Checkout is the one part of renting that nobody rehearses. You move in, you live somewhere for a year, and then in the space of a fortnight you have to hand it back to a standard that was written down on day one and read by almost nobody. This is what that standard actually is, what it is not, and how to work through the house so the money comes back.
General information, not legal advice — check the terms of your own agreement, because tenancies differ.
The standard you are actually held to
Not “professionally cleaned”. The test is that the property comes back in the condition it was in at the start of the tenancy, allowing for fair wear and tear. That is the whole thing.
Under the Tenant Fees Act 2019, a tenant cannot be required to pay for or to use a professional cleaner. If a tenancy tries to make professional cleaning a condition, that requirement does not stand. What a landlord can do, if the property genuinely comes back worse than it started, is claim evidenced and reasonable cleaning costs through the tenancy deposit process.
The practical consequence is the useful bit: you are not being marked against a show home. You are being marked against a photograph of the same rooms twelve months ago. A house that was tired when you got it does not have to be immaculate when you leave it — it has to be as clean as it was, minus a year of ordinary living.
Why the inventory decides everything
The inventory is the record of the property’s condition and contents at move-in, and it is what any deposit dispute is judged against. If you photographed every room on the day you moved in, including the marks that were already there, and emailed the photographs to yourselves so there is a timestamped copy, you have already won most of the arguments you might have had.
If you did not, do the mirror image now. On the day you hand back, after the cleaning is finished, photograph every room, every appliance, the inside of the oven and fridge, the meter readings if you have your own, and anything you think might be queried. Date-stamped evidence taken by you is worth more at checkout than any amount of confident recollection in September.
One more thing worth doing before you start cleaning: report anything still broken. A repair that was never fixed is not a cleaning issue, and it should be on record as a repair rather than surfacing as a deduction. If you rent from us, that goes through report a repair and we respond within 24 hours — even in your last fortnight, which is exactly when houses stop bothering.
Start two weeks out, not the night before
Almost every deduction we have ever seen traces back to a house that started at 9pm the evening before. Cleaning a shared house is not a long job; it is a job with drying time, bin collections and a tip run inside it, and those cannot be compressed.
- Two weeks out. Declutter. Everything you are not taking goes to a charity shop or the tip now, while you still have a car available and someone to help. Report outstanding repairs. Agree who is doing what, in writing, in the house chat.
- One week out. Deep-clean anything you have stopped using — spare rooms, the second bathroom, the oven. Defrost the freezer, because it takes far longer than anyone believes. Check when the bins actually go out.
- Last 48 hours. Bedrooms as people leave them, floors last, and the communal areas after everyone has finished carrying boxes through them.
- Handover day. Bins out and empty, windows shut, keys together, final photographs taken, meter readings noted if they apply to you.
The sequencing matters more than the effort. Nothing gets cleaned twice if the last person out is the one holding the mop.
Room by room: what gets checked
| Area | What is looked at | The bit houses forget |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen | Oven, hob, grill pan, extractor, fridge and freezer emptied and defrosted, all cupboards emptied and wiped inside, sink and plughole, worktops, floor. | Under and behind the fridge and cooker, the extractor filter, and the cupboard everyone forgot was theirs. |
| Bathroom | Limescale on taps and screens, grout, shower tray, toilet, basin, mirror, floor. | Hair in the plughole, the extractor fan grille, and the back of the toilet. |
| Bedrooms | Mattress, bed frame, wardrobe and drawers emptied, desk, window sills, floor, walls. | Under the bed, blu-tack shadows on the wall, and the back of the door. |
| Living areas | Sofa and cushions, carpets, skirting boards, light fittings, windows. | Down the sides of the sofa, and whatever the last house party left on the ceiling. |
| Hall and stairs | Floor, banister, walls, meter cupboard, the space by the front door. | Nobody’s room, so nobody’s job — put a name against it explicitly. |
| Outside | Yard or garden clear, bins emptied and put out, nothing left in a shed or cellar. | The bike nobody has ridden since November, and bagged rubbish left beside a full bin. |
Two practical notes. Ovens are the single most common deduction in student houses, and an oven cleaned in twenty-minute bursts over three days is far less grim than an oven attacked at midnight. And rubbish left behind is charged as removal, not as cleaning — a mattress, a broken chair or six bin bags in the yard cost real money for no reason at all.
