Two things about an empty property make cleaning it a different exercise from cleaning a lived-in one. The first is access: for the only time in that property’s life, nothing is hiding anything. The floor under the almirah, the wall behind the fridge, the inside of every cupboard — all reachable at once, and none of it touched in years. The second is the deadline. A handover date, a tenancy end or a possession date is a fixed point, and the work has to be finished and inspected before it. This page covers how we run empty-property cleans in Karachi, and how a move-out clean differs from a post-construction one. Our scoped room-by-room service is full house deep cleaning.
Empty means you can finally reach what furniture always hid
In an occupied house there is a permanent list of places nobody cleans because nobody can. Under and behind heavy wardrobes and beds. The wall behind a fridge, which in a Karachi kitchen carries a decade of aerosolised cooking oil oxidised into a tacky film. The floor beneath a full bookcase, the back half of every kitchen cabinet, window tracks blocked by curtains, the tops of doors, and behind the washing machine.
All of it comes into scope the moment the property is empty, and collectively it is a substantial fraction of the total soil in the building. It is also why an empty-property clean turns up things a routine clean never does: an old leak stain behind an almirah, cockroach harbourage under a fitted counter, mould on a wall a bed had been pushed against for four years. We photograph what we find and tell you, because it is far better for that to surface from us than from the other party’s inspection.
Sequencing, and why the order is the whole job
Top-down, without exception. Ceiling fans, AC units and filters, light fittings, cornices, the tops of wardrobes and high shelving, then walls and switch plates, then doors and frames, then windows, grilles and tracks, then cabinetry, then sanitaryware, then floors. This is not a preference, it is gravity: every stage sheds dust downward, and any surface cleaned before the ones above it gets cleaned again.
Wet work before floors, and cabinetry inside before out. Bathrooms and kitchen wet areas throw splash and runoff well beyond their own footprint, so they are done while the floors are still on the list. And the inside of a kitchen cabinet or fitted wardrobe is the first thing an incoming tenant opens and the last thing a normal clean reaches — interiors are emptied, wiped, and left dry and open.
Floors genuinely last. Hard floors get their full treatment only when nothing above them is going to shed again — see floor cleaning for the hard-floor method. Fitted carpet is done after the floors around it and dried under air movers; loose rugs are handled separately through carpet cleaning.
And nothing starts until the trades have finished. This is the sequencing rule with the most money attached to it. If a painter, plumber, electrician or carpenter is still due, cleaning first is paying twice — a painter alone will re-dust every horizontal surface, splash the floors and leave masking residue on frames. If your property has work outstanding, book us for after it. We would rather move your slot back a week than clean the same house twice.
What a landlord or agent actually inspects
Handover inspections here are predictable, and knowing what gets looked at is the difference between a deposit released the same day and a fortnight of argument. Bathrooms carry the most weight — the WC and its base, the shower enclosure, the grout lines, the extractor grille, limescale on taps and glass. Nothing else in the property produces the same reaction if it is wrong. The kitchen comes second: cabinet interiors, the wall behind and beside where the cooker stood, the hood if one is being left, the sink and drain, and the floor at the base of the units.
Then a short list of specifics. Fan blades, because the shadow of dust on a blade is visible from the doorway. Ceiling and wall staining from old leaks or AC drips. Window tracks and grilles, which in Karachi hold a grey-brown film of dust bound with sea air. Switch plates and door handles. And floors near a window, where low-angle daylight shows every smear.
And smell, which nobody lists but everybody registers. A closed-up flat here develops a stale, slightly damp smell within a fortnight, usually from dry drain traps letting sewer gas back up and a bathroom with no air movement. Running water into every trap and ventilating deals with most of it, and it changes the first ten seconds of an inspection more than any amount of polishing.
Move-out cleaning and post-construction cleaning are not the same service
They get booked under the same name constantly, and that is where expectations go wrong. The soil is chemically different, the tools are different, and the time is different.
