At a Salford Quays check-out the inventory clerk holds a torch flat against the floor-to-ceiling glass and reads the pane sideways, because smears that are invisible straight-on light up along the glass. That is the standard a Quays flat is handed back to, and it is why our end-of-tenancy clean here is built around glass, grease and ventilation rather than the things that fail a terraced house. £30 per hour per cleaner, fixed package prices for standard flats, and a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the check-out report itself. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price in about three minutes.
Last updated July 2026. We cover the whole of M50, both sides of the dock basins, plus the Quays-facing edge of M5 along Ordsall Lane. This page sits inside the Greater Manchester directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Manchester.
The report you signed on day one is the exam paper
When you moved into your Quays flat, somebody walked it with a tablet and photographed every surface: the hob, the inside of the hood, the silicone bead around the shower tray, the balcony decking. In the corporate and build-to-rent blocks that dominate M50 that report is digital, timestamped and brutally thorough, because the operator runs hundreds of identical units and inspects them all against the same app. At check-out the same app comes back. Every line is compared with the day-one photo, and anything materially worse, beyond fair wear and tear, is priced against your deposit.
You are marked against the flat’s first morning, not against a normal Tuesday. The flat had usually been professionally cleaned the week before you got the keys, which means a free Sunday and a mop is competing with a professional benchmark. On the Quays jobs we get called to rescue after a failed DIY hand-back, the deductions cluster in a familiar band: £60 to £110 for the cooker hood and its filter, £80 to £150 for glass and paint marks, £120 to £300 for carpets in the older blocks, £40 to £90 for the balcony. Deposits here are protected in one of three government-approved schemes, and the scheme adjudicator reads the report, not the argument; gov.uk explains how the protection works. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 means nobody can force you to book a professional clean. The check-in photos are what make most people book one anyway.
You are marked against the flat’s first morning, not against a normal Tuesday.
What actually fails a Quays hand-back
Not what fails one in London. The water at the Quays is soft. United Utilities feeds this side of Greater Manchester from Lake District and Pennine reservoirs, and the hardness runs at roughly 25–60 mg/l calcium carbonate, which their own water hardness checker classes as soft. Limescale, the deduction that quietly eats deposits across London and the South East, barely registers here. Kettles at the Quays do not fur. Shower screens do not pit.
Grease is the Quays problem.
Nearly every kitchen in these towers has a recirculating cooker hood, and a recirculating hood does not vent anything outside: it pushes cooking air through a charcoal cassette and back into the room. Two years of frying coats the cassette, the housing and the ceiling directly above the hob with a film most tenants have never once looked at, and it is the first thing the clerk opens. Behind it come the rest of the tower-flat failures: haze and finger marks on the floor-to-ceiling glass, splatter on the stone splashback that only shows under the torch, the black band under the dishwasher kickplate, and green algae edging the composite balcony decking after a Manchester winter.
The other one is condensation. A sealed flat with glass walls and an extractor fan as its only ventilation grows black spotting on window reveals and silicone beads by February, especially on the basin-facing side where the glass runs cold. We remove what cleaning can remove and photograph what it cannot, because persistent damp is a landlord obligation under the Homes Act 2018 rather than a tenant cleaning failure, and a dated photo is what keeps that charge off your deposit.
The 57 things, tower edition
Every booking runs to our 57-point agent-approved checklist, and at the Quays we work it in its tower order, the one tuned to integrated kitchens and windowless bathrooms. The full list comes with the booking confirmation. Here is the shape of it.
The integrated kitchen
The charcoal cassette comes out of the hood and is washed or replaced; we carry universal cassettes in the van because half the manuals for these units are long gone. The metal grease grilles in front of it are soaked. The induction hob gets a glass-safe degrease, no abrasive pad, since the clerk checks it edge-on under light exactly as they check the windows. The dishwasher kickplate is unclipped, every one, and the floor behind it cleaned; the drawer and filter are cleared. Oven stripped, racks soaked, door glass split where the design allows so the brown film between the panes comes out. If the oven is the only thing your agent flagged, a standalone oven clean covers it without the full package. Integrated fridge and freezer done through once defrosted, seals included, which are a routine deduction line on their own. Washing machine drum, detergent drawer out and scrubbed, door seal wiped back to grey-free. Cupboards inside and out, worktops, splashback buffed rather than wiped, bin store washed, floor into the threshold strips.
