Most weeks we get a call that starts the same way: “I’ve got three quotes and they’re all different. Why?” It’s a fair question. Exterior cleaning quotes in Sydney routinely vary by 30 to 50 percent for what looks like the same job, and the cheapest one is rarely cheap once you find out what it left out.
This is how we build a quote, what we think every quote should list, and the questions we’d ask if we were the customer.
Why quotes differ so much
Exterior cleaning is not one service. A house in Bellevue Hill with rendered walls, a sandstone retaining wall, a terracotta roof and a travertine pool surround is four different jobs with four different methods, and a quote that treats it as “house wash, $X” has either not looked properly or is planning to use one pressure for everything.
In our experience the price gap comes down to five things: whether the surfaces were actually assessed, what method will be used, how access is being handled, what is and isn’t included, and whether the operator is carrying real insurance. A quote that is silent on any of those is guessing, and the guess is usually in their favour.
What a proper quote lists
Every quote we send is itemised by surface. That’s not a marketing flourish; it’s how we stop arguments on the day. A proper quote should tell you:
- Each surface and its method. “Rendered walls: soft wash” and “Concrete driveway: surface cleaner at controlled pressure” are two different line items with two different prices. If the quote just says “pressure clean exterior”, ask what pressure and on what.
- What the price includes. Detergent, water, rinsing of adjacent surfaces, protection of plants and glass, cleanup. If any of those are extra, they should be listed as extra.
- Access. Two-storey work, steep blocks, roofs, and anything needing a harness or a platform costs more and should be shown separately. A quote that ignores access will either be revised on the day or done unsafely.
- Insurance and who is doing the work. Public liability with the dollar figure, and whether the people on site are employees or subcontractors.
- A fixed price. Not “from”, not “estimate”. If the operator has seen the property, they can commit to a number.
- What happens if a stain doesn’t come out. Some marks are permanent (etched rust, deep tannin, decades-old paint bleed). An honest quote flags likely limits before you pay, not after.
The questions that expose a cheap quote
You don’t need to know anything about cleaning to ask these. The answers tell you most of what you need.
- “What pressure are you using on the render?” If the answer is a number over about 1,000 psi, or “whatever gets it off”, walk away. Render, paint and sandstone are soft washed at low pressure. High pressure on those surfaces causes the damage we get called to look at six months later.
- “Did you assess it, or is this off photos?” Photo quotes are fine for simple jobs. For anything with stone, heritage fabric or multiple storeys, someone should have looked at it.
- “Can I see your certificate of currency?” This is the insurance document. Any legitimate operator has it on their phone. Hesitation is the answer.
- “Where does the water go?” Run-off into stormwater drains carries detergent to the harbour or the beach. A competent operator has a plan for that on every job, and will tell you what it is.
- “What’s the fixed price?” If they won’t commit, the number on the paper isn’t the number you’ll pay.
Where the money actually goes
People assume the cost is mostly labour. Labour matters, but for a surface-matched job a lot of the price sits in things that are invisible in the quote: the right detergent for the surface (a sandstone-safe cleaner costs several times what a generic degreaser does), the time spent protecting plants and glass and rinsing them afterwards, insurance, and the access equipment that keeps someone off a wet tile roof without a rope.
A quote that undercuts on price is usually skipping one of those four. Sometimes that’s fine (a flat concrete driveway with nothing nearby is a simple job). Often it isn’t, and the saving turns into a repaint or a sandstone repair.
How we do it
We assess the surface first, quote a fixed price itemised by surface, and send a before-and-after photo report on every job. We carry $20 million public liability. If a mark isn’t going to come out, we tell you before we start. That’s not a sales pitch, it’s the minimum we’d expect from anyone we let onto our own property.
Written by the crew at The Prestige Standard. We clean exteriors across Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, North Shore and Northern Beaches every week, and the examples in this article come from that work. Nothing here is a substitute for a site assessment of your specific property.
