The fee to hire a professional cleaning service can be calculated either by the hour or the total floor area. As a general guide, it is usually more cost effective to be charged by the hour for smaller square foot (e.g. one room apartment) and be charged by square foot or one fix price if the total floor area is bigger.
Most of the cleaning companies in Singapore calculate by using these 2 methods and these are some other factors that may affect the rate include:
- Cleaning frequency
- Location of the place
- Variety of surfaces to clean
- Speciality cleaning (high/external windows, furniture)
- Pets in the house
- Number of people required for cleaning
- Urgency of cleaning
As a buyer, you reserve the full rights to negotiate to reach a fair amount. However, it is advisable that you don’t take price as the only determining factor. You do want to make sure service is delivered as expected and not having cleaning contractors cut corners just to get your money. Do consider a large bulk of the cost goes to the cleaner, cleaning equipment and logistics arrangements like carpark fee or tolls. In a situation where an item is damaged as a result of the cleaning, a good portion of the fee goes to insurance to cover those losses. The last thing you want to avoid is to fork out extra to cover unexpected losses.
In Singapore, a reasonable rate that you can expect ranges from $18 per hour to $30 per hour, depending on all the factors mentioned above. The farther away you are from the city or neighbourhood centre, the higher the rate is; The more frequent you engage the cleaning service, the lower the rate is.