How do you charge on residential first cleans versus recurring cleans? Say you have a home with windows that haven’t been cleaned in 5 years. I am assuming you would charge a lot more for the first clean than for follow up cleans (especially if you do the dentist close and have that home on a six month rotation).
Sometimes there is no difference. The windows may be a bit more dirty and I don’t charge any extra figuring I’ll make it up in the long run. Other times the windows are just fucking nasty and need a higher price on initial clean. Then I let the customer know that the price will be less going onward.
Matthew has a good policy. For me, I assume that most of the customer’s windows will require scrubbing with a walnut pad and will have a little bit of sap, fungus, maybe even a few paint drips, so I bake it into the price. Where I live, after six months a window will still look mostly clean but there will almost certainly be at least one spot that requires extra attention for one reason or another. At that point (for me at least, I’m slow) it usually takes me almost the same amount of time as the initial clean, even though the windows were dirtier prior to the initial cleaning. So, I find that I usually undercharge slightly for the initial clean but it’s about right for subsequent cleanings. Personally, I feel that going into a job having priced it with the idea that there may be some extra attention required by windows here and there makes it easier to slow down and do an amazing job, rather than rush because I charged too little and feel that I’m not breaking even. I think most homeowners paying hundreds of dollars to have their windows cleaned would rather pay just a little bit more to hire a window cleaner who will slow down and make sure everything looks amazing. But every market is going to be different.
Discounts are overrated in 2024, just charge a premium for every clean.
If you’re not sitting around $150-200/hour what’s the point in residential cleaning?
I’m in New England, about 40 minutes from Boston…Central Mass.
Other than my route day each week, I typically can do $900-$1300 residential windows per day.
Route days are $400-$600 depending on the rotation of work.
I’m lucky enough that I can use wfp on every clean, even first cleans on almost all of my work. As far as dirty windows go it’s just a lot of dirt, the occasional artillery spray and I’ll just scrape it off and keep goin with the waterfed.
I don’t do any CCU and stopped doing storm window cleaning as well.
Window cleaning minimum is $300 for me, power washing is $350.
I have heard you reference car mechanics before so I called around. Low end was $100/hr for an independent. High end was $150 -200 depending on the work. Others were $130-$160.
Solo, I also do house washes… in May I had a couple large commercial window cleanings. On average from April to November I dip from about 15k all the way up to 44k in November last year with Christmas lights