The clean that decides your deposit in NW3
End of tenancy cleaning in Swiss Cottage is a full strip-down of an empty flat against the check-in inventory, priced by the size of the property and guaranteed for 48 hours, with prices from £156 for a studio up to £425 for a four-bed. That is the short version. The rest of this page is the detail, because in NW3 the detail is where deposits are won or lost.
Swiss Cottage sits around the meeting of Finchley Road, Avenue Road and College Crescent, in the London Borough of Camden. The pub that named it has gone, but Sir Basil Spence’s library still stands a short walk up Avenue Road, the Hampstead Theatre is next to it, and the Jubilee line still runs from the station in zone 2. None of that changes how a tenancy ends. What changes is the kind of flat you are handing back, and around here that is usually a flat in a big red-brick block with rooms that take longer to clean than a clerk allows for in their head.
We are a domestic cleaning firm, not an agency that subcontracts to whoever is free. The same trained cleaners do these jobs, they bring their own kit and materials, and they stay until the flat matches the standard the inventory recorded. You need to give them an empty property with the power on and hot water running. We handle the rest.
It helps to know who you are dealing with here. The Swiss Cottage rental market leans heavily towards professional tenants and corporate lets, the sort of tenancy where the deposit is large and the managing agent is thorough. A two-bed in one of the mansion blocks off Avenue Road can carry a deposit running into four figures, and the agent handling the check-out is rarely the same person who let you in. They send an independent inventory clerk, the clerk works from a written report, and that report is unsentimental about a smeared oven door or a grey bath.
That is the gap we close. A clerk is paid to find faults, and a flat that feels clean to you can still read as below standard on paper, line by line. We work to the same line-by-line logic, so the report comes back clean.
This guide walks through what Camden expects of the property, why mansion-block flats slow the job down, what the 57-point checklist covers, what it costs, how end of tenancy differs from a deep clean, the deposit rules worth knowing, what the moving day itself looks like, and how to book.
What Camden checks, and the licence behind your flat
Camden runs two HMO licensing schemes and both cover the whole borough, Swiss Cottage included. There is no selective licensing for ordinary single-household lets anywhere in Camden, so a self-contained flat let to one household does not need a licence. A shared house is a different matter.
Mandatory HMO licensing applies to any property let to five or more people from two or more households who share a kitchen or bathroom. Camden’s additional HMO licensing scheme widens that net to smaller shared homes, those let to three or four people across two or more households. The council renewed that additional scheme in 2025: the designation was made on 2 July 2025, it came into force on 8 December 2025, and it runs to 8 December 2030, replacing the previous scheme that had run since December 2020. The drop-in session for the consultation was actually held at Swiss Cottage Library on Avenue Road, so this is a local matter, not a paper one.
Why does a licence sit on an end of tenancy page? Because a licensed HMO is inspected, and the inspection covers cleanliness and condition. If you are a sharer moving out of a licensed house off Finchley Road or up towards Frognal, the standard you are held to at check-out tends to be firmer, and the inventory tends to be more detailed. The mandatory scheme thresholds are set out on the gov.uk guide to houses in multiple occupation, which is worth a read if you are not sure whether your home counts.
There is a practical reason this matters for the clean rather than just for the paperwork. A licensed HMO has tighter rules on the state of communal areas, kitchens and bathrooms, and the agent managing it knows the council can inspect. So when a room in a shared house off College Crescent changes hands, the check-out on that one room is often stricter than the check-out on a whole self-contained flat. Shared-house tenants get caught out by communal kitchens most of all, because nobody quite owns the grease behind the cooker until somebody is moving and the clerk is pointing at it.
For a single household it is simpler. No licence, but the same deposit law, and the same check-out clerk holding the same inventory. Either way the cleaning standard is the thing that decides the money, and that is the part we control.
A clerk is paid to find faults, and a flat that feels clean to you can still read as below standard on paper, line by line.
The mansion-block flats that slow this job down
Most of our Swiss Cottage work is in the big mansion blocks. Red brick, four or five storeys, a porter on the better ones, flats that were carved out generations ago and have been let to professionals ever since. They are handsome and they are slow to clean, and tenants nearly always underestimate the second part.
The kitchens are the main reason. A lot of these flats still have a heavy freestanding range or an older built-in oven that no one has cleaned behind in years, and the grease finds its way down the sides and onto the floor under the unit. Tiled splashbacks collect a film. Extractor filters clog. The bathrooms are the other reason: cast-iron baths, original tiling, grout that has gone grey, and limescale around taps and the shower screen because the water up here is hard. None of that comes off with a quick wipe.
