End of Tenancy Cleaning in Geneva

What is an état des lieux and why does it matter so much?

The état des lieux de sortie is the handover inspection. A representative of the managing agent — the régie — walks through the flat with you, compares its condition against the report made when you moved in, and records any findings in a document called the procès-verbal. That document then governs whether your deposit is released quickly or held for months.

The key point is that this is not a cleanliness inspection in the ordinary sense. The inspector is looking for the legal distinction between wear resulting from normal use, which cannot be charged to you, and damage or poor upkeep, which can. This is why a flat that looks clean can still be refused, and equally why paint that has dulled over eight years of occupancy is not your problem.

It also means the inspection is methodical rather than impressionistic. The inspector opens cupboard doors, removes appliance filters, looks behind radiators and up at the tops of wardrobes, and runs a finger along window rebates. Nothing on that list is visible while standing in the middle of a room, which is exactly why those points are the ones that cost deposits.

What does the managing agent actually check?

The list is consistent across Geneva agencies and it is short enough to be worth knowing before you decide whether to do the work yourself.

In the kitchen: the inner glass of the oven door, the dishwasher filter unscrewed from the bottom of the tub, the extractor hood filter and grille, the seals around the hob, the fridge interior and its door seals, the tops of tall units, the inside of every cupboard, and the base of the sink mixer where limescale collects. In the bathroom: taps descaled including the back of the spouts, the shower screen and its lower rail, silicone seals, the ventilation grille removed and cleaned, and behind the WC pan.

Throughout: window rebates — the groove the casement closes into, checked first and almost always — panes inside and out, frames and sills, roller shutter boxes, skirting boards including behind doors, radiators front and back, switch plates, and floors treated with the right product for their covering. Then the annexes listed in the lease: cellar, attic space, parking space, bike store. Finally every key, including copies made during the tenancy — a missing key can mean paying for a replacement lock cylinder.

When should the cleaning be done relative to the inspection?

The day before the inspection, or the day before that. Not a week earlier. An empty flat stays immaculate for around twenty-four hours: dust settles, and a flat cleaned two weeks ahead will be inspected in a state that is no longer the one you paid for.

There is a second reason, which matters if you want a commitment to mean anything. Our undertaking to come back and correct a cleanliness point only makes sense if the flat has stayed empty and untouched since we left it. A flat cleaned early and then used for a few more nights is no longer verifiable, and any contractor's guarantee becomes unenforceable in practice.

This creates the most common scheduling problem in Geneva: handover appointments are frequently set for a Monday morning, which means the cleaning has to happen on the Sunday. We work seven days a week at the same rate for exactly this reason. A contractor who works five days cannot serve a Monday handover, and cannot correct a reservation before a Friday handback either.

How do I get my rental deposit back?

Your deposit — the garantie de loyer — sits in a blocked account opened in your own name at a Swiss bank. This is a genuinely important detail that many tenants get wrong: the managing agent cannot simply take money from it. The bank releases funds only against an agreement signed by both parties, or a court decision.

That changes your position entirely. You are not asking for money back; you hold a right over an account in your name, and it is for the other side to establish their claim. It also explains why you should never sign a statement of account you disagree with in order to speed things up — your signature is precisely what is needed to release funds against you, and it is almost impossible to withdraw afterwards.

In practice everything turns on the procès-verbal. With no reservations recorded, release is a formality. With reservations, they set the terms of the discussion for the following months. Three habits protect you: photograph the empty, clean flat with dates, ask for a copy of the signed report on the spot rather than by post, and send a written release request once matters are settled — files sometimes stay open simply because nobody closed them.

What is included, and what is charged extra?

Included without supplement: windows with frames, rebates and sills, inside and out where reachable without a cherry picker; the oven including the inner door glass; the extractor hood; hobs; the fridge and dishwasher interiors; all sanitary ware descaled; floors, skirting boards, doors, handles and switch plates; radiators; ventilation grilles; the inside of cupboards and the tops of wardrobes; and the annexes listed in your lease.

