovered both directions, rugs lifted and the floor underneath cleaned, hard floors mopped and dried so they do not streak. Cobwebs out of the ceiling corners. Then a final walk-through, every room photographed before and after. That photo set is the evidence you keep.

What N1 hard water does to a Hoxton bathroom

N1 sits at the very hard end of the Thames Water supply. The figure for the postcode is around 338 mg per litre of calcium carbonate, which is well into the very-hard band, and it loses more Hoxton deposits than almost anything except the oven. Calcium builds on taps, shower heads, screens and tile joints faster than tenants expect, and wiping does nothing to set scale. The clerk checks for it deliberately. They run a thumbnail down the tap, look at the screen edge-on against the light, pull the shower head in close.

Grout is the sibling problem. Kitchen and bathroom grout is the line between a pass and a deduction here more often than carpets are. We scrub it rather than wipe it. Where it is genuinely past saving, which happens in long tenancies, we photograph the state before we start, so the clerk cannot bill you for wear that was already grey in the check-in pictures. That dated photo has settled more arguments than any amount of arguing. You can check the hardness for your own postcode on thameswater.co.uk.

That dated photo has settled more arguments than any amount of arguing.

Because we are here anyway, it is worth naming what an end-of-tenancy clean is and is not, since three different jobs get muddled.

Check-in inventory

The report a clerk writes on day one, describing and photographing every surface. It is the benchmark your check-out is judged against, which is why we clean to it rather than to a general notion of tidy.

End-of-tenancy clean

Built to pass that inventory and get the deposit back, done with the flat empty, charged at £30 an hour per cleaner, with the 48-hour re-clean guarantee on it.

Deep clean

A reset for a home you are keeping, lived-in, no formal standard to hit. Same hourly rate, different aim.

Regular domestic clean

Ongoing upkeep, weekly or fortnightly, from £22 an hour on a retainer. Not a hand-back job.

Around the square: the stock changes corner by corner

The square is a garden in the middle, a public green kept open in summer with a Stik sculpture nearby, ringed by flats that change character as you walk round. The south side is where the White Cube gallery ran from 2000 to 2012, the room that put the Young British Artists on the map and set the tone for the whole creative quarter. Insurance firm Aviva has been buying up buildings here for a corporate campus, which shifts the mix again. Walk it and the flats swing from print-warehouse loft to period conversion to new-build to ex-council in a few hundred metres.

Streets and stretches we work most weeks:

• Hoxton Square itself, all four sides, loft and period flats alike
• Coronet Street and Pitfield Street, where the warehouse conversions cluster
• Hoxton Street, the market end, up toward the older shopfront flats and the social stock behind
• Charlotte Road and Rivington Street, on the Shoreditch border
• Old Street, the Hackney side, where a lot of the letting-agent offices sit
• Hackney Road, the western end toward the Museum of the Home gardens
• Geffrye Street and the streets by Hoxton Overground, on the Windrush line since it opened in 2010

Hoxton is a high-churn corner: young creatives, tech workers, professionals and students, a lot of one-year lets. The council parking is controlled almost everywhere and the CPZ hours are long, so tell us the arrangement when you book, whether a visitor permit or a bay, and how we get in, whether concierge, key safe or an agent drop.

Not sure which side of the Shoreditch border your flat is on, or whether it counts as Hoxton or Haggerston? Ring 0333 555 2076 with the postcode and we will tell you in about ten seconds.

What it costs, and the sum most tenants run too late

Hoxton runs at our standard London pricing, not a premium rate. The loft surfaces take skill, but the price is the same as anywhere else in the city, kit, products and travel included. The figures below are tenant-pays end-of-tenancy work, including all the kitchen and bathroom descaling and the before-and-after photos.