Fair wear and tear versus damage
This is where most disagreements live, and the distinction is more generous than students expect. Fair wear and tear is the deterioration you would expect from normal use over the length of the tenancy, given the age and condition of the thing when you got it. Damage is something beyond that.
- Carpet worn along the route everyone walks is wear. A burn or a large stain is damage.
- Faint marks and blu-tack shadows on a wall are wear. A hole, a scrawl or a wall repainted a colour nobody agreed to is damage.
- Limescale that builds up over a year is cleaning. A cracked basin is damage.
- A mattress that has been slept on is wear. A mattress that has been slept on without a protector and shows it is a conversation.
Where a deduction is claimed, it has to be evidenced and reasonable, and it should account for the age and condition of the item rather than replacing a six-year-old carpet with a new one at your expense. If the sums look like an upgrade rather than a repair, that is a fair thing to question.
The joint tenancy problem, and how to head it off
In most shared student houses everyone signs one agreement, which means the house is treated as one tenant. There is no version of checkout where one person’s spotless room protects them from the state of the kitchen. That is worth saying out loud in March rather than discovering in July.
What works: agree the split in writing between yourselves, well before anyone starts packing. Communal areas get named owners, not goodwill. Whoever is leaving first does their share before they go rather than promising to come back. And if someone genuinely will not do their part, sort it inside the house early — it is far easier to resolve between six people in June than through a deposit claim in August. If your parents or guarantors are asking how any of this works, our guide for parents and guarantors sets out the deposit side in plain terms.
If money is deducted and you disagree
Your deposit must be held in a government-approved scheme, and a landlord or agent must protect it within 30 days of receiving it. Each scheme provides a free, independent dispute resolution service, so if you and the landlord disagree about deductions, a third party can decide instead of the money simply being kept. Source: GOV.UK. Again, general information rather than legal advice.
What actually wins a dispute is evidence, and it is nearly always the same three things: the inventory, dated photographs from move-in and from checkout, and a written trail of anything you reported during the tenancy. Reply in writing, keep it factual, and put your photographs in front of the adjudicator. If you want a second opinion from someone with no interest in the outcome, your students’ union runs a free and confidential advice service that covers exactly this.
Do not, incidentally, let a small deduction go unchallenged simply because arguing feels awkward. The dispute service costs you nothing to use and the deposit is your money until someone evidences otherwise.
How this works at our houses
We would rather tell you what we check than surprise you with it, so ask us for the checkout standard in writing whenever you like — including in March, when there is still time to do something about it.
- Every tenant deposit is protected through the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, and the scheme details come with your tenancy paperwork.
- Our security deposit is around one week’s rent on most properties, so the sum at stake at checkout is smaller than the five-week deposits students are often braced for.
- Repairs are answered within 24 hours, so the honest expectation is that a house hands back with nothing outstanding on it.
- Every home we let is bills included with the package confirmed in writing, so there are no final meter readings to chase or accounts to close on your way out — one less thing in a fortnight that has plenty in it already.
- Tenancies typically run 48 to 50 weeks with no summer retainer, so checkout happens once, at the end, rather than as a mid-year move-out and move-back.
More of the practical questions we get asked at this end of the year are answered on our FAQ page.
Next step
If you are in your last few weeks with us and want to know exactly what will be looked at, just ask — we will send it in writing and answer anything you are unsure about. If something is still broken, report it now rather than cleaning around it. And if you are moving on to your next Lancaster house, tell us what you need for 2026/27 and we will tell you what is genuinely available. Get in touch, call 01524 888 151, or call into the office at 42 North Road, LA1 1NY.
