OC · StrataCommon property cleaning for Melbourne owners corporations and body corporates
OC · StrataCommon property cleaning for Melbourne owners corporations and body corporates
$Pricing
Strata cleaning prices come down to three things: how many hours your building needs per visit, how often we visit, and which periodic jobs you add. This page shows the hours we usually see by scheme size, walks through a 20-unit building line by line, and explains how committees fit the result into the owners corporation budget.
This page is for committee members preparing a budget, managers comparing contractors and owners who want to know whether their levies are being spent sensibly. Cleaning is usually one of the larger recurring lines in an owners corporation's annual budget, so it deserves a clear explanation rather than a figure plucked from the air.
We have chosen to show hours rather than a list of dollar prices. Hours are the part of a cleaning price that actually changes from building to building, and they are the part cheap quotes quietly cut. Once you know roughly how many hours your scheme needs, any quote can be checked: divide the price by the hours and see whether the numbers make sense. Every figure below is indicative and confirmed on a walk-through. For everything else about how we work across the city, start at strata cleaning Melbourne.
01The method
Strata cleaning prices are worked out by estimating the hours each visit needs, multiplying by the number of visits in a month, applying a labour rate that covers wages, supervision, insurance and equipment, then adding each periodic job at its own price. Materials, GST and any consumables sit on separate lines.
Consider two quotes for the same building. One shows eleven hours a month at a higher rate; the other shows seven hours at a lower rate and a smaller total. The second looks cheaper, but it buys a third less cleaning. Unless the hours are written down, a committee cannot see that difference, which is why every quote we send shows them.
Labour is the largest part of the price by a wide margin. The Cleaning Services Award fixes the minimum wage a cleaner can be paid in Victoria. Over and above that wage a contractor pays superannuation, WorkCover, public liability insurance, supervision, travel between sites, vehicles and equipment. A contractor who charges far less than the rest is either paying below the award, carrying no insurance, or planning fewer hours than the building needs.
That is also why we do not quote a flat price per lot or per square metre for routine cleaning. Those shortcuts work for a builder's clean of an empty site, not for a lived-in building where the same stairwell may need ten minutes on Tuesday and twenty after a removalist on Saturday.
Hours come from the walk-through. We count levels, stairwells, lifts, corridors and amenities, time the tasks on a typical checklist and add travel and reporting. For a new building the first month is monitored closely and the hours are adjusted if the estimate was wrong in either direction.
Pay rates: Fair Work Commission, Cleaning Services Award 2020.
02By scheme size
Small townhouse groups need an hour or two a fortnight or month. Walk-ups of around twenty lots need two to three hours a week. Mid-rise buildings with lifts need several hours on two or three days each week, while a tower needs a cleaner there most days. The table sets out the ranges we usually see.
| Scheme | Typical common areas | Hours per visit | Visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Townhouses, 3 to 9 lots | Driveway, letterboxes, bin bay, paths | 1 to 2 | Fortnightly or monthly |
| Walk-up, 10 to 20 lots | Entry, stairs, landings, laundry, bins | 2 to 3 | Weekly |
| Low-rise with lift, 20 to 50 lots | Lobby, lift, corridors, stairs, bin room | 3 to 5 | Once or twice a week |
| Mid-rise, 50 to 100 lots | Plus carpark, amenities, more lifts | 4 to 6 | Two or three a week |
| Tower, over 100 lots | Multiple lifts, podium, basements | 6 or more | Daily or near daily |
These bands follow building size loosely, not lot count exactly. A 40-lot building with one lift and tiled corridors can need less time than a 30-lot building with two stairwells, carpeted halls and a pool. That is why a figure per lot is a poor way to compare quotes, and why every price we give follows a walk-through.
Tier matters less than layout. Two tier 3 schemes, each with about thirty lots, can sit at opposite ends of the same band: one a compact block around a single lift, the other a spread of three walk-up buildings across a garden site with separate bin bays. The second needs more walking, more doors and more time.
Monthly hours are simple to work out from the table. Weekly visits happen about 4.3 times a month, so a building needing three hours a week uses roughly thirteen hours of routine cleaning each month.
03Worked example
A typical 20-unit, three-storey walk-up with one entry, two stairwells, a shared laundry and an open-air bin bay needs about two and a half hours of routine cleaning a week, plus gutters, external glass and a path wash during the year. The breakdown below shows where those hours go.
| Entry glass, doors, letterboxes and mats | 0.4 h |
|---|---|
| Two stairwells, three levels, handrails | 0.9 h |
| Landings and short corridors | 0.4 h |
| Shared laundry benches and floor | 0.2 h |
| Bin bay tidy and spills | 0.3 h |
| Photo report and defect notes | 0.2 h |
| Per visit | 2.4 h |
| Per month (x 4.3) | about 10.3 h |
The periodic jobs add roughly twenty to twenty-five hours of work across the year, which is small next to the routine clean but important for the building. Spread over twelve months, they usually add less to the monthly figure than committees expect.
Notice what is not in the list: a quick wipe of the lift, because there is no lift, and a carpark sweep, because parking is on open ground. Both would appear for a building that had them. The point of a line-by-line estimate is that the committee can see exactly what it is paying for and query any line that looks too generous or too thin.
If the same building had carpeted stairs and a lift, the routine hours would rise by around an hour a week, and a yearly carpet extraction would join the periodic list. A townhouse group of the same size, with no internal stairs at all, might need only a fortnightly visit.
