How and When To Raise Your House Cleaning Rates

One of the scariest things you can do as a self-employed house cleaner, maid or housekeeper is raise your rates for cleaning customers.

It’s easy to imagine all sorts of ugly behavior from your customers when you tell them you’re raising your cleaning rates.

You wonder will they pout, yell, scream? Toss you out of the door? Cancel their service? Trash you on social media?

Over the course of your cleaning career, a few customers might go to those extremes. However, most of your customers will quietly say “yes” to your rate increases.

This is especially true if:

The best way to move past the fear of raising your cleaning rates is to have a plan and understand your worth as a self-employed house cleaner.

Why Most Customers Will Say Yes

Your customers know they can go with a lower-priced house cleaner, but there is a risk in doing so.

First, there is the pain of finding a new house cleaner. They have to ask neighbors, friends, relatives or coworkers for referrals.

They may also research different websites like Yelp, Google Business Profiles, Angie’s List or Thumbtack to find a cleaner with good ratings.

The customer has to adjust to how the new cleaner works. Every house cleaner has a different way of working. Plus, the new house cleaner will be great at some tasks and less than great at other tasks.

Every house cleaner will schedule them differently. They may not get their favorite day of the week or time of day for cleanings.

Then the new cleaner has to learn their home and where everything is in their home.

From the location of the circuit breaker panel to where the garbage and recycling bins are kept, everything for the new cleaner will be unfamiliar the first 4 or 5 cleanings.

Finally, what if the new cleaner doesn’t work out? What if they are unreliable?

They could end up with a “ghost” house cleaner who disappears for weeks on end or is never heard from again.

Or it could be worse, the new house cleaner could be a thief.

You, on the other hand, are someone they already know and trust. You are honest.

You know their home, their kids, their pets and how they like their home cleaned.

They can rely on you and that’s worth a lot.

When The Rate Door Opened For Me

In the article, the writer described Gayla as a house cleaner charging “top rates of $100 per floor… and has a year minimum waiting list for service.”

In 2008, I was still cleaning two & three story houses for $100 or less. Reading that article made me take another look at what other local house cleaners were charging.

I soon found my cleaning rates were too low. I was leaving money on the table with my customers.

Rates “Too High” For Whom?

The part about Gayla having a year minimum waiting list for service was the real eye-opener for me.

Gayla charged top dollar for her cleaning, but her high cleaning rates made her more in demand, not less.

I had to re-think “too high” cleaning rates. Too high for whom?

There were people willing to pay a lot more for cleaning than I was charging.

Gayla’s eager prospects were willing to get on a year minimum waiting list to pay more.

Reading that article, I got a glimpse of the rewards of being an in-demand house cleaner. I had to figure out how to push the rate door open wider and get inside.

Before You Raise Your Rates

Most house cleaners, maid services and housekeepers just look into what similar businesses in their area are charging and charge the same or less.

DON’T FALL INTO THIS TRAP!

Pricing this way, you could end up making pennies ⎯ or worse ⎯ working for free.

Whether you charge hourly, by the house or by square foot, before you raise your rates, you need to know your business costs.

Once you know your costs, you can set rates that cover those costs and produce a profit for your work.

When you clean and collect payments from customers that don’t cover your costs or produce profit for your company, you’re working for free.

To avoid working for free, you need to know two things:

1. How Much It Costs You To Clean

Your costs include business expenses such as:

2. What Customers Are Willing to Pay

What customers are willing to pay is based on your location and who you target as customers.

For example, if you’re located in an area that has a low cost of living like some retirement communities in the southwestern US and you target price shoppers your rates may be lower.

Low cost of living location plus customers who are only willing to pay low rates (price shoppers).

If you’re a house cleaner located in a large, expensive city like New York, San Francisco, Washington DC Metro Area or Seattle who targets convenience or value shoppers, your rates may be higher.

High cost of living location plus customers who are willing to pay more for convenience or value.

How to Raise Your Rates With Current Customers

Test Your Rate Increase

Instead of taking the rate increase plunge with your entire customer list, you can test your new, higher rates with a few customers at a time.

Start with five of your customers whose rates don’t (or barely) cover your costs in terms of time or overhead.

Some of your most unprofitable customers may your first ones. They signed on when you were just starting out and got your cheapest rates.

Then as your cleaning time and performance got better, they still paid your “I’m a new house cleaner” rates. Most of them will say yes to your rate increase.

Others may push back and try to bargain you down to the “new house cleaner / maid / housekeeper” rate they’ve enjoyed since they signed on with you.