Then there are the windows. Many blocks have tall metal-framed casements, sometimes with secondary glazing fitted for the traffic noise off Finchley Road, and the runners and frames hold a surprising amount of grime. We clean the inside glass and frames as part of the job. The outside is a separate booking where access allows, because on an upper floor in a block there is no leaning out of the window safely.
Floors vary. Original parquet or wide boards in the reception rooms, carpet in the bedrooms, vinyl or tile in the kitchen. Each wants a different approach, and the clerk will check the lot. The practical upshot is time. A two-bed mansion flat that looks tidy can still be a full day, which is exactly why we never run this service by the clock.
There is also the question of getting the kit upstairs. A lot of these blocks have a lift, but not all of them, and the older ones have a small lift that will not take a carpet machine and three people at once. The cleaners plan around it. On a porter-served block they will sign in at the desk, which is smoother than it sounds, because a good porter knows the flats and will point out which tap drips and which window has been painted shut for years.
Not every Swiss Cottage tenancy is a mansion flat, mind. There are purpose-built blocks from the 1960s and 70s along Adelaide Road and around the station, and a scattering of converted houses up towards Belsize Park and Frognal. The newer blocks clean faster, with flat modern surfaces and sealed kitchens, while the converted houses sit somewhere in between. We price each on what it actually is, after a quick description of the flat over the phone.
Parking is the small daily annoyance. The controlled zones around the station and along the side streets off College Crescent run through the working day, so the cleaners load and unload, then move the van. It is the worst part of the round, honestly, and it has nothing to do with how clean the flat ends up. If a job is a short walk from the bus stops on Finchley Road we just carry the kit in, which is often quicker than circling for a bay.
What the 57-point checklist covers, room by room
The 57-point agent-approved checklist is the same document the better Camden agents recognise, and we bring it to every job. It is not a marketing list. It is the order of work, room by room, so nothing gets skipped while the clerk is standing in the hallway with a clipboard.
In the kitchen we clean the oven inside and out, take the door apart where it comes apart, degrease the hob and extractor, wipe inside and on top of every cupboard, pull out and clean behind freestanding appliances where they move safely, descale the sink and taps, and finish the floor. The oven alone is the part tenants most often get wrong, and it is the first thing a clerk opens.
In the bathroom the work is descaling and sanitising: taps, shower screen, tiles and grout, the bath and basin, the toilet inside and behind, mirrors, and the floor. Hard water leaves its mark on chrome and glass, so this takes longer in NW3 than the photos suggest.
Through the rest of the flat we dust and wipe every surface from the top down, clean skirting boards and door frames, do switches and sockets, clear cobwebs, clean internal glass and window frames, hoover carpets and upholstery, and mop the hard floors last. Light fittings, radiators and the insides of fitted wardrobes are on the list too, which is where a rushed clean usually falls down.
The order matters as much as the list. We work top to bottom and back to front, so the cleaner is not dragging dust onto a floor that has just been mopped, and the kitchen and bathroom, the two rooms a clerk always scrutinises hardest, get done when the cleaner is freshest rather than at the rushed end of the day. Limescale is the recurring enemy in NW3 because the water is hard, so the descaling in the bathroom and on the kitchen taps is built into the timings rather than tacked on.
Two things we will ask you to sort before we arrive. The flat needs to be empty of your belongings, because we cannot clean a cupboard with your things still in it, and the rubbish needs to be gone. We are cleaners, not a clearance firm, and a clerk will note leftover bin bags as a failure even if the surfaces gleam.
One more honest caveat. We clean, we do not redecorate, and we do not perform miracles on damage. A cigarette burn in a carpet, a cracked tile, a scuffed wall that needs paint, those are condition issues for you and your landlord to settle, not cleaning. What we guarantee is that the dirt is gone and the flat reads as clean against the inventory. That is the part that saves the deposit.
What end of tenancy cleaning costs in Swiss Cottage
We price by the size of the flat, not by the hour, so the number you are quoted is the number you pay. A studio is £156. A one-bed is £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339, and a four-bed £425. Those are the full end of tenancy rates and they include the materials and the kit, brought to the flat at no extra charge.
Swiss Cottage is an expensive place to rent, but our price for the cleaning is the standard Camden price. We do not load the bill because the postcode is NW3. If you would rather book cleaners by the hour for a smaller job, that runs at £30 per cleaner per hour, though for a move-out the fixed price almost always works out better and carries the guarantee.
Some jobs need add-ons. Carpet cleaning by hot water extraction is £36 a bedroom and £43 for a living room, or £115 for a whole two-bed flat done together. Oven cleaning, if you book it on its own rather than as part of the full clean, is £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a range cooker, the sort you often find in these older kitchens. Upholstery and exterior windows are quoted on what is there.
