HOA Cleaning Services: Common Areas, Contracts, Costs

HOA cleaning services for condo common areas: what is included, how often, contract terms, additional insured and comparing bids. Text for a written price.

By Yuri and Tatiana, owners of Shining Cleanse LLC, a family cleaning company based in Everett, WA and licensed in 10 cities across Snohomish and King County.

HOA cleaning services clean the shared parts of a condo or townhome community on a schedule: lobby, mailroom, corridors, elevators, stairwells, laundry rooms, the clubhouse, the fitness room and shared restrooms. With us, common-area cleaning starts at $297 per building visit, weekly or every two weeks, and corridor carpet is $0.25 per sq ft.

This guide is written for the board member or manager who has to bring a cleaning proposal to a vote. It covers what the scope should include, how often to clean, what the contract should say and how to compare bids so the board is comparing the same thing.

What do HOA common area cleaning services include?

Our common-area service for property managers and associations covers:

What we do not do: pressure washing, exterior windows above the ground floor, landscaping, snow, repairs, painting or biohazard cleanup. If your current vendor bundles some of those, split them out in the scope so the bids line up.

Corridor and clubhouse carpet can be cleaned on a schedule at $0.25 per sq ft with a $260 minimum. We clean it with hot water extraction, which takes 4–8 hours to dry, so we schedule hallways for a quiet day and set up air movers to speed drying. All our commercial rates are on the pricing page. Carpet details are in our guide to commercial carpet cleaning cost per square foot.

How often should condo hallways and lobbies be cleaned?

Traffic decides it, not the calendar. A few questions that help a board decide:

• How many units share each entrance and elevator?
• Do residents bring dogs through the lobby?
• Is there a single main door that collects all the rain and grit in winter?
• Is the clubhouse rented out for events?

A busy building with one main entrance usually needs the lobby, mailroom and elevator weekly. A smaller building, or a townhome community where the clubhouse is the only shared indoor space, often does fine every two weeks. In the Northwest the wet months change things: entry mats and lobby floors that look fine in August can need weekly attention from November to March. Some associations run weekly in winter and every two weeks in summer, and the contract can say so.

Before

After

What should an HOA cleaning contract say?

A short contract with a clear scope sheet beats a long one with vague words. Ours, and the ones we would want to see from any vendor, cover:

1. The scope by area, with what happens every visit and what rotates (for example, baseboards monthly).
2. The frequency and the day or time window, including what happens on holidays.
3. The price per visit, and how and when it can change. A price change should come in writing with notice, never on an invoice.
4. Who supplies paper, soap and liners. We restock from the association’s supplies and say when stock runs low.
5. Access: keys, fobs and alarm procedures, and who holds them.
6. Insurance: the certificate, limits and additional insured wording.
7. How problems are reported, and how fast they are fixed. Our rule: tell us and we come back to fix anything in our scope at no charge.
8. Extras: anything outside the scope needs a written yes before work starts.
9. Billing and terms: we invoice monthly, Net 15.
10. Ending the agreement: the notice period. We use 30 days.

If the association already works through a management company, the manager usually holds the vendor paperwork. The board still votes on the scope and the budget line.

Should the HOA be named as additional insured?

It is a common request, and a reasonable one. Being named as additional insured on the cleaner’s general liability policy means the association has a direct path to that policy if the cleaner’s work damages common property or someone is hurt because of it.

Ask your association’s insurance agent or manager what the governing documents and your master policy expect: the limits, the exact name of the association and the management company, and whether the board wants a copy each year. Then check the certificate: named insured, policy dates and limits. We carry $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate in general liability, and we send a Certificate of Insurance with the association named as additional insured where required.

How do boards compare cleaning bids?

Give every bidder the same one-page scope sheet: areas, frequency, square footage of carpet, number of restrooms, supply arrangement. Without it, a low bid often turns out to be a smaller scope.

Then turn every bid into the same annual number. Per-visit prices hide the real budget line:

Add carpet, for example a quarterly corridor clean, as its own line. Routine cleaning is an operating expense; carpet replacement is the kind of item associations usually plan for separately, so check how your budget and reserve study treat it.

A few more things to ask every bidder:

• Who will actually do the work, and will it be the same people each visit?
• Are they licensed in your city? You can check any company’s UBI on the Department of Revenue lookup.
• What does the bid leave out?
• What happens when a visit is missed?

The cheapest bid can be the right one if the scope matches. Compare like with like and the vote gets much simpler. Our article on commercial cleaning cost in the Seattle area shows how other facility types are priced, and apartment turnover cleaning for property managers covers vacant-unit work if your manager handles that too.

Our job

FAQ

Do you clean HOA common areas in Mill Creek?

Yes. We are licensed in Mill Creek and nine other cities in Snohomish and King County. We send a COI and our license details with the proposal so the board can check them before the vote.

Can you clean individual units for owners too?

Yes, as a separate residential booking for the owner, priced by work hours. It is not part of the association contract, and the owner pays us directly.

Can a board member see what was done each visit?

Yes. We work from a written checklist, and we can text or email a short note with photos after each visit to the manager or a named board contact. One contact works better than five.

How many buildings do you take on?

We are two owners and do every visit ourselves, so we take on the number of buildings we can clean well and on time. Send us the building list and frequency, and we confirm in writing what we can take.

Get a written price for your association

Text 2–4 photos of the space to (425) 539-5492 or request a written quote: the lobby, a corridor, the laundry room and any shared restroom help most. We reply with a written price the same business day (Mon–Fri 9am–7pm, Sat 9am–5pm). For a larger property, send more photos and a floor plan; we ask any questions by text and confirm the price in writing.

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