Nobody likes the answer "it depends," so here's the version with actual numbers attached. Pricing a house clean in Pinellas comes down to four things: how much floor there is, what that floor is made of, how often we come back, and what month you're calling in.
One note before the numbers. Florida charges 6% state sales tax plus a 1% Pinellas surtax, but residential house cleaning isn't taxable in Florida — commercial interior cleaning is. So if we're cleaning your home, the quote is the quote. If we're cleaning your vacation rental as a business operation or your office off Drew Street, that's a different tax situation and you'll see it on the invoice.
The baseline: square footage and bathrooms
Bathrooms and kitchens eat the clock. A 3/2 in Countryside and a 3/2 in Morningside with the same square footage will price about the same. A 3/3 with a big island kitchen won't.
Rough recurring ranges for a standard clean around Clearwater, Dunedin and East Lake:
- Condo or small bungalow, 1-2 bed, under 1,200 sq ft — the older Gulfport and downtown Dunedin stock, or a beach condo. Lowest end of the range.
- Typical 3/2 CBS ranch, 1,400-1,900 sq ft — the bulk of what we clean. Middle of the range.
- Larger homes, 2,400+ sq ft — East Lake Woodlands and Lansbrook golf-community houses, Feather Sound, Island Estates. Higher, and often two cleaners instead of one.
Ask for a flat per-visit price, not hourly. Hourly rewards slow work.
Florida floors change the math
This is where quotes from national booking apps fall apart. They price by bedroom count and ignore what's underfoot.
Tile with grout takes longer than laminate. Not a little longer. And terrazzo — which is under half the mid-century homes in Pinellas, sometimes under carpet the previous owner glued down — is its own thing. It shows every scuff, and it doesn't like the pH of a lot of general-purpose floor cleaners. If your house has original terrazzo, say so when you call. It affects both the product and the time.
Then there's the outdoor-indoor stuff. A screened lanai or a pool cage is functional square footage: pollen sits on it, mildew grows in the screen channels, and love bugs splatter it in May and September. Most companies quote the lanai as an add-on. That's fair — it's real work. Just know it's an add-on before the crew shows up, not after.
Why the first clean costs more
Almost every reputable company charges a higher rate for the first visit. Often 1.5x to 2x the recurring price. That's not a bait-and-switch, it's arithmetic.
The first clean is where we deal with whatever's accumulated: grout haze in the guest bath, the film on the return-air vents from running AC nine months a year, oak pollen from February through April that got in around the sliders, beach sand in the baseboards. Humidity here means mildew shows up in places that would never grow anything in Ohio. Once that's handled, maintaining it is genuinely faster, which is why the recurring price drops.
The recurring gap itself is worth understanding. Weekly is cheapest per visit, biweekly is the sweet spot for most families, and monthly costs the most per visit because four weeks of Florida humidity undoes a lot. One-time cleans price highest of all — no future visits to average the setup against, and no idea what we're walking into.
Snowbird season is a pricing factor, not a myth
November through April, seasonal homes and rentals fill up across Pinellas and Pasco. Two waves hit us. Fall is move-in cleans — get the place opened, aired, and wiped down before the owners land. Spring is close-up cleans, usually with a fridge-empty and a linens component.
What that means for you as a year-round resident: calendars tighten. From roughly late October through March, the good slots get claimed by recurring clients and seasonal contracts. If you want a Friday-before-Thanksgiving deep clean, book it in September. If you call the week of, you're taking whatever's open, and rush pricing is a real thing in this market.
It's more pronounced in the 55+ parks and manufactured-home communities in Elfers and Holiday, where the seasonal turnover is dense and clustered into a few weeks. Newer subdivisions over in Citrus Park run steadier year-round.
Things that legitimately add cost
- Inside the fridge and oven — almost always separate line items.
- Interior windows and slider tracks — salt air and sand make coastal tracks brutal.
- Pets — hair volume, not the pet itself.
- Post-construction or post-storm — drywall dust and flood residue aren't house cleaning, they're a different job with a different price.
- Distance — we cross three counties. A Citrus Park house at 8am and a Dunedin house at 10am means the Courtney Campbell or the Bayside Bridge in between. Some companies charge travel for the far edges; ask.
One last piece of advice: get the quote after someone has actually seen the house, or at minimum after a real conversation about floors, lanai, and pets. A number generated from a dropdown menu is a number that will change on cleaning day. If you want an honest range for your place, tell us the neighborhood, the square footage, and what's on the floors — send it over or look at what we cover in Dunedin and the rest of the service area. Terrazzo owners, mention it first.