It's not hard to find a cleaning service. There are a lot of them out there. What's important is finding the right one for you and your home. Why is it hard to hire the right cleaning service? One of our own clients summed it up perfectly.
"...having a stranger come into your home is never easy, especially when they see it not at its best. They made me feel immediately at ease and it was a pleasure having them here."
There are three main business models in the cleaning services industry. Each service will give you a different kind of experience.
W-2 employer: The service hires and trains their own W-2 employees.
The service is a domestic referral agency which connects/matches you to independent cleaners and cleaning companies.
The service is a single person or team - like an independent contractor or domestic employee.
How Much Should House Cleaning Services Cost?
House cleaning service costs can vary depending on the type of company, the services that are needed and your location. House cleaning costs in the bay area are typically around $40-$50 per cleaner per hour for a reputable, high-quality company that hires W-2 employees. Similarly, an experienced independent contractor will typically charge $20-$50 per cleaner per hour. Read our article titled How To Hire The Right Cleaning Service for a more detailed look into the different types of cleaning services, their costs and what to consider before hiring each.
There is a direct connection between the quality of work and length of time to complete a job. Proper training and the right tools go a long way to improving efficiency, but time is always going to be the biggest factor when it comes to job cost. So, don't be fooled by a low-ball offer to clean your home. Many companies will price their estimates low to get their foot in the door. But you'll find that the end result is either going to cost you more or it won't be as thorough as you hoped it would be because the housekeepers are working quickly to meet an unreasonable deadline.
At Spring Into Clean, our goal is to provide you a realistic price. We also set flat-rate prices so that you can more easily budget. You don't have to worry about your housekeepers going over time and costing you more money. The price you see is the price you'll pay. It's part of our goal to be as open and honest as we can about what you can expect. We want all sides to be on the same page so that there are no surprises when a job is complete. We believe this approach leads to much happier clients, and a cleaning team that is less stressed out.
Use our Cleaning Calculator to see what a high quality house cleaning would cost for your home.
What is a W-2 housekeeping service?
These are W-2 employers who have proven experience, policies and procedures to ensure the quality of their employees and tools is the same on every cleaning. Prices are typically the highest of the services types you'll hire. Part of this is because these employers have to pay more in taxes and insurance in addition to their other business costs, such as the infrastructure to make communication, scheduling and billing very easy.
One of the biggest advantages to hiring a company is that they have employees instead of independent contractors. One of the biggest reasons this service is so popular is because it relieves you, the customer, from the responsibility of filing employer related taxes, paperwork, doing the interviews, and checking to make sure the worker is authorized to legally work in the US.