A move-out cleaning costs $300 to $650 for most Massachusetts homes in 2026, with apartments running $200 to $400 and larger single-family homes reaching $700 or more. The price buys a top-to-bottom clean of the empty property, including inside every appliance, cabinet, and closet. For renters it’s usually the difference between keeping and losing a security deposit several times that size.
Move-Out Cleaning Prices by Property Type
- Studio or one-bedroom apartment: $200 to $325. Two to four labor hours on an empty unit.
- Two- to three-bedroom apartment or condo: $275 to $450, depending heavily on kitchen and bathroom condition.
- Single-family home: $350 to $650 for most North Shore houses, more for large homes or long-occupied ones.
- Landlord turnover packages: owners with multiple units can usually get per-unit pricing on a schedule; we do a steady business of turnover cleans for landlords between tenants.
Two factors move these numbers more than size: how long the home was occupied, and whether the kitchen was heavily used. A five-year tenancy with daily cooking leaves a different oven than a two-year tenancy of takeout.
What a Move-Out Clean Includes
This is the most thorough service in cleaning, because there’s no furniture to work around and no judgment calls about what to skip. A proper move-out cleaning covers the inside of the oven and refrigerator, the inside of every cabinet and drawer, closet shelves and rods, baseboards and trim throughout, doors and frames, light fixtures and switch plates, window sills and tracks, full bathroom descaling, and floors finished last on the way out the door. If you’re doing any of it yourself first, our Massachusetts move-out cleaning checklist covers the complete list landlords actually check.
The Security Deposit Math
Massachusetts landlords can deduct for cleaning beyond normal wear and tear, and in practice the kitchen and bathrooms decide the outcome. A typical North Shore security deposit is one month’s rent, often $2,000 to $3,500. Against that, a $300 professional clean with a walkthrough-ready result is cheap insurance. There’s a second, less obvious benefit for renters: a documented professional cleaning gives you a receipt and a standard to point to if a deduction gets disputed.
For sellers, the math is different but points the same direction. An empty house shows every flaw, and buyers walking a spotless empty home read it as well maintained. Agents on the North Shore routinely schedule a move-out clean between the moving truck and the first showing.
Should You Just Do It Yourself?
You can, and plenty of people start to. The honest math: a proper move-out clean of a two-bedroom is six to ten hours of hard work, done in the same exhausting week you’re packing, lifting, and changing addresses. It needs supplies you may have already packed, and the two places where deposits actually die, the oven and the bathroom buildup, are precisely the jobs that take professional products and patience. The pattern we see every month is the half-done version: the renter cleans for a day, runs out of weekend, and the landlord’s cleaner bills the deposit anyway. If the home is small and was lightly lived in, DIY with our checklist is realistic. If it’s a family home with five years of cooking in the kitchen, the $400 is the cheapest part of your move.
Timing It Right
The clean happens after the home is completely empty and before the final walkthrough or first showing, which usually means a one- or two-day window. Book at least a week ahead, two weeks at month-end; the last days of any month are the busiest in this business, and summer lease turnovers around the universities book out further. If movers run late, tell the cleaning company immediately, a good one can usually shift within the day.
Getting a Firm Number
Move-out cleans quote accurately because the scope is fixed: the whole empty home, every time. Give us the address, the size, and the vacancy window and we’ll give you a flat price for anywhere in our North Shore and Metro North service area: (857) 880-0641. For the broader pricing picture, our 2026 house cleaning cost guide covers every service type.
