How often should strata common areas be cleaned?

What decides how often strata common areas should be cleaned?

Each of the three building types I service needs something different.

• Walk-ups of 2 or 3 storeys with no lift. Every resident uses the one stair and the one entry, so wear concentrates on a few square metres of carpet, one handrail and one glass door.
• Mixed-use blocks with a shop or cafe downstairs. Cafe customers, deliveries and a bin room shared with a food tenant bring the street inside, and push these buildings toward more visits.
• Small schemes under 10 lots. Fewer feet on the stairs, but the bins still go out every week and the car park still collects leaves and litter. The bin day usually sets which days the visits fall on.

I set the cadence from the building. Before you sign, I put a frequency against every area in writing, and you can check my work against it.

Does every common area need the same frequency?

No – in a Streamline Strata Care scope each area carries its own frequency, and the bin day is fixed by the council, not by the cleaner.

• Every visit: entry and foyer, corridors and stairwells, lift car and lift lobby, car park and driveways.
• Council collection day: bins to the kerb, and back the same day.
• Set in your scope: bin room wash and disinfect, garbage chute and hopper, windows and glass, bike rooms and storage cages, pool deck and BBQ area.
• Quoted separately: deep cleans, carpet steam cleaning, hard floor scrub, strip and seal.

The full area-by-area scope is on the strata common area cleaning page.

How does the cleaning frequency change the cost?

Frequency and lot count are the two biggest levers in a fixed monthly fee, and I quote each building after walking it rather than from a rate card. I publish no list price and no from-price, because I can't price a building properly from a photo.

Each visit puts a crew on site, so the number of visits drives most of the fee. Travel, product and reporting are there at any cadence, so the fee does not rise in a straight line with the visits.

My quote is itemised by service. The cleaning line sits on its own, so the strata committee can see what a step down in frequency saves, and what a step up costs, before it decides.

That decision belongs inside the budget cycle. In NSW the strata committee discusses and agrees the budget first, then it must be shown and approved at a meeting with the owners (NSW Government, "Managing strata finances and insurance", updated 22 June 2026). Frequency affects the levy, so settle it at budget time.

What should a strata manager ask for in the scope?

Ask for a stated frequency against every area – daily, twice weekly, weekly, monthly – and refuse "as required". "As required" means whenever the cleaner remembers, and it is why cleaning contracts end in an argument at the AGM.

Three questions sort a serious cleaner from the rest.

1. 01
   Which areas are every visit, and which are set to a longer cycle?
2. 02
   Which day do the bins go out, and who brings them back?
3. 03
   What happens on a public holiday – is the visit made up, moved or skipped?

My rule is that the scope is written before day one. It becomes the crew's checklist, and it is what you inspect me against.

What are the signs the frequency is wrong?

The clearest sign is complaints that cluster on the same days each week – the day before the visit. If residents write to the manager every Thursday, the building is running out of clean by Wednesday night.

Other signs I see across my building types:

• bins still on the kerb the morning after collection
• fingermarks on the foyer glass by midweek in a mixed-use block
• litter and leaves across the car park after every weekend
• a bin room smell that a fortnightly wash cannot hold.

Two different problems often get mixed up. A standard that was fine in the first month and then slipped is a crew and inspection problem, not a frequency problem. In my own words: "Standard slips after the first month." Adding visits does not fix a cleaner who has stopped looking.

Check the building on visit day and on the day before the next visit. Dirty the day before means the frequency is wrong. Dirty on visit day means the crew is the problem. The "What happens after every visit" section of the strata common area cleaning page sets out how photos after each visit keep the second problem visible.

When should an owners corporation change the frequency?

Review the frequency when the building changes – a new ground-floor tenant, a run of lot sales, a lift installed, or leaf-drop season – and at budget time, not mid-quarter. A cafe opening downstairs changes a foyer a lot.

Two NSW points sit behind that review. First, there is no NSW rule that sets how often common areas must be cleaned. Cleaning frequency is the owners corporation's judgement. Second, the owners corporation does have a legal duty to maintain and repair common property (NSW Government, "Repairs and maintenance in strata", updated 22 June 2026). Since 1 July 2025 it cannot delay repairs to common property where the delay affects access or use, and an owner now has six years, up from two, to claim for a failure to maintain (NSW Government guide to strata law changes, updated 25 August 2026). That is the repair duty, not a cleaning schedule – but a cleaner who is in the building regularly is the person who reports the loose tile or the failed light before it becomes a claim.

My contracts run month to month with 30 days' notice either way. A change of frequency is a scope amendment and a revised itemised quote, not a new contract.

What to do next

Three steps give a committee something to compare.

1. 01
   Count the lots, and note whether there is a lift, a car park and a ground-floor tenancy.
2. 02
   Walk the building on the day before the current visit. That is the building your residents see.
3. 03
   Get an itemised quote at two frequencies – the one the building runs now and the one you think it needs – so the committee can compare two prices for its own building.

Start with Strata common area cleaning for Sydney strata buildings, or call Sam on 0408 993 943.