What you’ll actually pay a professional to turn over a short-stay property in New Zealand.
Prices by property size
| Property | Per changeover |
|---|---|
| Studio | $50 – $80 |
| 1 bedroom | $55 – $95 |
| 2 bedroom | $70 – $120 |
| 3 bedroom | $110 – $180 |
| 4 bedroom | $150 – $240 |
| 5+ bedroom / large holiday home | Priced per property |
Add-ons
| Service | Cost |
|---|---|
| Linen service (per bed) | $12 – $25 |
| Towel service (per set) | $6 – $12 |
| Same-day turnover premium | +20 – 30% |
| Deep clean after vacancy | $180 – $400 |
| Outdoor areas / BBQ | $25 – $60 |
| Spa or pool check | $30 – $70 |
| Pet clean surcharge | $30 – $60 |
| Consumables restock | At cost, or $8 – $15 |
What drives the price
Bedrooms, not floor area. Bed-making is 8–12 minutes per bed done properly. A four-bedroom house is nearly an hour of bed-making before anything else.
Bathrooms. Same as commercial, disproportionately slow.
Location type. Coastal properties genuinely cost more. Sand, salt residue, damp, outdoor furniture and decks add real time. A Raglan or Whitianga property is legitimately 20–30% more than an equivalent Hamilton apartment.
Travel. In holiday areas, properties are spread out. A cleaner driving 30 minutes each way has to recover that somewhere.
Turnover window. Same-day changeovers remove all scheduling slack. One late checkout cascades through the whole day, which is why the premium exists.
Season. December to February in holiday markets is when hosts need cleaners most and cleaners have least availability. Seasonal pricing is normal. It should be disclosed up front, not sprung on you in January.
What should be included
At the price above, expect:
- Full changeover clean, all rooms
- Beds stripped and remade
- Bathrooms fully cleaned and restocked
- Kitchen cleaned including inside the fridge and microwave
- Floors vacuumed and mopped
- Rubbish and recycling removed
- Basic amenity restock
- Damage and maintenance issues reported
Ask specifically whether photos are included. They should be. Timestamped photos of the finished property before check-in are the single most useful thing a short-stay cleaner can provide, and it costs them 90 seconds.
What to check before booking
- Are they insured? Public liability, and evidence of it.
- What happens if they can’t attend? Cover arrangements matter more here than in any other cleaning context, a missed changeover is a cancelled booking.
- How do they handle late checkouts? Get the policy and any charge in writing.
- Do they work from your booking calendar, or do you have to book each clean?
- Linen, theirs or yours? And who launders.
- Do they photograph the finished property?
- How do they report damage? And how fast?
Cheap is expensive here
More so than in commercial cleaning, because the failure mode is a public review rather than a private complaint.
A $20 saving per changeover is $800 a year on a busy property. One two-star review mentioning cleanliness suppresses your ranking for months and costs considerably more than that.
What we charge
We price per property after seeing it, because a tidy two-bed apartment and a beachfront bach that takes sand through every room are not the same job. Photos before check-in are standard, not an extra, see Airbnb cleaning for what’s included.