Business owner exposes insane list of demands from real estate agent after bond clean
A fed-up cleaning business owner has revealed the shameful extent some real estate agents will go to keep a tenant’s bond.
A cleaning business owner has put real estate agents and landlords on blast, revealing some of the insane call backs she and her team receive following bond cleans.
Fiona Morris is the founder of the Australian Cleaning Academy, which offers education for the cleaning industry, and she also owns and runs a cleaning business operating in the Newcastle region.
Ms Morris, 46, has been around the cleaning industry since she was eight years old when she used to help her mum complete bond cleans.
A bond clean, also known as an end of lease cleaning, is a deep clean performed in a rental property when a tenant is moving out to return it to the condition it was in when they moved in.
A satisfactory end of lease clean is often required in order for renters to receive their full bond back.
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This is something tenants can do themselves but, given how meticulous some real estate agencies can be about this process, many also choose to hire a professional cleaner.
This is where Ms Morris comes in, with she and her team having years of bond cleaning experience and, at one point, doing up to five end of lease cleans a day.
However, bond cleaning is not for the faint hearted, with the business owner recently documenting some of the absolutely ridiculous items a real estate agent called her team back to “fix” following a bond clean.
The unnamed real estate had provided a two page list of items in the property that were apparently not cleaned properly.
One item was to remove the “white, sticky residue” on the dishwasher door.
Upon inspection, Ms Morris found that there was still a plastic film on the appliance, revealing the tenant hadn’t ever used it in the 12 months she had lived there.
“You ready, Mr real estate? You f**king wombat,” she said, before peeling off the film, revealing a spotless dishwasher.
When the cleaning professional asked the tenant why she had never used the appliance, the young woman said she was “too scared” of how the real estate agency would react.
“Real estate agents like to get their pissy pants on when cleaning business owners have the audacity to call them unreasonable or fastidious,” Ms Morris said in another video.
“This real estate agent was willing to hold somebody’s bond, delay their happiness in moving into their new property, and delay this person moving in for this.”
On the list of issues provided by the property manager, there was “list after list” of supposed hair and debris that needed cleaning.
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After vacuuming, Ms Morris estimated they picked up “17 cat hairs, three bits of fluff, and four eyelashes”.
Other items on the list included cleaning off brown, sticky marks in the fridge space and wardrobe track, both of which were found to be liquid nail residue left over from what Ms Morris described as a “landlord special”, so not the tenant’s responsibility.
They were also instructed to clean water marks on the shower head, staining on the driveway that appeared to be purely weatherworn and wiping down already spotless shelves.
“You psychos. Not validating that,” Ms Morris said, as she showed zero dust or dirt coming away from the shelves as she wiped.
Speaking to news.com.au, Ms Morris revealed that in the original email from the real estate agent, they informed the tenant that, overall, the property was left in great condition and the cleaning issues were very minor.
But, because the tenant had booked a cleaner, the real estate agent decided they could return to the property to fix those issues, which the Newcastle woman branded a “power trip”.
Thankfully, the tenant in this case received her full bond back, but Ms Morris warned this is “far from an isolated issue” and she has had hundreds of situations just like this one.
While she understands not all real estate agents are like this, having family and friends in the industry herself, she does believe those that are doing the right thing need to be better at advocating for tenants and speaking out against this behaviour.
Another problem this level of nit picking causes is that many cleaners feel they need to inflate their prices for bond cleans even further, because they are anticipating they will have to go back to the property.
In Ms Morris’ experience, they will get a call back from a real estate seven or eight times out of 10, noting they often have to warn tenants this will be the case.
“I can hand on heart say 90 per cent of the time it’s frivolous. It’s not fair and reasonable. It’s wear and tear, it’s damage, it’s maintenance, and it’s not always cleaning, and they don’t want to see the maintenance because it means a battle with the landlord,” she said.
Since posting the videos exposing the reality many tenants face when leaving a rental, Ms Morris has received a huge amount of support, with many Aussies sharing their own nightmare rental stories.
The 46-year-old said that, if she hadn’t done the call back herself, she would have looked at that two-page report from the real estate and assumed her cleaners weren’t doing their job.
“But when I walked in there, I was like, this is such bullsh*t,” she said.
“Then when we started filming I feel like the advocacy, the ambassador, the spokesperson came up in me and, as that rage rose, I thought ‘this is a much bigger conversation’.”
Despite the frustrating experiences she has had with some real estate agents, Ms Morris said it hasn’t deterred her from doing bond cleans.
If anything, it has “put a fire in her belly” and inspired her to create more resources for tenants on how they can navigate the end of lease process.
“We’re going to put a DIY bond clean kit together and empower tenants. They don’t have to pay $1000 to have a bond clean,” she said.
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The business owner plans to help empower tenants to know whether real estate agents are being unreasonable in their demands, how to advocate for themselves and properly document the end of lease cleaning process.
Ms Morris added that, while she isn’t afraid to call out dodgy behaviour, her goal isn’t to demonise real estate agents, noting they also have a tough job.
“If we can come together with some solutions, I think we’ll do really well,” she said.