Those figures assume a flat in normal lived-in shape. A long tenancy with heavy wear, a pet household, a smoker’s flat, or a loft nobody has deep-cleaned in years costs more, and we say so on the phone rather than after. The hourly rate is £30 per cleaner where a flat is partly furnished or you only need certain rooms done. Carpet shampoo runs £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, or £115 for the whole carpeted area of a two-bed, which comes up a lot on the open-plan lofts off Coronet Street where one carpet runs through the living space. Oven add-ons are £77 single, £110 double, £114 for a 90cm range. The degrease-and-buff on a polished-concrete floor is in the end-of-tenancy price, not an extra.

Run the maths the way the deposit makes you. A one-bed at £207 to protect a deposit above two grand is barely a decision. Every booking carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the agent flags any cleanliness issue inside 48 hours, we come back and redo it free, provided you tell us in that window and nobody has moved in. Our first-time pass rate against agent inventories sits near 97%. There is a reason the agents round here know us: we are on the books of 300+ letting agents across London, and over the last decade that work has helped tenants recover £1.2m deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions.

A Coronet Street job from February

“Two-bed warehouse loft off Coronet Street, three years, and I was dreading the concrete floor and the extractor over the open-plan kitchen. I had let the grease build for years, honestly. Two cleaners came for eight hours, stripped the extractor, degreased and buffed the floor so the grey cast lifted, did the exposed brick by hand. The agent’s clerk signed it off with no deductions. Full deposit back inside a fortnight.”
Marcus, Hoxton N1 6, February 2026

That is a fair picture of the pattern on the lofts: a long tenancy, a concrete floor and a ducted extractor nobody had touched, and an agent who checks properly. The clean cost a fraction of what was riding on it. What settled it was not the scrubbing alone but the dated photo set that went out with the invoice, the part most DIY hand-backs never have when the agent pushes back.

Booking it, and the month-end crush

Hoxton clusters its check-outs at month-end like the rest of inner London, the slots go, and ringing on the 29th for the 31st often means you are out of luck. Book early for those windows. The steps are simple.

1. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected]. Price in about three minutes. Give us the postcode, the bed count, the check-out date, and any known problem areas, and mention anything the check-in report marked “as new”.
2. We book you in, ideally the day before hand-back with a buffer, against the standard Hoxton pricing above. No surcharge for the loft surfaces; it is the same rate as any London flat.
3. Flat empty when we arrive. Furniture out, personal things gone, rubbish cleared. We also do removals if you want the move and the clean on one booking, which genuinely helps on Hoxton’s tight permit-parking streets.
4. Two cleaners work the checklist room by room with their own kit.
5. Photo proof at the end. Every room, before and after, with an itemised invoice on company paper. Anything flagged inside 48 hours, we come back and fix it free.

A quick add-on note. Carpet shampoo is the common one on the open-plan lofts; the detail sits on the carpet cleaning page. A ducted extractor untouched for years sometimes wants a deeper degrease than the standard scope, covered on the oven and kitchen deep-clean page. The older timber windows on a period flat benefit from the window cleaning service a week before hand-back if the outside has gone untouched. For the wider borough and our N1, E2, E5 and E8 work, the Hackney directory linked at the top of this page has the rest.

Questions we get asked

How much does end-of-tenancy cleaning cost in Hoxton Square?

From £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bed or loft, £243 for a two-bed warehouse conversion or period flat, £339 for a three-bed, and £425 for a four-bed. Hoxton runs at our standard London rate, not a premium one. The loft surfaces take skill, but the price is the same as any other London flat, and the quote is confirmed on the phone.

Is Hoxton really cheaper than places like Hampstead or Notting Hill?

Yes. Those genuinely premium neighbourhoods carry a small uplift on our end-of-tenancy tiers. Hoxton does not. A warehouse loft off Coronet Street is charged at the same standard London pricing as a flat in Walthamstow or Ilford, even though the concrete and the ducted extractor take longer to clean. We price the labour honestly and keep the tier standard.

Do you handle the polished-concrete floors in the warehouse lofts?