Bathrooms with no window
Most Quays bathrooms are internal, so the extractor is the whole ventilation story and its grille collects fluff fast. The grille comes off and the dust behind it goes. Silicone beads around bath and shower tray get a mould treatment left to dwell for its proper contact time, not a quick wipe. The glass enclosure is polished both sides, tracks included. Taps, aerators, plugholes, the toilet inside and out including behind the pedestal, mirrors and cabinet fronts, floor finished into the corners.
Glass, floors and the balcony
Internal glass is microfibre and a glass-safe solution, never paper, which sheds lint that catches the low morning light off the basins. Frame seals and sills wiped, because the smear-edge starts there. Engineered boards get a damp mop with a wood-safe product and no steam, steam lifts the lacquer; vinyl plank gets the same respect. Specialist floor problems, a scratched board, a stained grout line in an older block, sit with our floor cleaning team on the same visit. Wardrobes and built-in storage opened and done inside, skirting wiped, switches, sockets, the intercom panel and the inside of the front door. The balcony gets a stiff brush and a wash-down of the composite decking, the panel joints where the algae sits, the glass balustrade and the drain. Exterior glass beyond arm’s reach is a window cleaning job we fold into the same booking where the inventory asks for it. Then the final walk-through, photographed room by room, before and after. That photo set is yours.
Basin by basin: who rents what across the Quays
The old docks were numbered and the basins that replaced them carry Great Lakes names: Erie, Huron, Ontario, with Michigan Avenue running through the middle of the peninsula. The housing is post-2000 almost without exception. No period stock, no conversions, no original fireplaces. What changes basin to basin is who the landlord is, and that changes how the check-out runs.
The Quays proper: NV Buildings, the Anchorage, Imperial Point
The three sail-shaped NV Buildings above Huron Basin are the postcard, and inside they are exactly what we mean by Quays stock: two-bed, two-bath, glass on two sides, balcony over the water. Around them sit the Anchorage, Imperial Point, City Lofts and the schemes strung between the Exchange Quay and Anchorage tram stops. Ownership here is mostly private landlords letting through agents; Julie Twist Properties runs a steady book of NV and Anchorage flats, and each agent has its own inventory firm with its own habits. Detroit Bridge, the old railway swing bridge, is the shortcut our cleaners use between the two sides of the docks when parking only works on one of them.
Clippers Quay and the Ordsall Lane edge
Clippers Quay, next to the watersports centre, is Grainger’s build-to-rent village: hundreds of purpose-built rental homes with a resident team on site, furnished options and a pet-friendly policy that makes it one of the few places at the Quays where a spaniel is part of the tenancy. Build-to-rent hand-backs are their own discipline. The operator’s checklist is standardised, the inspection is app-based, and the furniture belongs to the landlord, which pulls upholstery cleaning and mattress work into scope more often than anywhere else on this page. Send us the operator’s hand-back guide and we clean to it line by line. North-east of there, the riverside schemes along Ordsall Lane carry the M5 postcode and drift toward the city centre market; we cover them from the same rota.
MediaCityUK: The Heart, X1 Media City and the piazza cluster
On the western tip, MediaCityUK is the company-town end of the Quays. The BBC sits in Quay House, ITV films Coronation Street across the water on Trafford Wharf, and the University of Salford’s campus feeds a rolling population of short professional lets in The Heart, X1 Media City on Michigan Avenue and the blocks around the piazza. Contract churn does the rest: broadcast staff arrive on eighteen-month contracts, leave on a fortnight’s warning, and hand back furnished one-beds with a corporate inventory attached. The Lowry at Pier 8 and the Imperial War Museum North over the footbridge mark the boundary; cross it and you are in Trafford, where our Old Trafford end of tenancy team picks up. Same vans, different council.