04Add-on scopes
Each periodic scope has its own pricing unit: gutters per scheme clean, windows per elevation or metre of balustrade, carpets by area, bin rooms per wash and carparks per scrub. They appear as separate lines, booked into the month they happen, so the committee can add or drop any of them.
| Scope | Priced by | Usual frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Gutters and roof valleys | Per whole-scheme clean | Twice a year |
| External glass and balustrades | Per elevation, or per metre of balustrade | Quarterly or twice a year |
| Corridor and lobby carpets | Per square metre, lift cars per car | Once a year |
| Bin room hot wash | Per wash, chute flushing per visit | Monthly to weekly |
| Carpark scrub | Per scrub, by floor area and levels | Every three to six months |
| Pressure cleaning | Per job, by area and surface | Once or twice a year |
Add-ons do not have to start on day one. Many committees approve the routine clean first, see three months of reports, then add gutters and glass once they trust the contractor. The first quote simply lists the add-ons as options with their prices, so the later decision takes a single email rather than a new tender.
Each of these has its own page with the method and what drives its price: strata roof and gutter cleaning, strata window cleaning, strata carpet cleaning and bin room and waste area cleaning.
05What moves it
Stairwells and levels move the price most, followed by lifts, visit frequency, amenities, carpet, bin volume and access. Time of day matters too: the award loads wages for early, late and weekend shifts. Most of these are fixed by the building; frequency and timing are the ones a committee can change.
Each extra stairwell adds a full flight-by-flight clean to every visit.
The multiplier on everything else; the committee's biggest lever.
Cars, tracks and landings on each level, every visit.
Gyms, pools, laundries and rooftops each add their own checklist.
More bins and chutes mean longer washes and more doors.
Keys, fobs, parking and early or weekend starts.
Buildings also change over time. A new pet-friendly rule, a gym added on the rooftop or a spike in online deliveries all add work that did not exist when the original quote was written. We review hours against the photo reports each year and tell the committee if the scope has drifted, up or down.
Two changes committees often make after the first quarter are worth mentioning. The first is dropping a visit in winter for small schemes where traffic is lower. The second is moving the visit from early morning to mid-morning on weekdays, which avoids penalty rates without residents noticing any difference.
06Budget
Routine cleaning is a recurring cost in the annual budget, paid from the annual fees each lot contributes according to its lot liability. Periodic jobs listed in a maintenance plan can be paid from the maintenance fund. The committee estimates both before the AGM, when owners set the fees.
The committee or its delegate estimates administration, maintenance and insurance costs, including cleaning.
The proposed budget goes out with the meeting notice, and owners determine the annual fees.
Schemes with a maintenance plan pay listed items from that fund by ordinary resolution.
That timing is why quotes need to arrive early. Consumer Affairs Victoria explains that the proposed budget must be sent to owners with the notice of the annual general meeting, so a cleaning quote that turns up a week before the meeting is often too late to change the numbers. We time renewal quotes to reach the committee well before the budget is drafted, and we hold prices fixed for the contract term so there is no mid-year surprise.
Special fees are different. They cover extraordinary costs, such as an urgent repair, and are not meant for routine work. If a building has been neglected and needs a one-off deep clean before a regular contract starts, some committees fund that first clean separately so it does not distort the ongoing budget.
A flat monthly figure, with periodic jobs spread evenly across the year, is easier for many committees to budget than a lumpy one. Both add to the same annual total, and we can quote either way.
Sources: Consumer Affairs Victoria, owners corporation fees; maintenance fund. Checked September 2026.
07Traps
The common traps are missing insurance for work on common property, no photo evidence of visits, and a scope that quietly shrinks after the contract is signed. All three make a low price look attractive at the AGM and expensive by the end of the year.
If a resident slips on a wet floor, the owners corporation wants the cleaner's insurer involved, not its own.
Without dated photos, a missed week is invisible until a resident complains.
Fire stairs, lift tracks and bin rooms are the first tasks to disappear when hours are too tight.
A quote without hours per visit cannot be compared with anything, which is usually the point.
A low monthly price with gutters and glass quoted later, at whatever rate suits.
Multi-year contracts that renew automatically, with a steep exit fee.
Insurance is the trap with the biggest consequences. Common property is where residents and visitors walk every day, so a slip on a freshly mopped floor is a real risk. The owners corporation should hold the cleaner's current certificate of currency before work starts, and check the policy covers work on common property, not only in commercial premises.
A useful test at the committee table is to ask each contractor the same three questions in writing: how many hours per visit, who does the periodic jobs and at what price, and what happens if a visit is missed. A contractor who answers all three clearly is usually priced honestly, whatever the number.
None of this means the cheapest quote is always wrong. It means the cheapest quote should be able to answer the same questions as the others. For a longer checklist committees can use, see our guide what strata cleaning costs: a committee guide.
08Your figure
Give us the size of the building, how many storeys and lifts it has, where it is and which jobs you want on the quote. We walk the building, then send a fixed quote showing hours per visit, visit days, every periodic job with the month it falls in, GST, and the annual and monthly totals, normally the day after we have seen the site.
If you already have quotes from other contractors, send them too. We price the identical scope so the comparison is fair, and flag anything that seems to be missing from any quote on the table, ours included. Plans and photos can be uploaded when you get a quote online.
What arrives is a short document the committee can read in a few minutes: the scope area by area, the hours behind it, the visit days, a calendar of periodic jobs and the totals. The certificate of currency and any safety documents are attached, so the whole decision can be made at one meeting.
In every quote
09Price questions
Four questions that come up in almost every budget conversation.
