Guide
Vacate Clean Checklist for Melbourne Properties
A vacate clean checklist for anyone moving out of a Victorian rental or handing back a commercial tenancy. It lists what to clean in every room, explains the standard Victorian law actually asks for, and gives a countdown so the clean isn't left to the last night. Renters, property managers and business tenants can print it, work through it, or use it to check a cleaner's quote. More practical guides are in the Cleaningia blog.
Last checked 27 September 2026
The checklist
What should a vacate clean checklist cover?
A vacate clean checklist should cover every room and fitting the condition report mentions: kitchen appliances, wet areas, cupboards, walls and skirting, floors, windows and coverings, vents and fans, and the outside areas you were responsible for. The goal is a home that matches its ingoing report, give or take fair wear and tear.
Kitchen
- Oven interior, racks, trays and door glass degreased
- Cooktop and knobs cleaned, burners lifted
- Rangehood canopy wiped, filters soaked and rinsed
- Dishwasher filter emptied, seals wiped
- Every cupboard and drawer emptied and wiped out
- Sink, drain and tapware descaled
- Splashback and grout lines free of grease
Bathrooms, toilet and laundry
- Shower glass free of soap scum and water marks
- Tiles and grout scrubbed, silicone free of mould
- Bath, basin and vanity inside and out
- Toilet bowl, seat hinges and the base behind the pan
- Mirrors and cabinet shelves wiped
- Exhaust fan cover dusted
- Laundry tub, cabinet and dryer lint area
Living areas and bedrooms
- Built-in robes emptied, shelves and tracks wiped
- Cobwebs removed from ceilings and corners
- Light switches and power points wiped
- Heating and cooling vents dusted
- Skirting boards and door frames dusted
- Carpets vacuumed right to the edges
- Hard floors mopped, sticky spots gone
Windows and coverings
- Inside glass cleaned without smears
- Outside of ground floor windows cleaned
- Sills and tracks vacuumed and wiped
- Fly screens dusted
- Blinds wiped slat by slat
- Curtains free of dust and marks
Walls and doors
- Scuffs and fingerprints spot-cleaned, gently
- Blu Tack and tape removed carefully
- Doors and handles wiped both sides
- Marks around light switches removed
- Any hooks you added dealt with as agreed
Outside and garage
- Balcony or courtyard swept and washed
- Garden beds weeded, lawn mowed if it is yours to do
- Garage or shed emptied and swept
- Bins emptied and rinsed
- All rubbish and belongings removed
The standard
What standard does Victorian law actually ask for?
Victorian renters are expected to return the home reasonably clean, matching how it looked when the lease began, with allowance for fair wear and tear. For rental agreements made from 29 March 2021, a rental provider can only require professional cleaning in limited situations set out in the regulations.
Consumer Affairs Victoria's Director's Guidelines on cleanliness (a Word document) set out what "reasonably clean" looks like in practice. The examples closely match the checklist above: appliances free of grease, wet areas free of soap scum and mould caused by the renter, cupboards emptied, walls and skirting reasonably free of scuffs and dust, and windows, including the outside of ground floor windows, free of smears.
On professional cleaning, the regulations set two exceptions. A rental provider can insist on it if the home had a professional clean immediately before your tenancy began and you were informed of that, or if it is the only way to return the property to its starting state, fair wear and tear aside. So check your agreement date and what you were told at the start.
The guidelines also note that cleaning at heights is often maintenance, which falls to the rental provider, and that renters aren't expected to reach ceiling fans where it would be dangerous. That is worth knowing before you climb a ladder on moving day.
A final point on REIWA checklists, which come up often in searches: they are written by the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia for WA rentals. In Victoria, the standard comes from the Residential Tenancies Act, the regulations and your own condition report, so use those as the reference.
Inspection
What do agents check first at the final inspection?
Agents start with the ingoing condition report and its photos and compare each room against them, usually beginning with the kitchen and bathrooms because grease and soap scum are the easiest problems to see. The best defence is your own set of photos, taken from the same angles, after the clean.