Learn From The Customers Who Push Back

If you hold firm with them on this increase, the customers who push back will tell you all of their objections to the changes.  Listen to them carefully.  

Use their objections to prepare and refine your policy changes for the next few least profitable customers.  

The worst that can happen if unprofitable customers drop you is you’ll stop losing time and money.

You’ll get to replace them with customers who pay your new higher rate.

If they don’t want to go along with the rate increase, let them go with care and respect.

Explain your new rate

Explain that you’ve held lower rates for them because you value them as a customer.

But, your costs have risen over the past year (or five years) and you must raise your cleaning rates.

Give them a grace period

Ease them into the higher rate with a grace period of two to eight weeks after which your higher rate kicks in.

The Upside Of Letting Go

At one point, I was long overdue raising my rates with my customers. When I raised my rates, all of them said yes except one.

With that customer, I was cleaning three floors of their home (main floor, upstairs and basement).

Their home often took me five hours with a ton of dusting, unmade beds (unlike the rest of my customers who make their own beds), parking issues and up and down lots of stairs.

They complained the increase was too high. I respectfully let them go and asked for a review on the way out of the door.

They gave me a great review! I was able to put their review on the Testimonials page of my website and on my Yelp business listing (in the photo gallery).

Their detailed review helped me get more customers for years.

I was able to replace them within a month with someone who paid me at the higher rate. The new customer’s home was just two floors and took four hours.

Plus I didn’t have to make any beds in the new customer’s home!

Letting that customer go worked out for me several ways. All of them good.

Set Up An Annual Rate Increase

To avoid falling into a rate slump again, make annual rate increases a part of your business.

Businesses in all industries have annual rate or price increases. Many people actually expect you to raise your rates on a regular basis.

Some house cleaners and maid services increase rates once a year for all customers.

Others choose to raise rates on the anniversary of each customer’s first cleaning.

Send a Change of Terms letter or email to your current customers. Let them know your rates will increase for all of your customers each year.

Then send out rate increase notices to customers two to four weeks before the rate increase kicks in.

Start Out Right With New Customers

For new customers, your annual rate increase should be a part of your “workfence” or company policies.

The policy of yearly rate increases should be written in your Service Agreement, so your new customers know what to expect from you each year.

How Much Of An Increase?

How much should your annual increase be? I’ve found that most customers don’t have a problem with a 3 to 5 percent increase per year.

It’s high enough to make a pleasant difference in your bank account each month, but not so high that you have to do a song and dance to justify the increase.

When To Raise Your Rates

1. When Your Costs Increase

House cleaners and maid services, all face regular price increases of cleaning supplies, equipment, gas (or public transit costs), insurance, licenses and taxes.

A lot of the time you may absorb those costs because you don’t want to nickel and dime your customers.

The Role of Recordkeeping

Also, if you drift from month to month without financial awareness, costs can creep up on you and you can find yourself losing money.

That’s why it’s so important for you to keep good records and be very aware of business costs like equipment, supplies, licenses, taxes and education.

Your awareness can lead to timely action like raising your rates.

Related: Top 10 Records Self-Employed House Cleaners Need To Keep

2. Your Schedule Is Full

When you are just getting started, you may be pricing your cleaning services like casual “side gig” cleaners and other unlicensed competitors.

However, once you’ve built a base of customers and your cleaning schedule is full, it’s time to raise your rates.

Your full schedule is a signal that you provide excellent service and are in demand.

You can charge a premium for your reputation and skill (value). You might even start a waiting list like Gayla from the beginning of this post.

Pushing The Rate Door Wide Open

While I never got to the point of charging $100 per floor and having a year long waiting list like Gayla, I did find the courage to raise my rates on a regular basis.

Unlike Gayla, I didn’t keep a waiting list. If I wasn’t able to bring on another customer, I referred them to another house cleaner or maid service.

What I found after raising my rates was I was able to work fewer hours for more money.

I was finally able to work four days a week instead of five. I was free to use the fifth day for extra services for customers, to purchase cleaning supplies or do some planning and marketing.

I finally had the time to work on my business instead of in my business.

An Unexpected Bonus

One unexpected bonus was customers treated me better after I raised my rates.

The customers who tended to micro-manage the cleaning backed off and trusted me to get things done without lists or “friendly reminders” when I walked through the door.

With one or two exceptions, they said yes to rate increases with no drama or push back.

A Little Courage Goes A Long Way⎯Up