It is worth being clear about why we hold to one price for the cleaning across the borough when the rents are not equal across the borough. The cost of cleaning a two-bed flat is the cost of the cleaners’ time and materials, and that does not change because the flat happens to be in NW3 rather than further out. Some firms quietly add a premium for the smarter postcodes. We do not, because the work is the work, and a tenant moving out of a pricey flat is no more able to absorb a padded bill than anyone else.
The reason the fixed price matters is the guarantee behind it. We have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone on cleaning deductions, and we are on the books of 300+ letting agents who know the work. If a clerk or agent challenges the clean, we return within 48 hours and put it right at no cost. That guarantee only works because the price is fixed and the cleaners stay until the job is done, so there is never a temptation to cut a corner to beat the clock.
End of tenancy, deep clean or a regular tidy
People mix these three up, and booking the wrong one wastes money. They are not the same job.
An end of tenancy clean is for an empty flat at the end of a let, measured against the check-in inventory, and it is the one with the 48-hour re-clean guarantee. A deep clean is for a flat you are staying in that has fallen behind, a spring clean with teeth, and it works around your furniture and your life. A regular clean is the lighter maintenance visit, weekly or fortnightly, that keeps a lived-in flat ticking over.
If you are moving out, you want the end of tenancy service, full stop. If you have just moved into a Swiss Cottage flat that the last tenant left in a state, a one-off deep clean is the better fit and you do not need the inventory-grade version. And if you are settling in for a while, a fortnightly clean is the cheapest way to never face a big catch-up. We can talk you onto the right one when you call.
The confusion costs people money in both directions. Book a regular clean for a move-out and the flat will not pass, because a maintenance visit was never meant to pull out appliances or descale a whole bathroom. Book the full end of tenancy clean on a flat you are staying in and you have paid for inventory-grade work you did not need. The honest answer is usually obvious once you say out loud whether the flat is being handed back or kept, so that is the first question we ask.
The deposit rules a Swiss Cottage tenant should know
Your deposit is protected by law, and the law shifted recently, so it is worth knowing where you stand before you argue over a cleaning charge. Your landlord must place your deposit in one of three government-backed schemes within 30 days of taking it, and return it within 10 days of you both agreeing what comes off. The full rules are on the gov.uk tenancy deposit protection guide.
On cleaning specifically, the bar is set by the inventory. You have to return the flat to the same standard of cleanliness it was in when you moved in, no better, and a landlord cannot keep money for fair wear and tear. Shelter is clear that a tenancy agreement cannot force you to pay for professional cleaning as a condition, and its guide on what a landlord can deduct for cleaning spells out where the line sits. If you cannot get the flat back to the check-in standard yourself, that is when a professional clean with a receipt pays for itself.
The bigger change is the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which came into force on 27 October 2025 with its main provisions following through into 2026. It ends fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies and moves everyone onto periodic tenancies, which changes how and when a tenancy comes to an end, though it does not change the basic deposit deduction principle one bit. Clean to the inventory and the deduction has nothing to stand on.
If you disagree with a deduction, push back rather than accept it. Each scheme runs a free dispute service, and the Deposit Protection Service will adjudicate on the evidence, which means your check-in inventory, your photos and any cleaning receipt all count. This is the practical case for booking a professional clean and keeping the invoice: if it ever goes to adjudication, a dated receipt from a firm the agents already know carries real weight, far more than your word that the flat was spotless.
One thing the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 does not touch is the worth of good records. Take photos on the day you leave, keep the inventory you signed at the start, and hold on to the cleaning receipt. Three pieces of paper, and most cleaning disputes never get past them.
- Check-in inventory
- The report made at the start of the tenancy that records the condition and cleanliness of the flat room by room. It is the standard your check-out is judged against.
- Fair wear and tear
- The normal deterioration from ordinary living, such as worn carpet in a hallway. A landlord cannot deduct from your deposit for it.
- HMO
- A house in multiple occupation, let to people from more than one household who share facilities. In Camden these need a licence borough-wide.
- 48-hour re-clean guarantee
- If the clerk or agent challenges our work, we return within 48 hours and put it right free of charge.
Getting the timing right on moving day
Moving day in Swiss Cottage tends to run tight, and the cleaning has to slot into it without becoming the thing that holds everyone up. The flat has to be empty before we can do a proper job, so the order is removals first, clean second, check-out last.
A typical sequence looks like this. The removals firm clears the furniture in the morning, ideally before the controlled parking hours bite hardest on the side streets. The cleaners come in once the flat is bare, usually for most of the day on a larger mansion flat, and they finish in time for the inventory clerk to do the check-out, which the agent often books for the late afternoon or the next morning. If the check-out is the same day, leave a clear few hours between the clean finishing and the clerk arriving, because a damp floor and a clerk in a hurry is a bad combination.