Before you start cleaning, open the condition report and look at the photos. Note anything that was already marked, stained or worn on the day you moved in. Those items don't need to look better than they did then, and knowing that saves hours spent scrubbing a stain that was never yours.
After the clean, walk the property with your phone and photograph each room from roughly the same spots as the ingoing photos, plus close-ups of the oven, shower, cupboards and window tracks. Date-stamped photos are the simplest evidence if a cleaning item is raised later. The condition reports page from Consumer Affairs Victoria sets out why that document counts for so much when the bond is settled.
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Two weeks out | Read the condition report, book any cleaner, arrange rubbish removal |
| One week out | Clean the oven and rangehood, deal with the garden, patch nothing without asking |
| Two days out | Pack and remove everything, then clean cupboards and robes |
| Last day | Wet areas, floors and windows last, then photos and keys |
Commercial tenancies
How is the checklist different for a commercial tenancy?
A commercial vacate is governed by the lease, not the residential rules. The make-good clause decides what has to be removed, repaired and cleaned, and it often goes further than a home, covering signage, fit-out items, carpets and the kitchenette. Read the clause first and build the checklist from it.
Read the clause
Some leases ask for the premises back "in good repair and clean", others list specific items such as carpet cleaning, repainting or removing partitions. The cleaning scope has to match those words, not a generic list.
Sequence the trades
Cleaning comes last. Partitions, cabling, signage and repairs make dust and mess, so the final clean is booked after they finish, with time left before the landlord's inspection.
Extra items
Sign adhesive on glass, kitchenette appliances and fridges, server or comms room floors, window blinds, and bathroom fixtures in shared tenancies all tend to be checked closely.
Hand back keys, access cards and remotes on the day with a signed record, and keep photos of every area. On a commercial lease, the landlord's agent may inspect with a copy of the original fit-out plans, so leave time to fix anything they find before the lease end date.
Doing it yourself
What order should you clean in, and what will you need?
Clean from the top of each room down and from the back of the property towards the front door, so dust falls onto areas you haven't done yet and you never walk across a finished floor. Start the slow soaking jobs, like the oven and rangehood filters, first, and leave floors until last.
A realistic order for a two-bedroom rental is: oven and filters soaking, then cupboards and robes once they are empty, then high dust and cobwebs, then bathrooms, then windows and tracks, then walls and switches, then floors on the way out. Emptying the place fully before you start makes everything faster, because you aren't cleaning around boxes.
Allow more time than you think. A thorough vacate clean of a small flat can easily fill a full day for one person, and an oven that hasn't been cleaned during the lease can take a couple of hours on its own. Splitting it across two days, with the oven and cupboards done early, takes the pressure off the last day.
Don't forget the things that aren't cleaning but still come up at inspection: all rubbish gone, including from the garage and garden, light globes working, and keys, remotes and swipe fobs gathered in one place.
Supplies worth having
- Microfibre cloths, plenty of them
- Bicarb soda and white vinegar
- A degreaser for the rangehood
- A squeegee for shower glass
- A vacuum with a crevice tool for tracks
- A step stool, used safely
Book
When is it worth paying for a vacate clean?
It is worth paying when the property is large, the oven and bathrooms need serious work, you are short on time, or the lease genuinely requires professional cleaning. For a small, well-kept flat, doing it yourself with this checklist is often enough. Either way, book early rather than the day before keys are due.
If you hire, send the cleaner the condition report and your inspection date, and ask whether they come back free of charge when the agent flags something they were meant to clean. A reliable company will.
Check the quote against this checklist. If the oven, window tracks, inside cupboards or wall spot-cleaning are missing, ask why before you agree.
For homes and commercial tenancies in Melbourne, our page on vacate cleaning in Melbourne explains how we clean to either the report or the lease's make-good terms, and what our free re-clean covers.
Or use the quote form to send the address, report and date, and a fixed price comes back.
Questions
Walls, carpets and ovens: what do people ask?
The three items that cause the most arguments.
Do I have to wash the walls?
Do I need to steam clean the carpets?
How clean does the oven need to be?
Moving out and short on time?
Send the condition report and your key date. We will clean to it and photograph the result.