Move-In / Move-Out Exterior Cleaning: A Scope You Can Put in the File

Work backward from the possession date, not the closing date

Every move-in and move-out job has a date on it that somebody else set: keys at 5pm, funding Friday, final walkthrough Thursday morning. Build the schedule off that date, because possession and closing are often not the same day. We hold same-day and next-day slots, and a typical 1,500 to 2,500 square foot Treasure Valley home runs two to four hours depending on pane count. Three things decide whether next-day is real: the house is empty or close to it, water is on at the hose bib, and we have a code or a key. If utilities were shut off at move-out, tell us when you book. We can bring our own water. What we cannot do is find out about it in your driveway an hour before the walkthrough. Call (208) 453-6760 and we confirm the slot in writing. Reflekt is locally owned, started in April 2025 by Hunter Stevens and Ethan Seusy, and rated 4.9 stars across 115+ Google reviews.

The move-out list and the move-in list are different jobs

Writing both as one line item is how scope disputes start. Move-out covers what the last occupant left behind: exterior glass, sills and tracks cleaned out, screens pulled, washed and reinstalled, cobwebs off the eaves and soffits, gutters cleared, and the driveway pressure washed where the vehicles parked. Move-in covers what the next occupant walks into: interior glass while rooms are still empty and nothing has to be moved or covered, tracks done again after the movers scuff them, and house washing if nobody is going to think about the siding for another year. Interior glass on an empty house is faster and cleaner than the same job around furniture. Windows start at $199 and price by pane count, screens add $50, gutters start at $199, house washing is $0.18 per square foot soft-wash, and flat pressure washing is $0.20 per square foot. Ask for the itemized estimate.

What this changes in listing photos, and what it does not

Agents ask us to promise more than we will. Here is what exterior cleaning actually does to a photo set. Glass stops reading as a flat gray panel and starts reading as glass, which matters most on west elevations shot in the afternoon. Interior rooms get brighter, so the photographer shoots at a lower ISO and images come back with less noise and more apparent space. The elevation loses the spotting, cobwebs and streaked siding a buyer registers as deferred maintenance in about a second, before they have consciously looked at anything. What it does not do is create demand. Nobody has written an offer because of the windows. It will not move your comps, disguise a dated kitchen, or rescue a listing priced above the market. Treat it as removing a distraction rather than adding a feature and it will be worth what you spent.

Lockboxes, walkthroughs, and who actually has to be there

Vacant is the easy case, and most move-out work is vacant. Send the lockbox or Supra code, tell us which side gate is unlocked, and nobody has to be on site. We text on arrival and send photos when we finish, so you are not driving to Star to check. Occupied is different. Interior glass needs someone to let us in, and on a tenant-occupied property that means proper notice under the lease, not a text from us that morning. We will not talk our way past someone who did not know we were coming. Exterior-only work needs nobody inside, just gate access and the dog put up. If the home is still showing, we take the first slot of the day or drop between appointments and are gone in a couple of hours. Send the showing calendar and we build around it. We are fully insured and will send the certificate to your broker before the first job.

Hard water is the Idaho problem, and etching will not be gone by Friday

The one thing that consistently shows up in Treasure Valley move-out photos is hard water spotting. The water here carries a heavy mineral load, and a sprinkler head aimed slightly wrong since the house was built has been hitting the same pane every morning for years. On a home that has been lived in and not maintained, the bottom third of the ground-floor glass goes chalky, and it photographs worse than it looks standing in the yard. Our routine clean runs 100% pure deionized water with no soap, which lifts fresh deposits and leaves no film for dust to grab. Older buildup needs hard water stain removal, which is acid-based, hand-worked, priced separately and slow. The part nobody wants to hear midweek: once mineral has etched into the glass surface, no product brings it back. Etched glass gets replaced or it goes in the photos as-is.

Where we would cut the scope instead of selling it

We talk people out of this work fairly often, and the pattern is consistent. If the buyer is an investor taking the house as a flip or a scrape, skip it, because the glass is coming out anyway. If the seller is giving a credit at closing instead of doing repairs, cleaning windows on the way out does not move that number. If photos are already shot and approved, the clean only helps in-person showings, so decide whether that is worth $199 on its own. And if the glass is genuinely etched, paying for stain removal to buy a marginal gain against a hard possession date is a bad trade, and we will say so on the phone. One more scope note so nobody is surprised: we do windows and exteriors. If the contract calls for a broom-clean interior, that is a different vendor, and you should hear that from us up front.