Make-ready turnover cleaning in Austin
Insured · work performed by licensed subcontractors · 5.0 stars from 7 Google reviews · Austin, TX
Same-day short-term rental turns and full tenant make-readies across Austin — photo-documented every turn, quoted flat per unit, one insured accountable crew.
Turnover cleaning resets a unit between occupants: a short-term rental cleaned and restaged between guests, or a longer make-ready that returns an apartment, house or commercial space to lease-ready condition between tenants. Both are scoped by bedroom and bath count, condition and the date the next occupant arrives.
They get bought as one line item and they are not one job. Confusing them is the single most common reason a turnover quote and a turnover invoice do not match.
Hours, not days, usually between an 11am checkout and a 4pm check-in. The unit is furnished and stocked, so the work is reset and restage: strip and remake beds, launder and restock what the property holds, reset the kitchen and baths, and leave the room matching the listing photos. Speed matters because the window is fixed by someone else's booking.
Days, not hours, on an empty unit. Nothing is staged and nothing is hidden: insides of cabinets, drawers and appliances, baseboards, vents, marks on walls, the smell the last tenant left. The bar is not clean enough for tonight, it is clean enough to show and to lease, which is a deeper and slower standard.
An office, suite or retail space changing hands between occupants. Closer to a make-ready in depth, but scheduled around a building's access rules rather than a lease date — badge, freight window, escort and certificate of insurance on file before anyone gets in the door.
Tell us which of the three you are actually buying and the quote stops being a guess. If the space is coming out of construction rather than out of an occupancy, it is neither — that is post-construction cleaning, a different scope with a different problem in it.
Short-term rental work is not a smaller house clean. It is a scheduled, documented, repeatable operation, and the properties that run well are the ones that treat it that way.
We run turns the way property managers run them: assigned per property, against a task list with an expected duration, and photographed at completion. Where a portfolio is managed in turnover software — Breezeway and its equivalents — we work inside the platform rather than beside it, so the record of each clean sits with the rest of the property's history instead of in a text thread. That matters more than it sounds. When the owner is in another state and the next guest arrives at four, the photo set is the handoff.
It is also what makes a damage claim survivable. A stain found and photographed at eleven in the morning is a documented incident with a timestamp. The same stain reported by an angry guest at seven that evening is an argument nobody wins.
Almost nothing that goes wrong on a turn is a cleaning problem. It is a stocking, data or maintenance problem that only becomes visible when somebody is standing in the unit with a few hours left on the clock. These are real ones, off real turns:
A unit listed as one bedroom that is actually two. That is not an admin typo — bedroom count sets the scope, the time on site and the rate tier, so a wrong number means an under-scoped clean and an under-billed turn, every single time, until someone catches it.
Fitted sheets staged for the wrong mattress depth. The beds still have to be made, the clock does not move, and the fix is a stocking decision nobody made.
A comforter with pet hair, staining and odor that genuinely cannot be reused — and no second comforter stocked anywhere in the unit. Somebody has to decide, that hour, whether the guest arrives to a bare bed or a bad one.
Pet soiling on a living-room couch. That is a documentation and fee question, not a scrubbing question, and it needs photographs before the next guest arrives, not an explanation afterwards.
A washer and dryer at the property that both simply do not run. On-site laundry is often the assumption the whole turnaround window is built on, and when it fails the schedule fails with it.
A clean performed on a property that was never opened as a task, so it is invisible in the system and invisible on the invoice. Work that is not recorded is work that quietly does not get paid for.
We report every one of these the day it happens, with photos, rather than cleaning around it and letting you find out from a guest review. It is worth agreeing three things before the first turn: who stocks the spares, who owns appliance maintenance, and what the pet-damage and trash-out path is. Sorting those out in advance costs one conversation. Sorting them out mid-turn costs a booking.
On a tenant make-ready the unit is empty, which sounds easier and is not. Everything the furniture used to cover is now visible, and the standard is a space that shows well to the next prospect rather than one that merely passes at a glance.
The honest limit of a cleaning scope is that a fair amount of what a vacated unit needs is not cleaning. Scuffed and marked drywall, a door that will not sit right, missing caulk, paint that has stopped being touch-up and started being a repaint — no amount of scrubbing fixes any of it, and most cleaning vendors' involvement ends at photographing it and handing the list back to you.
Bailey & Bear runs a construction side under the same owner, so on a make-ready those punch items can be scoped and fixed rather than only reported. One walkthrough, one accountable person, one plan covering both halves — instead of a cleaning vendor, a handyman and a scheduling gap between them while the unit sits empty. Appliance repair is the exception: that is a licensed trade and we refer it, we do not claim it.
A turnover is quoted as a flat per-turn rate, set by bedroom and bath count, unit size and the condition we can expect to find. You get the number in writing before the first turn and it holds, so the line item is predictable across a month of bookings rather than re-negotiated every time.