What it costs, in sentences before the table
The sentences first, because most people ring with one flat in mind. A studio at X1 Media City or The Heart is £156. A one-bed at NV Buildings or the Anchorage is £207. A two-bed, the commonest flat on the Quays by a distance, is £243. A three-bed duplex is £339, and a four-bed penthouse is £425. Anything that does not fit a package, a part-clean after a landlord’s own effort, a huge open-plan lateral, runs at £30 per hour per cleaner. Carpet shampooing on the same visit is £36 per bedroom and £43 for a living room, or £115 for the whole carpeted area of a two-bed. A standalone single oven is £77 and a double £110, and the integrated doubles in these kitchens are usually the £110 kind.
| Property | Typical duration | Estimated cost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio (X1 Media City, The Heart) | 2-3 hours, 2 cleaners | £156 |
| 1-bed (NV Buildings, the Anchorage) | 3-4 hours, 2 cleaners | £207 |
| 2-bed (Clippers Quay, Imperial Point) | 4-6 hours, 2 cleaners | £243 |
| 3-bed duplex or townhouse | 6-8 hours, 2 cleaners | £339 |
| 4-bed penthouse | 8-9 hours, 2-3 cleaners | £425 |
| Carpet add-on, per bedroom | Same visit | £36 |
| Oven only, single | 1.5-2 hours | £77 |
M50 is standard-rate territory for us. The tower address carries no premium; the price for a two-bed at NV Buildings is the price for a two-bed in Eccles. Kit, products and parking arrangements are our problem, not a line on your invoice, and a flat that has had years of heavy wear or a smoker gets priced honestly on the phone rather than adjusted afterwards.
Now the sum that makes the decision. A Quays two-bed lets for around £1,600 a month, and the five-week deposit cap puts the money at stake near £1,840. A £243 clean guarding an £1,840 deposit is not a hard sum. Every booking carries the 48-hour re-clean guarantee: if the clerk flags any cleanliness item inside 48 hours, we come back and put it right free, provided the flat is still empty and as we left it. We hold a 97% first-time pass rate, we are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and the work has returned £1.2m deposits recovered for tenants who would otherwise have paid for someone else’s benchmark.
A £243 clean guarding an £1,840 deposit is not a hard sum.
A Clippers Quay hand-back from February
“Two years in a two-bed at Clippers Quay with a spaniel, so I knew the carpets were the risk. The check-out there is photo-by-photo against the app and I had genuinely lost sleep over it. Monster sent two cleaners for six hours, shampooed both bedrooms and the living room, cleaned the sofa the dog had claimed, and left me a photo set that matched the app shot for shot. Full deposit back nine days later.”
Gemma, Clippers Quay M50, February 2026
That job is the Quays pattern in one booking: a build-to-rent flat, landlord furniture, a pet clause, and an inspection run against day-one photos rather than a clerk’s mood. The carpet and sofa work cost more than the base clean. It was still a fraction of the deposit, and the photo set did the arguing so she never had to.
Two months’ notice moved the rush, not the standard
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 went live on 1 May 2026. Section 21 is gone, every assured shorthold tenancy in England has converted to a periodic tenancy, and a tenant can give two months’ notice at any point in the year. The cleaning side of a hand-back did not change one word: same check-in benchmark, same deposit rules, same report. What changed at the Quays is rhythm. Broadcast and corporate tenants no longer wait for a fixed term to lapse, so move-outs now land midweek and mid-month as often as at month-end, and the diary moves faster than it used to. Book five to seven days ahead for most of the month, longer for the final few days of it, which still bunch.
Booking is short work.
- Ring 0333 555 2076 with the building name, flat size, hand-back date and anything the check-in report marked new. Price in about three minutes; out of hours, email [email protected] and we call back first thing.
- We book the day before your check-out where we can, so nothing has time to gather dust between our visit and the inspection.
- Sort access with us in advance. Most Quays towers want the service lift booked through the concierge or the resident team, visitor parking is scarce around the basins, and a fob that stops working at the wrong moment is the classic move-out delay. Tell us the arrangement and we plan around it; the Metrolink stops at Anchorage, Salford Quays, Harbour City and MediaCityUK mean our teams are not hostage to Trafford Road traffic.
- Flat empty, or inventory-furnished only. Your belongings out, landlord furniture stays. Our removals crew can run the move and the clean as one booking if the van logistics are the headache.
- Photo pack on completion, every room, with an itemised invoice. Anything flagged inside 48 hours, we return free.
Add-ons, and the neighbours one tram stop away
Four jobs get muddled on the phone every week, so here is the plain sorting of them.
- Check-in inventory report
- The day-one document, photos and all. It is the benchmark your hand-back is judged against, and the reason we ask what it marked as new.
- End-of-tenancy clean
- This page. Built to match that report, priced by flat size, 48-hour guarantee attached, flat empty or inventory-furnished.