A move-out clean deals with domestic soil — cooking grease, body oils, dust, hair, limescale, scuff marks, soap scum. It is organic and mineral, it responds to surfactants, alkalis and mild acids, and it comes off with chemistry plus time.
A post-construction clean deals with adhered inorganic residue, which is a different problem entirely. Cement haze — the thin mineral film left across tile after grouting, which no detergent touches and which needs a controlled acidic haze remover on ceramic and porcelain, never on marble or other calcareous stone. Grout residue in corners. Paint splash and overspray, removed mechanically, scraped or bladed with full knowledge of what is underneath. Silicone and adhesive smears, which need solvent. Protective-film adhesive baked onto new fittings by Karachi sun. And plaster dust, which is everywhere, including inside AC units and switch boxes.
The other honest difference is that a post-construction clean usually needs two passes. Fine dust in a newly finished property stays suspended, sits in ducts and settles out of the air for days after the trades leave, so a single pass on day one and a photograph on day three will not agree. We build that into the quote rather than discovering it with you.
Moving in: four things worth doing while the place is still empty
Clean the water tanks before you fill them. This is the one people skip and regret. Tanks in a property that has stood empty accumulate sediment, biofilm and sometimes insect or rodent ingress, and once the house is occupied every tank clean means a day without water for a family. Before you move in it costs nothing in disruption. See water tank cleaning.
Treat for pests while the property is empty. It is the easiest treatment environment there is — full access to skirtings, under fitted units and into voids, with nobody to work around and no food to protect. It is also when you find out what the previous occupants were living with, because harbourage under a fitted counter is invisible until the kitchen is emptied. See pest control in DHA.
Do the hard-floor work now, and clean your upholstery before it goes in. Stone and tile work is wet and takes rooms out of use for a day or more, so doing it before furniture arrives removes that friction. Sofas and mattresses out of storage arrive carrying dust, and a sofa is far easier to work on in an empty room — see sofa cleaning.
What we will tell you not to book
If your landlord is repainting between tenancies, tell us. It is standard practice in a large share of Karachi lettings, and where it applies, walls, ceilings and frames do not need our attention at all. That is a meaningful part of the scope and we will price the job without it. You should not pay to clean a wall that is being painted next week.
Do not book too early, and do not double up. An empty property with a window left ajar re-dusts noticeably within a week here, so the clean should sit close to the handover date rather than conveniently early in the schedule. And a move-out clean and a full house deep clean overlap almost entirely — one or the other, scoped correctly, is the right booking.
And we cannot clean away damage. Burn marks, deep scratches, cracked sanitaryware, a stained ceiling from an unresolved leak and paint rubbed through are repair items, not cleaning items. We document them with photographs so they can be discussed as what they are, but nobody should be quoting you a clean to make them disappear.
What it costs
Empty-property cleans are quoted after a site visit or from a video walkthrough, because the scope swings on things a size figure does not capture: how many bathrooms, whether the kitchen is left fitted, whether walls are in scope, and above all whether this is a domestic move-out or a post-construction handover.
For reference, our scoped full house deep cleaning runs PKR 12,000-70,000 depending on house size, and an empty-property clean is scoped the same way with the furniture-moving removed and the hidden areas added. Where the kitchen is the heavy part of the job, our kitchen deep cleaning bands are PKR 6,500-10,000 for a small apartment kitchen, PKR 12,000-18,000 for a standard kitchen, PKR 18,000-28,000 for a large villa kitchen and PKR 20,000-35,000 for a post-construction or handover kitchen — that last band exists precisely because cement haze, paint splash and grout residue add hours a domestic clean does not have.
Bahria Town is the one location with a travel charge: a flat PKR 800 fuel surcharge per visit, waived on contracts of three or more visits. Everywhere else in Karachi is at published rates with no travel addition. Offices, shops and commercial units being handed over are quoted through commercial cleaning.
