Most hosts know what they charge. Fewer know what it costs. Here’s the full picture.
The line items
For a two-bedroom property, per changeover:
| Item | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Professional clean | $70 – $120 |
| Linen laundering (2 beds) | $25 – $40 |
| Consumables | $8 – $15 |
| Rubbish / recycling | $0 – $5 |
| Total per changeover | $103 – $180 |
If you clean it yourself, replace the first line with your time, and price it honestly.
The cost hosts forget: their own time
A two-bedroom turnover is 2–3 hours of actual work, plus travel. Say 3.5 hours door to door.
At $30/hour, a conservative value for your own time, that’s $105. Which is roughly what a professional charges.
The self-clean saving is smaller than it looks, and it comes with a failure mode: you’re the single point of failure. Get sick, go away, have a busy week at work, and you have no cover.
Annual cost
For a property with 120 booked nights a year and an average 3-night stay, 40 changeovers:
| Approach | Annual cost |
|---|---|
| Professional, 2 bed | $4,100 – $7,200 |
| Self-clean (time at $30/hr) | $4,200 in your time |
| Self-clean (time not counted) | $1,300 in linen and consumables |
Costs that surprise people
Linen replacement. Towels and sheets have a working life of about 60–80 washes before they look tired. Budget replacement annually, not "when they wear out", guests judge greying towels as dirty, not old.
Deep cleans. Two to three times a year, and after any long vacancy. $180 – $400 each.
Damage. Not the dramatic kind, the accumulation. Chipped crockery, stained cushions, a broken blind. Budget 2–3% of revenue.
Peak season premiums. Cleaners charge more in December to February in holiday markets, because that’s when they’re scarcest. Plan for it.
Late checkout losses. A guest who leaves at 11:30 instead of 10 can cost you a rescheduled clean or a rushed one.
The economics of same-day turnovers
Same-day changeovers cost 20–30% more, and they’re worth it. A property that can accept back-to-back bookings has meaningfully higher occupancy than one that needs a buffer day.
Do the arithmetic on your own listing: if a buffer day costs you 15 nights a year at $180, that’s $2,700 of revenue to protect against maybe $600 of same-day premiums.
Where the cost is worth paying
Linen service. The thing that makes same-day turnovers possible at all.
Documented cleans. A cleaner who photographs the finished property saves you the drive over, and gives you the evidence for damage claims. That evidence is worth more than it costs the first time you need it.
Consistency. The expensive failure isn’t a $40 price difference, it’s one bad review, which suppresses your ranking for months.