How do you get a full deposit back on a Selsdon semi when the inventory clerk has already photographed the lounge and stair carpet on the way in? You stop treating the check-out clean as a tidy-up and start treating it as the thing the report is written against. That is the whole page.
Last updated April 2026. Written for tenants, landlords and letting agents handing back property in Selsdon and the wider CR2 postcode.
We are Monster Cleaning Ltd, a domestic cleaning company that has worked the Croydon side of the boundary since 2014. The answer first, because most people reading this want the number: we do end of tenancy cleaning in Selsdon from £156 for a studio, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee if your agent’s inventory clerk flags anything we missed.
Selsdon is a particular kind of job and we will be honest about why. This is a planned garden suburb on the high ground south-east of South Croydon, mostly Costain-built mock-Tudor in the 1920s and 1930s, with the bigger inter-war detached running out towards Selsdon Vale and the 1960s Forestdale estate beyond that. There is no station up here. The 64 and the 433 do most of the lifting along Addington Road, and almost every property we clean was built to a 1930s spec with original floors under the carpet, picture rails, panelled doors and a kitchen refitted at least once. None of that is a Victorian conversion. It changes what an inventory clerk looks at, and it changes what we do.
Why Selsdon deposits get deducted
The deduction almost never comes from the obvious. It comes from the things a tenant stops seeing after a year or two in the same flat. Across our CR2 work the same short list does most of the damage on a check-out report.
Carpets first. The 1930s Selsdon houses have deep skirtings and original boards, and most tenancies put a fitted carpet over the lot. Four years of a family, a dog and school shoes grinds dirt into the lounge and the stair runner in a way a domestic vacuum never lifts. Clerks photograph it because the deposit scheme adjudicator wants to see the line-item, and a re-carpet on a Selsdon three-bed is a real number, so it is the first thing they reach for.
Then the kitchen. Whatever has been fitted into these houses, the oven is the single most disputed appliance on the inventory. A clerk will pull the door, check the glass between the panes, look at the runners and the grill, and they will check behind and under the cooker where four years of spitting fat has gone hard. We treat the oven as the appliance most likely to lose someone money and we clean it like that.
Limescale is the third one, and it is a genuine local flag rather than a line we copy onto every page. Selsdon is in the SES Water supply area and the water up here is hard. It builds a white crust on the kitchen mixer, the shower glass and the bathroom taps that a wipe with a cloth will not shift, and a clerk who runs a fingernail down the screen will write it up. We descale every wet area properly with a proper scale remover rather than smearing it around. You can confirm the hardness figure for your own postcode on the supplier’s site if you want to read it for yourself.
Last, the bits nobody photographs until check-out. The tops of the panelled doors. The picture-rail line in the older rooms. Inside the airing cupboard. The window reveals. Extractor grilles in the kitchen and bathroom. None of it is hard on its own. All of it is on the 57-point agent-approved checklist, and all of it is on the clerk’s clipboard.
Renters’ Rights Act 2025
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 changed the ground under all of this and it is worth two sentences. It ended fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies for most renters and moved everyone onto periodic tenancies, which in plain terms means people now leave Selsdon properties on shorter notice and with less warning, so check-out cleans get booked tighter than they used to. What did not change is the deposit law underneath it. Your money is still held in a government-backed scheme, the landlord still has to prove a deduction is fair rather than simply assert it, and the standard the adjudicator applies is still the property’s condition at check-in allowing for fair wear and tear. You can read the Act on legislation.gov.uk, and Shelter’s plain-English guide on shelter.org.uk is the one we point worried tenants at.
Deposits and the adjudicator
If your deposit is protected with the Tenancy Deposit Scheme or mydeposits, both run a free dispute service and the burden of proof sits with the landlord, not you. The adjudicator looks at the check-in inventory, the check-out report and the photos, and they will not award a full carpet replacement for cleanable soiling. That single point is why a clean that actually satisfies the clerk on the first visit is worth more than the clean itself costs. We have put roughly £1.2m of deposits back in tenants’ hands doing exactly this. The detail on the schemes is on tenancydepositscheme.com and mydeposits.co.uk.
What an inventory clerk on Addington Road actually checks
The agents who book us on the Selsdon and Sanderstead side, the local Park & Bailey, Bairstow Eves and Frost offices among them, use independent inventory clerks, and those clerks are predictable because the housing stock is consistent. On a 1930s mock-Tudor semi the clerk works a set order: oven and hob first, then the carpet seams and the stair runner under a torch, then the bathroom for scale on the glass and taps, then the window reveals and the tops of the panelled doors, then the airing cupboard and loft hatch. Councils set their own licensing rules for rented homes, and for this address that sits with the London Borough of Croydon, whose private-rented pages on croydon.gov.uk are the place to check whether a let needs a licence. We clean in the order the clerk checks, because there is no point cleaning in an order nobody inspects in.