- Deep clean
- A deep clean resets a flat you are staying in, no formal standard to hit, from £30 an hour.
- Regular domestic clean
- Ongoing upkeep visits, from £22 an hour weekly; the domestic cleaning page has the detail.
Carpet cleaning is the most-added extra in the older Quays blocks where bedrooms kept their carpet, and hot-water extraction with a receipt satisfies the clause some agreements still carry. Beyond the postcode, the same teams work Stretford down the Metrolink line, the rest of the city on the Salford page, and the corporate lets around Deansgate across the river. If your next flat is one of those, one phone call covers both ends of the move.
Questions we get asked
How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost at Salford Quays?
Studio £156, one-bed £207, two-bed £243, three-bed £339, four-bed £425. Those are the same rates we charge across Greater Manchester; M50 carries no tower premium. Odd layouts and part-jobs run at £30 per hour per cleaner, and the phone quote is the invoice price.
Is the water at Salford Quays hard or soft?
Soft. United Utilities supplies the Quays from Lake District and Pennine reservoirs and hardness sits around 25–60 mg/l calcium carbonate. Scale on taps and screens is rarely what fails a Quays inspection; grease film on the hood and haze on the glass are the usual culprits.
Do you clean the floor-to-ceiling glass and the balcony?
Yes. Internal glass is done with microfibre and a glass-safe solution, never paper, and checked sideways under light the way the clerk reads it. Composite balcony decking gets a stiff brush and a wash-down, the glass balustrade is polished where access allows, and the balcony drain is cleared.
Can you handle the cooker hood filter and the integrated appliances?
Yes. The charcoal cassette comes out of the hood and is washed or replaced, the dishwasher kickplate comes off, the integrated fridge seals are cleaned, and the washing machine drawer and door seal are scrubbed. Those four are the most-flagged items on Quays inventory reports.
What about condensation mould around the windows?
We treat and remove surface spotting on silicone and reveals, then photograph anything that points to a structural problem. Persistent damp is a landlord obligation under the Homes Act 2018, not a tenant cleaning failure, and the dated photos keep that charge off your deposit.
Do you cover MediaCityUK as well as the older Quays blocks?
Yes. The Heart, X1 Media City and the blocks around the piazza are on the same rota as NV Buildings, the Anchorage, Imperial Point, City Lofts and Clippers Quay. Send the building name with the postcode and we confirm access arrangements when you book.
How long does a Quays flat take to clean?
A one-bed runs three to four hours with two cleaners; a two-bed four to six. Add roughly an hour where carpets are shampooed on the same visit. We allow a margin for service-lift bookings, which slow tower move-outs more than the cleaning does.
When should I book once I have given notice?
Five to seven days ahead is comfortable for most of the month; allow longer for the last few days of the month, which still bunch up. Since tenancies went periodic on 1 May 2026, Quays hand-backs land midweek and mid-month far more often, so slots move faster than they used to.
Does selective licensing apply at Salford Quays?
No. Salford’s selective licensing designations cover Broughton, Kersal and Broughton Park, north of the city centre. M50 sits outside them. What protects your deposit at the Quays is the deposit scheme and the check-out report, which is exactly what the clean and the photo pack are built around.
What happens if the agent flags something after the clean?
Tell us inside 48 hours and we return and put it right free under the 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If the landlord still deducts, escalate to your deposit scheme; our invoice and dated photo set are evidence adjudicators accept. Shelter’s deposit guidance walks through the steps.
Do you work for landlords and block managers as well as tenants?
Both. We are on the books of 300+ letting agents nationally, and at the Quays that includes void cleans for landlords between tenancies and hand-backs booked by building teams. Same 57-point agent-approved checklist, same prices, whoever pays.
Does the flat need to be empty, and what about furnished lets?
Empty is best for an unfurnished flat. Furnished lets, the norm at Clippers Quay and much of MediaCityUK, are fine as they stand: we clean around the inventory furniture and can add upholstery and mattress cleaning where the check-in photos demand it.
Get a price
Call 0333 555 2076 with the building name, the flat size and the hand-back date, and the price takes about three minutes. Out of hours, send us a message and someone rings you back first thing. A couple of photos of the kitchen and the glass sharpen the quote. Monster Cleaning Ltd, Companies House 9919639, cleaning rented homes since 2014. And if your check-out at the Quays is tomorrow morning, ring anyway; we have rescued tighter deadlines than that.