Yes, and it is one of the most-flagged items round here. Concrete films with cooking grease under the kitchen island and dries with a grey cast if it is only mopped. We degrease it and buff it so it does not film, as standard within the end-of-tenancy scope on those units. The price does not change for a concrete floor.

What about the exposed brick and the Crittall windows?

Exposed brick takes pencil scuff and furniture marks that a domestic spray smears rather than shifts, so we work it by hand with a soft approach. The steel Crittall-style glazing bars hold dust along every edge, and we do them edge by edge, inside, with the frames, fasteners and the inside of the glass. Outside glass on the upper floors is a separate job we can quote.

How long does an end-of-tenancy clean in N1 6 actually take?

A one-bed loft or period flat is usually 4 to 5 hours with two cleaners. A two-bed warehouse conversion off Coronet Street runs 5 to 7 hours, sometimes longer if the extractor and floor are bad. A studio in a new-build block is 3 to 4 hours. We quote the slot length when you book.

Will my Hoxton letting agent accept your clean?

We work with a lot of the agents whose offices sit along Old Street and the Shoreditch border, and we are on the approved-cleaner list with several of them. If the inventory clerk flags anything, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee brings us back to put it right at no extra cost. That is what agents actually want to see: not a promise, but a comeback.

Does the property need to be empty?

Fully empty is strongly preferred. Furniture left behind blocks access and creates uncertainty at the check-out. A single piece left for the next tenant can be worked around, but the more that stays, the less complete the clean can be.

What about the kettle and shower scale in N1?

N1 water is very hard, around 338 mg per litre, so scale sets on every kettle, shower screen, tap aerator and toilet bowl over a tenancy. We descale all of it with a proper scale remover, not a wipe-down. That is part of the standard end-of-tenancy scope for Hoxton, not an add-on.

Do you do same-day or next-day jobs?

Often, yes. We hold a slot or two in the East London diary for last-minute Hackney calls. Phone before noon for a same-day quote; otherwise next-day is almost always there unless the diary has run hard that week.

Does Hackney’s new licensing scheme affect tenants in Hoxton Square?

The licence sits on the landlord, not the tenant. Hoxton is unusual: the square’s ward, Hoxton East and Shoreditch, plus Hoxton West, are among the four Hackney wards left out of the selective scheme that started on 1 May 2026. The borough-wide additional HMO scheme still catches most shared Hoxton flats, though, and a licensed landlord reads the check-out more carefully because the council is reading their paperwork.

Does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change my hand-back?

Only indirectly. From 1 May 2026 Section 21 evictions ended and old tenancies converted to periodic, so notice is more flexible. The cleaning obligation at the end is exactly what it was. The practical effect in a high-churn area like Hoxton is more frequent, less predictable move-outs, so book the slot earlier than you used to.

Will I get my deposit back if you clean?

Our first-time agent pass rate sits near 97% across our London book. Where the agent flags anything, the 48-hour re-clean guarantee covers a return at no extra cost. Over the last decade our work has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits. If the agent still disputes after a re-clean, the scheme adjudicators at Tenancy Deposit Scheme and mydeposits are the route, and Shelter’s deposit guidance walks through it.

Can I book a part-clean instead of a full end-of-tenancy?

Yes. The rate is £30 per cleaner an hour. We get part-clean calls for a kitchen-only deep clean or a mid-tenancy refresh on a shared loft where someone left a room in a state. Quote on the phone.

What about pet hair in a Hoxton flat with carpets?

Pet hair on carpet is one of the most common disputes in N1. We hoover both directions and use a hair-lift roller on rugs and bedrooms. If the report flags odour we add a deeper carpet shampoo at the price above, and the 48-hour re-clean covers the return if anything is still flagged.

Get a price

Call 0333 555 2076 and we price the job in about three minutes. Postcode, bed count, check-out date, any known problem areas, that is the lot. Out of hours, email [email protected] and someone rings back first thing. A couple of photos of the kitchen and bathroom sharpen the quote. And if your Hoxton check-out is tomorrow, ring anyway and we will do what we can.