The single biggest mistake is booking the clean too early, while boxes are still going down the stairs. Every box dragged across a clean floor undoes a bit of the work, and the cleaners end up redoing the hallway. The second biggest is forgetting that the keys have to get to the right person. On a porter-served block you can usually leave a set at the desk, but check with your agent first, because some insist on collecting keys themselves.
We work seven days a week precisely because move-outs do not respect the working week. Tenancies end on Saturdays, deposits are argued over on Sundays, and an agent will happily book a Monday-morning check-out on a flat vacated the Friday before. Tell us the check-out time when you book and we will work backwards from it.
If your move is staged over a couple of days, with the heavy furniture going early and the last bags following later, say so. We would rather come once to an empty flat than twice to a half-empty one, and we will fit the slot to when the place is genuinely clear.
How to book, and what we need on the day
Booking is a phone call. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected], tell us the size of the flat and your check-out date, and we will give you a fixed price and a slot. We work seven days a week, so a Saturday or Sunday move-out is no problem, and we can usually fit in a short-notice job if a check-out has been brought forward.
On the day, the flat needs to be empty of your things, with the electricity on and hot water running. That is all we ask. If the carpets or the oven need the extra treatment, say so when you book so we bring the right kit and quote it in. Our office is at 255 Upper Richmond Road West, SW14 8QS, and the same office handles the booking, the clean and any re-clean if a clerk flags something.
It is also worth lining up the work in the right order. If you have a removals firm shifting your furniture in the morning, book the clean for once the flat is clear, not while boxes are still going down the stairs.
We cover the area and the postcodes around it, so we also clean across Belsize Park, Hampstead and West Hampstead, and you can see the full picture on our Camden end of tenancy page. If you only need one job sorted rather than the full clean, the oven cleaning, carpet cleaning and upholstery cleaning services book separately too, which suits a furnished let where only the sofa and curtains let the place down.
Questions Swiss Cottage tenants ask before they book
How much is end of tenancy cleaning in Swiss Cottage?
It depends on the size of the flat, not the hours. A studio is £156, a one-bed £207, a two-bed £243, a three-bed £339 and a four-bed £425, with materials and equipment included.
Do you charge more because Swiss Cottage is expensive?
No. The flats here cost a lot to rent, but our cleaning prices are the standard Camden rates. The postcode does not change the price.
What is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?
If the inventory clerk or your letting agent challenges the clean within 48 hours, we come back and put it right at no cost. It is there so the work holds up at check-out.
Will the clean get my full deposit back?
Cleaning is the most common reason for a deduction, so a proper clean removes that risk. Our work passes first time 97% of the time, and we have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits over the years.
Do you clean the oven as part of the service?
Yes. The oven is cleaned inside and out as part of the full end of tenancy clean. If you only want the oven done on its own it is £77 for a single, £110 for a double and £114 for a range cooker.
Can you clean the windows in a mansion-block flat?
We clean the inside glass and frames as standard. Exterior windows on an upper floor are a separate booking and depend on safe access, so tell us when you call.
Do I need to be there during the clean?
No, as long as we can get in and the flat has power and hot water. Many tenants leave a key with the porter or the agent and we let ourselves in.
How long does an end of tenancy clean take?
A studio might take a few hours, a larger mansion flat can be most of a day. We do not work to the clock, so the cleaners stay until the flat matches the inventory standard.
Does my flat need an HMO licence?
Only if it is a shared house. A self-contained flat let to one household does not. Camden licenses HMOs of three or more people from two or more households across the whole borough.
Can my landlord make me pay for professional cleaning?
No. A tenancy agreement cannot require professional cleaning as a condition. You only have to return the flat to the standard recorded on the check-in inventory.
What happens if I disagree with a cleaning deduction?
Use the free dispute service that comes with your deposit scheme. The adjudicator looks at the check-in inventory, photos and any cleaning receipt, so keep all three.
Do you work weekends and short notice?
Yes, seven days a week, and we can often take a short-notice job if your check-out date moves. The sooner you call, the easier the slot.
What do you need from me before the clean?
An empty flat with your belongings and rubbish removed, the electricity on and hot water running. We clean everything else.
When on moving day should I book the clean?
After the removals are done and before the check-out. Leave a clear gap between the clean finishing and the inventory clerk arriving so the floors are dry.
Is anything not included in the clean?
We clean rather than repair. Damage like a cracked tile, a carpet burn or a wall that needs paint is a condition matter for you and your landlord, not part of the cleaning.
Do you cover the rest of NW3 and Camden?
Yes. We clean across Belsize Park, Hampstead, West Hampstead and the wider Camden area, so a move within the borough is straightforward to book.