What we will not do is fold turnovers into a commercial per-visit band. The $130 to $350 per-visit range published on our commercial cleaning cost page is for commercial spaces on a route — an office, a clinic, a retail floor. A furnished residential unit with linens, a kitchen reset and a fixed guest deadline is a different job on a different clock, and quoting it off the commercial band would just mean re-pricing it later. It gets scoped on its own.
Two things move a turnover quote more than square footage: how many beds have to be stripped, laundered and remade, and whether laundry happens on site or leaves the property. Both are worth stating up front.
We launder and stage what the property stocks, and flag it when the stock is short or wrong. We do not warehouse replacement linens for your units.
A dead washer, a failing HVAC unit or a plumbing fault gets reported with photos the same day, not repaired by us — those are licensed trades and we refer them. Drywall, paint and punch work is the exception, because the construction side handles it.
Fine drywall dust does not come out in one pass and is not a turnover. That is a separate scope — see post-construction cleaning.
We will commit to a same-day window on a unit we have scoped with access confirmed. We will not commit to one sight-unseen, because that is the promise that gets broken at four o'clock.
Short-term rental owners and hosts, property managers running scattered or multifamily portfolios, realtors preparing a listing to show, and commercial operators handing a suite from one occupant to the next. Austin and the surrounding Central Texas areas we already work in — downtown, East Austin, Westlake, Lakeway, Round Rock, Pflugerville and Dripping Springs.
Fully insured, work performed by licensed subcontractors, and one owner accountable from the first walkthrough onward — so when a turn goes sideways at 2pm the escalation does not have to travel through an account manager who has never seen the unit.
Turnover work sits inside our wider Austin commercial cleaning service. If you manage a portfolio rather than a single unit, start at property management cleaning. For recurring coverage on a schedule rather than per-occupant resets, see janitorial services. For a unit coming out of a build or renovation, see post-construction cleaning, and for hotel, venue and guest-facing work see hospitality cleaning.
Timing and depth. A short-term rental turnover happens between guests, often inside a few hours on the same day, and its job is to reset the unit to the exact condition the listing photos promise. A make-ready happens between tenants, usually with days rather than hours, and it takes an emptied unit back to lease-ready: appliances, insides of cabinets and drawers, baseboards, marks on walls, everything the last occupant left behind.
Same-day turns are normal for short-term rentals and we schedule to the checkout and check-in window rather than to a vague morning slot. What we will not do is promise a same-day turn on a unit we have not seen, on a day with no confirmed access. Tell us the window and the unit and we will tell you honestly whether it fits.
Yes, and we run them the way property managers run them: assigned per property, with a task list and expected duration, and photographed at completion. If your portfolio is managed in turnover software such as Breezeway, we work inside it rather than beside it, so the record of the clean lives where your other vendors' records already live.
Every turn. Photos at completion are the whole point of turnover work, because the owner is usually not there and the next guest arrives before anyone else looks at the room. Photographs are also how a damage claim survives: a stain found and photographed at 11am is a documented incident, and the same stain reported by a guest at 7pm is an argument.
You hear about it that day, with photos, before the next occupant walks in. We have found pet soiling on furniture, a comforter that could not be reused, a mattress protector that was gone and a washer and dryer that both simply did not run. None of that is cleaning work, and all of it changes what the next guest experiences, so it gets reported rather than quietly cleaned around.
We launder and stage what is stocked at the property, and we will tell you plainly when the stock is wrong: fitted sheets that do not fit the beds, or a single comforter with no spare when the one on the bed cannot be reused. We do not warehouse replacement linens for your units. Deciding who holds the spares is a stocking decision worth making before a turn, not during one.
As a flat per-turn rate, set by bedroom and bath count, unit size and the condition we can expect. That is why an incorrect bedroom count in a property profile matters: it is not an admin detail, it sets the scope, the time on site and the rate. We scope the unit, quote the number in writing, and hold it.
No, and we will not pretend one number covers both. The $130 to $350 per-visit band published on our commercial cleaning cost page is for commercial spaces on a route, such as an office or a retail floor. A residential turnover is a different job with different linens, different fixtures and a different clock, and it is quoted per unit.
Some of it, and this is the part most cleaning-only vendors cannot offer. Bailey & Bear runs a construction side under the same owner, so drywall damage, paint touch-up and punch items found during a make-ready can be scoped and fixed rather than only photographed and handed back to you to chase. Appliance repair is not ours; that gets reported.
Yes. Portfolios, multifamily and scattered short-term rentals run on one plan with one point of contact instead of a different vendor at every address. If the portfolio is the reason you are here, the property management cleaning page is the better starting point.
Austin and the surrounding Central Texas areas we already work in, including downtown, East Austin, Westlake, Lakeway, Round Rock, Pflugerville and Dripping Springs. Access is the practical limit, not the map: gate codes, lockbox or smart-lock detail, parking and a named contact for anything we cannot get into.
Use the main contact form to request cleaning support and include timing, access notes, and scope.
Tell us what needs to be cleaned, reset, turned over, or covered.