Charged extra, and only if requested: defrosting the fridge, which requires switching the appliance off several hours in advance — if you do it the day before, cleaning the interior is included and there is nothing to add; replacement hood filters, which are a consumable; work at height requiring a cherry picker; and surface treatments such as re-oiling parquet or crystallising marble, which are restoration rather than cleaning.

Not cleaning at all, at any price: repairs. Scratched parquet, cracked tiles, a drilled wall, a cracked pane, a broken blind, a silicone seal where mould has penetrated the material. These stay on the report regardless of how clean the flat is, and a deduction on those grounds has nothing to do with cleanliness. We flag them before starting so you can decide, rather than after.

What exactly does your guarantee cover?

It covers the cleanliness points that fell within our work. If the managing agent records a reservation on an item we handled or that appeared on the quote, we return and correct it at no charge, within the useful deadline before the flat is definitively handed back.

It deliberately does not cover the agent's decision. A guarantee promising that the flat will be accepted would be promising a third party's judgement over a scope we do not control: the procès-verbal covers damage, wear, missing items and unpaid rent as well as cleanliness. Any company advertising acceptance as guaranteed will, when the moment comes, explain that your particular case was not covered. We would rather commit to less and mean it.

Two practical conditions apply, and they are not escape clauses but the situations in which it becomes impossible to establish what was ours. The flat must be empty when we work — you cannot clean inside a full cupboard, and areas covered by belongings fall outside the scope. And nothing may be moved back in afterwards. Both conditions, and the exclusions above, are written on the quote.

Do I need a company, or can I do it myself?

Nothing obliges you to use a company. The obligation concerns the state in which the flat is handed back, normal wear aside, not who cleans it. For a well-kept studio or 2.5-room flat with windows that open fully inwards, doing it yourself is entirely reasonable — budget 10 to 17 hours for one person, plus the cost of products and equipment if you are starting from nothing.

The calculation changes in four situations. When the windows do not open far enough to reach the outside safely, which is common in older central buildings and is a question of risk rather than skill. When the flat has not been kept up for a long time, because old limescale and baked-on grease need products and method rather than effort. From 4 rooms up, where two days becomes three or four in the middle of moving week. And when you are leaving Geneva before the inspection, because you will have no way to correct a reservation.

That last case is the one worth thinking about hardest. The real financial risk is not the price of the cleaning; it is that a reservation leads the agent to instruct their own company at your expense, and that invoice almost always exceeds a clean booked in advance. If you have already returned the keys or left the country, you have no option but to pay whatever is quoted.

What if you also need the flat emptied or moved?

Handing back a Geneva flat is really three jobs in sequence: clear what is not coming with you, move what is, then clean an empty flat. The order is not negotiable, because cleaning assumes an empty flat and removal assumes the sorting is done.

We do all three, and that matters more for coordination than for price. With three separate contractors you pay three call-out charges for the same address and you carry the scheduling risk yourself: if the removal finishes at 20:00, the 08:00 clean the next morning starts in a flat that still has boxes in it, and neither contractor is at fault. You also inherit the grey areas — is a wardrobe left behind clearance or removal, is a cluttered cellar cleaning?

Clearance is priced by the volume to be removed and by access, never by the floor area of the flat, so it is quoted separately from the cleaning. If you only need the cleaning, that is entirely normal and it is the same price — the point of grouping is a single call-out and one written scope, not a conditional discount.

What changes the amount

Windows, frames and rebates are included in the end-of-tenancy package, inside and out, at no extra charge — it is the most frequent reservation item and taking it out of the package would make no sense. Defrosting the fridge is the only task we ask you to start the day before.

What the inspector opens, moves and looks at

The inspector opens, moves things, and looks behind and underneath. That is why a flat that «looks clean» can still be refused: the agent is not judging an overall impression, they are comparing point by point against the entry inspection report.

Included in the package, or a separate service

We would rather state a clear limit before the job than discover it on site. Anything marked «separate service» is priced in your quote with the proposed solution — you decide from there.