Selsdon coverage: streets and zones
We cover the whole of Selsdon and the streets that feed into it. The 1920s and 1930s garden-suburb core around Addington Road, Selsdon Park Road and Farley Road. The Tudorbethan parade and the roads behind it. The bigger inter-war detached out towards Selsdon Vale and the edge of Selsdon Wood. The 1960s Forestdale estate and its closes. The slope down towards Sanderstead and Croham Hurst, and the streets running back towards South Croydon. If you are on a CR2 postcode within reach of the 64 or the 433 along Addington Road, we clean it. Selsdon Park Hotel sits on the far edge of the area; if you are closer to the golf course than the shops you are still inside what we cover.
Maisonettes above the parade, the inter-war flats, and the modern infill blocks between the older roads all get the same checklist treatment, scaled to the property.
What’s included in a Selsdon end of tenancy clean
This is a full hand-back clean to the standard the local inventory clerks check against. It is not a maintenance clean and it is not a deep clean for somebody who is staying. It is the one you book once, on the way out, when a report is going to be written about it. Everything below is included in the price for the property size.
- Oven: Fully cleaned, racks and runners out and soaked, door glass split and cleaned between the panes where the door allows, grill and interior degreased by hand.
- Behind the cooker: Cooker pulled out where safe, the wall and floor behind and underneath degreased of hardened fat.
- Hob and splashback: Burnt-on residue lifted, knobs and surrounds cleaned, splashback degreased and polished.
- Extractor: Hood wiped down and the filter degreased or replaced where it lifts out.
- Kitchen units: Every cupboard and drawer emptied, cleaned inside and out, fronts and handles degreased, plinths wiped.
- Worktops and sink: Surfaces cleaned, sink and mixer descaled, the hard-water crust taken off the tap rather than wiped around.
- Fridge and freezer: Defrosted on request, shelves and seals cleaned, switched off and left open if the property is empty.
- Washing machine: Drawer and rubber seal cleaned, filter checked, exterior wiped.
- Bathroom scale: Shower screen, tiles, taps and showerhead descaled properly with a scale remover, not smeared.
- Sanitaryware: Bath, basin and toilet cleaned and disinfected inside and out, including behind and under the pan.
- Grout and sealant: Tile grout scrubbed, silicone lines cleaned and any mould spotting treated.
- Mirrors and chrome: Polished clear, no smears under the clerk’s torch.
- Lounge and stair carpet: Vacuumed, then hot-water extraction on traffic lanes and any flagged soiling, which on Selsdon family lets is usually the stairs and the lounge.
- Carpets throughout: All carpeted rooms vacuumed and spot-treated, edges and under furniture done where the room is clear.
- Hard floors: Original boards, laminate or tile vacuumed and mopped, edges and corners by hand.
- Skirting and picture rails: Deep skirtings and the picture-rail line in the older rooms wiped down by hand.
- Panelled doors: Both faces, the tops, the edges and the handles cleaned, including the grime line along the top rail.
- Window glass: Cleaned inside, plus outside where it is safely reachable from the ground.
- Window reveals and sills: Frames, reveals, sills and catches wiped, a spot clerks check on these inter-war houses.
- Airing cupboard: Shelves and the cylinder surround cleaned out, a standard clerk checkpoint up here.
- Walls and switches: Spot-cleaned for marks, light switches, sockets and the thermostat wiped.
- Light fittings: Shades and accessible fittings dusted, cobwebs removed from ceilings and corners.
- Loft hatch and stairs: Hatch surround dusted, stair spindles and handrail cleaned down.
- Built-in wardrobes: Interiors wiped, tracks and runners cleared.
- Final sweep: Whole property re-checked against the 57-point agent-approved checklist before we hand it back.
Common reasons we get re-called
We are not perfect and neither is any cleaning firm, so it is worth saying what actually triggers a clerk to ask for a return. These are the patterns we see most on CR2 jobs.
The first is dried soiling that looks lifted while it is damp and reappears as a faint shadow once the carpet dries fully, usually on a heavily marked stair runner. We come back, re-extract it and let it dry properly before signing it off. The second is the oven door, where the film between the two panes of glass is missed by anyone who does not split the door, and a clerk holding it up to the window will always see it. The third is hard-water scale that has etched the shower glass so deeply that one descale dulls rather than clears it, on the worst SES Water build-ups, which needs a second pass. The fourth is the line of grime along the tops of the panelled doors and the picture rail, missed because nobody looks up. If any of these comes back inside 48 hours, the re-clean is free and we do not argue about it.
What a Selsdon end of tenancy clean costs
Flat prices by property size, no survey needed, no hourly creep on the standard clean. A studio is £156. A one-bed flat or maisonette is £207. A two-bed is £243. A three-bed, which is the typical Selsdon mock-Tudor semi off Addington Road, is £339. A four-bed, common on the larger inter-war detached towards Selsdon Vale, is £425. If you would rather book cleaners by the hour for a part-property or a top-up job, that is £30 per cleaner per hour.
Carpet cleaning is the add-on that matters most here, because carpet soiling is the deduction that matters most. Hot-water extraction is £29 per bedroom, £36 for a living room, or £94 for the carpet throughout a whole two-bed. A standalone oven, if you want it done on its own rather than as part of the full clean, is £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £143 for a 90cm range. On a four-year family let off Addington Road, the three-bed clean plus the lounge and stair carpet extraction is the combination that answers the clerk’s report, and it is the one we book most.
