Post-construction cleaning for apartments in Marrakech

The dominant constraint on an apartment is neither the floor area nor the flooring: it is the surroundings. A team working inside an occupied building follows rules that nobody writes down and everybody notices the day they are broken.

• Waste water is never tipped into the stairwell. It is lifted with a wet and dry vacuum and emptied at the drains provided, not down the refuse chute or across the landing.
• The landing and the lift are protected on arrival and cleared of our own marks on the way out. An immaculate apartment behind a door, with boot marks running down to the ground floor, is not a finished job.
• Working hours follow the building's own rules, not our schedule.
• The meters. Without water and power on the unit, we do not come: a rotary machine and a vacuum need a supply, and a floor cannot be rinsed without water. That is the point to confirm before fixing a date.

The other property types are dealt with separately: single-storey or multi-storey villa, studio up to 45 m² and apartment in a medina building or riad.

After enough handovers, the same list comes back. It is the basis of our survey, before we have even walked the unit:

• hardened tile adhesive along the skirtings and in the corners of every room
• silicone squeezed out around shower trays, sinks and patio doors
• manufacturer's labels on the glazing, the taps, the doors and the sanitaryware
• paint flicked in fine droplets onto switches, sockets, door stops and door edges
• plaster on the ventilation grilles and in the shadow gaps of the suspended ceilings
• cutting dust in the sliding-door tracks, the exposed conduit and the roller-shutter boxes
• protective film still stuck to the stainless steel in the kitchen or to a balustrade, often baked hard by the sun if it has been left too long

A few marks of this kind are included in the base price. When they cover a good part of the unit, the clean takes longer and a surcharge applies; the method, material by material, is set out on scraping and removing bonded residues.

These are the three items most often missing from a competitor's quotation, and the first three places a methodical buyer looks at.

The balcony catches everything: offcuts, mortar, cigarette ends, packaging. Its floor is usually an external tile more porous than the one indoors, and its balustrade is either glazed or painted steel. It is not part of the internal floor area: it is added at the terrace rate, 10 MAD/m² incl. VAT on standard tiles, 30 MAD/m² incl. VAT on any other surface. It is done after the interior, never before.

The drying loggia houses the washing-machine outlet, a floor gully and sometimes the water cylinder. That floor gully is almost always packed with cement slurry: if it is not rodded out, the first wash cycle backs up.

The service duct — risers, meter cupboards, access hatches — is the one place where construction dust survives an ordinary clean, and where it comes straight back out the first time someone opens the panel.

In a Marrakech apartment three cases dominate. They are not charged at the same rate, and at equal floor area they do not take the same time.

• Standard tiles and porcelain: the standard case, at 20 MAD/m² incl. VAT. Cement haze removed with a low-speed rotary machine in one or two passes, rinse, dry.
• Marble, travertine or limestone: 30 MAD/m² incl. VAT. Measured mechanical action, no untested acid, a test patch every time. The treatment is matched to the material — not every floor can be crystallised — and we do no sanding.
• Polished concrete: 30 MAD/m² incl. VAT, like every floor that is not standard tiling. New polished concrete that has been poorly rinsed keeps a visible bloom in raking light.

Several floor types in the same apartment? You declare the square metres that are not standard tiling: 30 MAD/m² on those, 20 MAD/m² on the rest. A floor you cannot name is estimated at 30 MAD/m², then adjusted from photographs. Traditional materials are covered on zellige, bejmat and tadelakt.

For an apartment, the price starts from the internal floor area, all storeys added together, terraces excluded:

• standard tiles: 20 MAD/m² incl. VAT
• any other floor (marble, bejmat, tadelakt, polished concrete, stone, zellige, wood): 30 MAD/m² incl. VAT
• apartment or premises minimum: 3,000 MAD incl. VAT — below that amount, a top-up is added
• balcony or terrace, only if you add it: 10 MAD/m² incl. VAT on standard tiles, 30 MAD/m² incl. VAT on another surface
• many marks: +20%; thick residue or marks on almost every surface: +40%; furnished apartment: +15% — each surcharge is worked out on the base price

Two examples. A 70 m² unit in standard tiles comes to 1,400 MAD of flooring: the minimum applies, so 3,000 MAD incl. VAT.

A 150 m² unit with 30 m² of marble, a 10 m² tiled balcony and many marks: 120 × 20 = 2,400 MAD, plus 30 × 30 = 900 MAD, plus 10 × 10 = 100 MAD of balcony, a base of 3,400 MAD; +20% = 680 MAD; total 4,080 MAD incl. VAT, for 3 to 3.5 days with a team of 3.

These amounts are estimates, confirmed after photographs or a visit. For several units in the same building, see apartment block cleaning for developers, and the full schedule on post-construction cleaning prices.

A quotation that does not say what it excludes is a dispute booked in for handover day. Not included:

• clearing out: rubble and items to be thrown away must be removed before we arrive, we do not clear out
• sanding, repairs and touching up paint, grout or silicone, which belong to the trades
• a return visit after new works: we come once every trade has finished
• any glass that would need a cherry picker, ropes or dangerous access

Only one option is priced on top: the balcony or terrace, at the terrace rate. Any surcharge is announced before the date and never applied without your agreement. The company's full range of services is on our price page, and you can send us the details of your unit to get a figure: floor area, floor type, condition, handover date, with 3 to 5 photographs.