Booking, and what happens on the day
WhatsApp +92-311-1101810 with a walkthrough video rather than photographs — a two-minute video is worth twenty stills, and it lets us count bathrooms, see the kitchen, spot cement haze or paint splash and check the floors in one pass. Tell us the handover date, whether trades are still due, whether the landlord is repainting, and your area. Confirmation inside 30 minutes, Mon-Sat 09:30-20:00. For apartments, send building access details in advance: most Clifton and DHA buildings restrict service-lift use and shifting hours, and a team waiting in a lobby is time you are paying for. Water and electricity need to be live on the day.
The team arrives with extraction and pressure equipment, alkaline degreasers, descalers, cement-haze removers for ceramic and porcelain only, scrapers and blades, glass tools, air movers, ladders and PPE. Allow most of a day for a two-bedroom apartment and one to two days for a house, longer for post-construction. We finish with a walkthrough against the same list an inspection uses — bathrooms, kitchen, fans, tracks, floors in raking daylight, and photographs of anything that is a repair rather than a clean.
Common questions
How far before the handover should we book?
Book the slot two to three weeks ahead and schedule the work one to three days before the handover — close enough that dust has not resettled, far enough that a discovered repair can still be dealt with. If trades are still working, the clean goes after them regardless of what that does to the calendar.
Is this the same as a deep clean?
Same depth of work, different scope. A deep clean in an occupied house works around furniture and belongings and prioritises the rooms people live in. An empty-property clean loses the furniture-moving and gains everything the furniture was covering, plus cabinet interiors, and it runs to a fixed external deadline. If the property is occupied, full house deep cleaning or room deep cleaning is the right booking instead.
Our flat is brand new from the builder. Is that a move-in clean?
No, that is a post-construction clean and it should be quoted as one. Cement haze on the tiles, grout residue, paint overspray, silicone smears, adhesive from protective films and construction dust in the AC units are all present in a newly handed-over flat, and none of them respond to ordinary cleaning. Booked as a move-in clean it will be under-quoted and under-timed, and everyone ends the day unhappy.
Will this get our security deposit back?
It removes the cleaning argument, which is the commonest reason deposits are held here, and we hand you dated photographs of the finished property — useful evidence if the conversation goes badly. What it cannot do is resolve damage or missing fittings. If we find damage, you hear it from us before the inspection does.
Do you clean the windows and grilles?
Yes — interior glass, frames, tracks and grilles are part of an empty-property clean, and it is the one moment they are accessible with no curtains in the way. Karachi window tracks hold a dense film of dust bound with sea air, and they are on every inspection list. Exterior glass above ground floor depends on safe access, and we tell you on the walkthrough whether we can reach it.
Which areas of Karachi do you cover?
All of Karachi — DHA and Clifton, Gulshan, PECHS, Bahadurabad, North Nazimabad, Gulistan-e-Johar, Bahria Town and the rest — from our office in DHA Phase 4. Published rates apply everywhere; only Bahria Town carries a PKR 800 fuel surcharge per visit, waived on contracts of three or more visits.
Book move-in or move-out cleaning in Karachi
WhatsApp or call +92-311-1101810, or email contact@nestfumigationservices.com. We work across Karachi from our office at Plot #14, 2/1 2nd Gizri Street, DHA Phase 4, Karachi 75500, Mon-Sat 09:30-20:00. ISO 9001:2015 certified; members of KCCI, SPMA and PPMA. Founder Saad Danish. Frequently booked in the same window: full house deep cleaning, kitchen deep cleaning, washroom deep cleaning, water tank cleaning and pest control in DHA.
Saad Danish is a co-founder and director of Nest Fumigation Services Private Limited, a licensed pest-control and fumigation company based in DHA Phase 4, Karachi. He oversees the company's administration, client services, and marketing, working alongside NFS's technical team to deliver residential and commercial pest management across Karachi — from termite proofing and general pest control to HACCP and Sindh Food Authority compliance programmes for food, warehouse, and industrial clients. Nest Fumigation Services is ISO 9001:2015 certified and a member of the SPMA (Sindh Pest Management Association), PPMA, and the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
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