Cleaning goes last, and it is not close
Paint, then repairs, then flooring, then cleaning. Every time somebody cleans before the touch-up paint, they buy a second clean, and the second clean is at full price because it is a full clean.
The temptation is understandable — the unit is empty on Monday, the painter cannot come until Thursday, and cleaning is available now. Resist it. An empty dirty unit costs the same as an empty clean unit, and only one of them has to be paid for twice.
What photo-ready actually means
The standard is not "clean", it is "a prospective tenant would not notice anything". They are different, and the gap between them is where make-ready cleaning either works or does not.
- Inside and outside every appliance, including under the fridge and the oven drawer.
- Inside every cabinet and drawer, and the tops of the upper cabinets.
- Window tracks, sills and blinds — the single most photographed thing that nobody cleans.
- Grout, not just tile. And the caulk line, which is what makes a bathroom read as old.
- Vents, light fixtures and ceiling fan blades.
- The balcony or patio, which listings photograph and cleaners routinely treat as outside.
Give the cleaner your leasing calendar, not a phone call
Turnovers cluster at month end. Everybody's lease ends on the 31st and everybody wants their unit cleaned on the 1st, which means the first week of a month is fully booked and the third week is quiet.
A property manager who shares next month's move-outs gets slots held. One who calls on the day competes with everybody else who called on the day. This is the single largest lever on turnaround time and it costs nothing.
Photograph the unit before the clean
Not to catch anyone out — to settle the security-deposit question before it becomes a dispute. A before-and-after pair, timestamped, resolves nearly every argument about whether damage was cleaning or wear, and it takes two minutes on a phone.
It also tells you whether the charge should be a standard turn or a deep clean, which is the other thing that gets argued about after the fact.