Across the work we have done this way we have recovered around £1.2m in deposits for tenants, which is the only figure that really matters when you are weighing the cost of the clean against the size of the deposit.
How booking works
It is deliberately short. Five steps.
- Call 0333 555 2076 or email office@monstercleaning.com with the Selsdon address, the property size and your check-out date.
- We give you a fixed price from the list above on the call. No home survey, no quote visit for a standard clean.
- We book the slot, ideally the day before or the morning of your check-out so the property is clean when the clerk walks it.
- Two or more cleaners attend, work the checklist in the order the inventory clerk inspects in, and we send you a completion note.
- If the clerk flags anything within 48 hours, you call us and we return and fix it free under the re-clean guarantee.
We are a Croydon-area operator, not a national call centre, and we’re rated 4.7 on Google.
Related services and nearby areas
Carpet soiling is the Selsdon problem, so the page worth reading next is our carpet and stair-runner cleaning service, and if the oven is the worry the single and double oven cleaning page covers that on its own. If furniture is staying with the property the upholstery cleaning page is the relevant one. For the wider area, our end of tenancy cleaning across Croydon hub lists the rates and the coverage for the whole borough, and we also cover the slope down towards end of tenancy cleaning in Sanderstead on the same terms.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is an end of tenancy clean in Selsdon?
From £156 for a studio, £207 for a one-bed, £243 for a two-bed, £339 for a three-bed and £425 for a four-bed. The £339 three-bed is the usual price for a Selsdon mock-Tudor semi off Addington Road. Carpet extraction and standalone ovens are priced add-ons on top.
Do you guarantee I will pass the inventory check?
We clean to the 57-point agent-approved checklist the local clerks inspect against. If the clerk flags anything we missed within 48 hours, we come back and re-clean it free under the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.
The carpet is the thing flagged on my report. Can you fix it?
That is the most common Selsdon case, especially on a family let with a pet. We vacuum then hot-water-extract the traffic lanes and the flagged soiling, which is usually the stair runner and the lounge. Where soiling is cleanable rather than permanent, the deposit adjudicator will not award a full re-carpet, which is why this works.
Why does limescale keep getting written up here?
Selsdon is on hard water through SES Water, so scale builds fast on shower glass, taps and the kitchen mixer. A wipe does not remove it and a clerk will see the crust. We descale every wet area with a proper scale remover as part of the standard clean.
Is this different from a deep clean?
Yes. A deep clean is for a property someone is staying in. An end of tenancy clean is the hand-back clean, done once on the way out, to the standard the inventory report is written against. The work and the order of work are aimed at the check-out, not at general upkeep.
Do you clean the oven properly or just wipe it?
The oven is fully cleaned. Racks and runners come out and soak, the door is split where the door comes apart so the glass between the panes is cleaned, and the interior is degreased by hand. The oven is the single most disputed appliance on the inventory up here, so it is done thoroughly.
Can you come the day I hand the keys back?
Yes, and that is the best way to book it. We aim for the day before or the morning of your check-out so the property is clean when the inventory clerk walks it rather than days before, when it can pick up dust again.
Do I need to be there?
No. Most Selsdon clients leave a key or arrange access through the letting agent on the parade. We send a completion note when we are done.
What if my landlord still tries to deduct for the carpet?
If your deposit is protected with the Tenancy Deposit Scheme or mydeposits, both run a free dispute service and the landlord has to prove the deduction is fair. An adjudicator will not award a full carpet replacement for soiling that has been professionally cleaned. Keep our completion note as evidence.
Do you cover Forestdale and Selsdon Vale as well as the older roads?
Yes. The 1960s Forestdale estate, the larger inter-war detached out towards Selsdon Vale and the garden-suburb core around Addington Road and Selsdon Park Road are all inside our coverage, along with the streets running down towards Sanderstead and South Croydon.
How many cleaners come and how long does it take?
At least two, often more on a three or four-bed. A typical Selsdon semi with the lounge and stair carpet done runs around six to eight hours.
Does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change my deposit position?
It moved most tenancies onto periodic terms so people leave on shorter notice, but it did not change deposit law. Your money is still in a government-backed scheme and a deduction still has to be justified against the check-in condition allowing for fair wear and tear.
How do I book?
Call 0333 555 2076 or email office@monstercleaning.com with the Selsdon address, the property size and your check-out date. We give you a fixed price on the call from the published list, book the slot, and back it with the 48-hour re-clean guarantee.
Ready to book your Selsdon end of tenancy clean?
Tell us the address, the size and the check-out date and we will price it on the call. Phone 0333 555 2076 or email office@monstercleaning.com. Monster Cleaning Ltd, 75 Shakespeare Avenue, Feltham, TW14 9HU, cleaning Selsdon and the CR2 postcode since 2014, working with 300+ letting agents and backing every job with the 48-hour re-clean guarantee and £1.2m of deposits already recovered for tenants.