The end of tenancy checklist: what the check-out clerk marks down

A check-out clerk is not judging whether your flat looks clean. They are working through a list, comparing what they find against the check-in inventory, and photographing anything that differs. Knowing which items are on that list is worth more than another hour of general cleaning — because cleaning causes 54% of all deposit disputes, and it is nearly always the same handful of things.

Download the printable checklist (PDF)

How a check-out actually works

The clerk arrives after you have gone, usually with the check-in inventory on a tablet. They walk the property in a fixed order — kitchen first, because that is where the money is — opening things rather than looking at them. Anything worse than the check-in record gets photographed with a timestamp. That photograph is the evidence, and later, if there is an argument, an adjudicator decides on those images and the written file alone. Nobody revisits the property.

Two things follow. The clerk opens doors, drawers and appliances you would not think to clean into. And a fault they cannot photograph is a fault that does not exist.

Kitchen — where it is won or lost

In a survey of 600 landlords and letting agents, 84% named the kitchen as the room most often left unclean. Expect the clerk to spend half their visit here.

1. Inside the oven. The single most common deduction in the country. They open the door and photograph the back wall and the roof of the cavity, which is where carbon builds and where a wipe-down never reaches.
2. The oven door glass — between the panes. Most doors come apart with two screws. Grease migrates between the layers and cannot be reached any other way, and it is visible in every photograph taken towards a window.
3. Oven racks and the runners they slide on. Racks get cleaned; the side runners almost never do.
4. The grill pan and the cavity behind it. Pull the drawer fully out. There is usually a compartment behind it that has not been touched in years.
5. The extractor filter. Metal mesh, lifts out, goes in the sink with hot water and degreaser. It is a two-minute job that is skipped on most cleans, and it is checked on almost every check-out.
6. The hob, including under the burners and the control knobs. Knobs pull off. The ring of grease behind them is a photograph waiting to happen.
7. Fridge and freezer seals. The rubber gasket, in its folds. Also: the freezer must be defrosted and the fridge left switched off with the door propped, or you will be charged for the mould that grows in a sealed warm fridge.
8. The washing machine drawer and the door gasket. The drawer comes right out. The rubber seal around the door traps standing water, hair and black mould in its lower fold.
9. Inside every cupboard and drawer. Crumbs, rings from bottles, and the sticky residue on the shelf under where the oil lived.
10. The tops of the wall units. Above eye level, thick with kitchen grease, and the clerk uses a phone held over their head to photograph it.

Bathrooms

11. Limescale on taps, shower heads and glass. In London water this is the default finding. It needs an acid descaler and time, not scrubbing.
12. The shower screen runners and the seal at the base. The track fills with scale and soap; the seal strip goes black underneath.
13. Grout and silicone. Mould in the silicone line is treated with a gel and left to work, not wiped. If it is stained rather than dirty, say so — discoloured silicone is wear, not a cleaning failure, and that distinction matters.
14. Behind and under the toilet, including the hinge caps and the base where it meets the floor.
15. The extractor vent cover, which unclips.
16. The overflow holes in the basin and bath.

Everywhere else, in walking order

17. Window tracks. The runner channel at the bottom of every window. This and the oven are the two items most likely to appear on a report and least likely to appear on a cleaning quote.
18. The tops of doors. Run a finger along one now. The clerk will.
19. Skirting boards, the full run — including behind where furniture stood, which is now visible for the first time in two years.
20. Light switches and sockets, and the wall immediately around them.
21. Inside wardrobes and built-in storage, including the top shelf and the rail.
22. Radiators, between the fins and the wall behind.
23. Carpet edges and the strip at the threshold of each room, where a vacuum does not reach.
24. Bins, inside and out, and the cupboard the bin stood in.

The three that are not about cleaning

These get marked down constantly and no amount of cleaning fixes them, so deal with them separately.

• Rubbish left anywhere on the property, including a full bin on collection day and anything in a shared bin store. Removal is charged at a call-out rate and it is one of the easiest deductions to avoid.
• Missing items from the inventory — a bin, a shower curtain, a set of keys, a remote. Check the inventory list, not the flat.
• Light bulbs. Every bulb should work. It is on most inventories and it costs almost nothing to fix.

Before you hand the keys over

1. Photograph every room yourself, dated, from the same angles as the check-in photographs. The adjudicators' own guidance is that matched images settle arguments that paragraphs cannot. Include the inside of the oven and the fridge.
2. Keep the cleaning invoice if you had it done. An invoice naming the property and dated to the end of the tenancy carries weight; your own account of having cleaned does not.
3. Read the check-in inventory before you clean, not after the deduction letter. You are being measured against that document, and if it describes the flat as "domestically cleaned" rather than professionally cleaned, that is the standard you have to meet.
4. Leave the heating on low if you leave mid-winter, and the fridge open and off.

If a deduction does land, the rules are firmly on your side more often than people assume — the burden of proof sits with the landlord, and the free adjudication service is binding. That is covered in how to dispute a cleaning deduction, and whether you can be made to pay for professional cleaning at all is covered in this guide — in England, since the Tenant Fees Act 2019, you cannot.

Or have it done

Every item on this page is on our end of tenancy specification, including the oven, the extractor filter and the window tracks, at a fixed price with nothing added on the day. You get a photographic record of every room, and if the check-out flags anything on the list within seven days we come back and put it right free of charge.