MaidBossPro Blog — Offices, Rentals & Move-Outs

Post-Construction Cleaning for Builders: Quoting, Scheduling and Billing the Final Clean

A new or remodeled home is not finished when the last trade packs up. It is covered in fine dust, there are stickers on the windows, paint specks on the floors and sawdust in every drawer. Builders and remodelers need someone to turn that into a home that is ready for the buyer's walkthrough. For a maid service, it is demanding work, but builders who like you tend to call again and again.

What Post-Construction Cleaning Involves

Realtors, covered in Realtors and Move-In Cleaning: Turning Listings and Closings Into Steady Work, often bring move-in cleans after a closing. Builders bring the cleaning that comes even earlier, before anyone has lived in the home.

A post-construction clean is more detailed than a deep clean. Dust settles everywhere, including inside cabinets, on top of door frames, in light fixtures and in window tracks. Typical work includes:

• Dusting every surface, top to bottom, often more than once as dust settles.
• Wiping inside every cabinet and drawer.
• Removing stickers and labels from windows, fixtures and appliances.
• Cleaning interior windows, sills and tracks.
• Wiping baseboards, walls & doors and switch plates.
• Cleaning bathrooms and kitchens until they look new, because they are.

Heavy debris removal, hauling and anything that needs special equipment are usually outside what a maid service should take on. Be clear with the builder about where your scope ends.

It also helps to plan for the tools this work needs. Construction dust fills vacuum filters fast, sticker residue needs patience and the right scraper, and new fixtures scratch easily. Talk with your team about what to bring, and add a short products-to-use note on the address if the builder has preferences for new finishes, such as “No abrasive pads on the quartz counters.”

Quoting a Builder

Post-construction work is usually priced by square feet, because the time is driven by surface area and dust, not the number of bedrooms. In MaidBossPro, set up a post-construction service in your service list priced by square feet, and add extras like interior windows, inside cabinets, baseboards and walls & doors as their own lines.

Walk the home before you quote if you can, or ask for photos. A home where the builder already did a rough clean is a very different job from one straight off the drywall crew. Send the estimate, the builder approves it online, and the approved estimate becomes the scheduled job with the details on it.

Scheduling Around the Walkthrough

Builders work to a walkthrough or closing date, and the clean has to happen after the last trade and before the buyer arrives. Ask for the walkthrough date and the date the house will be ready for cleaning. Put the clean on the dispatch board as a one-time job with the cleaning type set to Post-Construction, and confirm with the builder by text a day or two ahead.

Trades often run late, so a home that was supposed to be ready on Monday might still have a painter in it. Before the team goes, confirm the house is clear. If the team arrives and work is still underway, they tap Skip with a note, and the office reschedules.

Many builders prefer the clean done in stages, which is covered in Rough, Final and Touch-Up: Scheduling Post-Construction Cleaning in Phases.

Access on a Job Site

New homes often have a construction lockbox, a temporary code, or a superintendent who lets you in. Put it all in the entry notes on the address: “Builder lockbox on front door, code in notes. Superintendent cell in notes if code fails. Wear shoe covers.” Those notes show on the team's phone at the address.

Photos for the Builder

Builders are rarely on site when you clean. Before-and-after photos taken in the team app and saved with the job show them the home is ready. Before photos also protect you: if a trade comes back later and leaves a mess, you can show what the home looked like when you finished. If the team spots a problem, like a scratched countertop or a missing outlet cover, a note with a photo lets the builder know before the buyer finds it.

Billing Builders

Builders who send you one home now and then can be billed per job, with an invoice created when the team taps Complete. Builders who send several homes a month often prefer one statement. Set the builder's account to Monthly, add each home as an address under the account, and they get one statement each month with each address on its own line. Past-due follow-up helps with builders who are slow to pay.

To see how post-construction work fits with move-outs, offices and your recurring homes, visit the MaidBossPro commercial cleaning software page.