Building your price list

Your price list is the most valuable document in the business. It converts phone calls into bookings in ninety seconds, it protects you from the underpricing spiral, and it decides whether the route you build pays or merely moves money around. Build it once, properly, and then defend it.

Hourly, flat, or recurring

Three pricing methods, and the trade-offs are real.

Hourly, $25 to $50 per cleaner-hour nationally, is the easiest to start with and the hardest to grow with. It feels fair to clients and it caps your income at the clock: get faster, which you will, and you earn less for the same home. Hourly also invites clock-watching, the client who wonders why the bookshelf took ten minutes.

Flat rate, a fixed price per job, is where experienced operators land. The quote needs only three inputs: bedrooms, bathrooms, and approximate square footage. Speed becomes your profit instead of the client's discount. The risk is underquoting a disaster home, which careful screening questions prevent.

Recurring pricing is the strategy that pays for everything else. Weekly, every-two-weeks, and monthly visits get a standing discount against the one-off rate, because a home on a rhythm is faster to clean and a client on a rhythm is income you stop re-earning. Published guidance puts typical recurring discounts at 10 to 15 percent, and some operators run 20 to 25 percent on weekly plans. A corpus course from a Seattle operator uses a clean ladder: 10 percent off monthly, 15 percent off biweekly, 20 percent off weekly.

One structural detail from the same operator, and it is pure scheduling wisdom: do not offer every-three-weeks service. A three-week cycle never lands on the same weekday, so the calendar rots within a month. Weekly, biweekly, and monthly only. Your future scheduler self will send thanks.

A fee schedule you can build today

Start from the survey band, $125 to $225 for a standard clean, then price by structure, not vibes. This model, adapted from the corpus fee schedule, prices the base by bedrooms and adds for each bathroom beyond the first:

| Service | Formula | Example: 3 bed, 2 bath | |---|---|---| | Standard clean | $120 + $20/bedroom + $25 per bath after the first | $205 | | Deep clean | standard + $100 to $180 | ~$335 | | Move-out clean | deep clean + $80 to $150 | ~$420 | | Recurring discount | −10% monthly / −15% biweekly / −20% weekly | $175 biweekly |

Treat those constants as tunable, not canonical. Your market may carry $150 plus $25 per bedroom, or less. The structure is the lesson: base plus bedrooms plus bathrooms beyond the first, discounts by frequency, and every number defensible by the cost model from the honest money lesson. If your area's rates sit below your costs plus a living wage, the honest answer is a different territory or a different business, not a thinner you.

Then list the extras, because add-ons are margin on a drive you already paid for. The bands below come from one published operator price list rather than a market survey, so treat them as a starting grid and tune them to your area:

| Add-on | One operator's price list | |---|---| | Inside oven | $35–$50 | | Inside refrigerator | $35–$50 | | Interior windows (per window) | $8–$12 | | Baseboard detail | $50–$75 | | Pet surcharge (per home) | $15–$25 |

One more line belongs on the list: the first-clean premium. First visits run longer than recurring visits, every time, because the home is at its worst and you are learning it. Many operators simply quote the first clean at the one-off rate with the discount applying from the second visit onward. Say so on the list. It is cleaner than apologizing later.

Underpricing, and the way out of it

The most common self-inflicted wound in this trade is the cheap launch: low prices to fill the calendar fast, then a route full of clients who anchor to the discount and revolt at renewal. If you start low, you have taught a whole neighborhood the wrong number.

The fix is scheduled, announced increases. Annually, with notice, framed on service and cost: "From March 1, my rate for your home moves from $150 to $165. You have been on the schedule for a year and I want to keep it that way." Corpus policy examples cap annual increases at 8 percent for exactly this reason; above that, expect conversations. You will lose a client or two per increase. The route replaces them at the new rate, which is the point.

Say the number like it is a fact

Price presentation is a trained skill. The quote is one sentence, one number, then silence: "For a three-bed, two-bath at that size, the standard clean is 205, and 175 recurring every two weeks." No apology, no justification, no discount you were not asked for. Operators who mumble their rates train clients to negotiate them.

The price list is half the sales conversation. The other half is the call itself: screening the home, spotting the trouble client, and closing on the calendar.