[zeusjazmin]

i have always been keen (nosy) to know what the average price is for a typical council house.
here in ayrshire ,scotland i charge £2.50 ,which is what all the other window cleaners charge,is there a vast difference from region to region?

[james44]

Price varies from area to area but £2.50 way to cheap

I have window cleaners in my area charging £3.50/£4.00

I charge £5.00/£6.00 upwards normal flats i charge £4.00

upstairs and £3.50 downstairs.

Houses 3/4 bedroom i can do 3/4 an hour  flats 5/6

most of window cleaners charging £2.50/£3.00 are most
 
Likely signing on the dole

[james44]

ooooops

[texas girl]

Hello!

 I am so happy that I found this forum! I am from the USA.  I have been in business for 25 years. I can respond to what I charge per window over here.  For residential I charge an average of $10 US dollars per window, in/out. Includes screen clean.  If there are lots of calcium stains, $1 -$5 more.  2nd story: $2-5 more. I clean all tracts, remove paint spots, water spots, move all furniture inside, etc.  Storm windows are $20-$25 per.  I hate cleaning storm windows. I have been getting $10. per window pretty easily.

[Ian_Giles]

I'm off to the States! rates sound way higher over there!

It's been 20 years since I did a house for as little as £2.50, that is my current minimum charge for a shop front, and that can mean a single large pane of plate glass and door. 2 minutes work.
A standard 3 bed semi will have a starting price of £8.00, and that won't include a conservatory either.
As the jobs get larger my price per window works out at roughly a £1.00 per window, or rather I will break any window down to a single unit price.

I use WFP but still price up as for cleaning with a ladder + squeegee etc, so on upstairs windows, providing they are normal casement ones, each move of the ladder will equate to 1 window.
The same with the downstairs in that a large window will be counted as 2 windows.
Georgian windows, every 8 panes will count as 1 window.

I love georgian windows with WFP They are done in just about the same time as a standard casement window, whereas with trad methods they take at least 3 times longer

Ian

[Malcal]

I'm from the north east and try to charge £4.00 to £5.00 for 1940s houses ( the large ones built fit for heros). Its hard when the going rate is a lot less. Spoke to a bloke yesterday in County Durham who charges £2.00 and tells me he manages 250 in 7 working days. When will they learn that at a reasonable price they wouldn't need the dole.
Cheers Mal

[Duke]

I wont even stop the van for less than a fiver.....

[AuRavelling79]

Sometimes I think we can be too experienced at pricing. A mate of mine recently got married, took on an instant family and needed better paying work. So he starts window cleaning.

I had a dozen underpriced houses on a nearby estate - 1930's terraces of four or six with bay windows - and gave them to him to help him out. (I was charging way too low £6-8 when for the time they took I should have been charging a tenner and I told him so and that he should put the prices up by a couple of quid.)

Thanx v. much says he and promptly put the prices up to £12.50-£15.00! (I would have cringed - not enough bottle see.) He lost one!  And another went two-monthly. And in the twelve months he's been doing them he's got another five customers.

Just before Xmas when I'm chuffed to bits doing a £130 day in the dull daylight hours he's only hit £210!

Beginners luck? Maybe, but there's a lesson for me when I put prices up in spring.

[Ian_Giles]

I agree Malc, on any new stuff, partly because I don't mind if they say yay or nay (domestics not commercial though ) I go in as high as I can, am still getting 60% of those I price for though.
Prior to this I would say my percentage was at least  95%.
A couple of years ago I sold my entire domestic round to a lad that had  worked for me. I kept all my commercial stuff of course, by that time I didn't need domestics, I had enough shops and so that I only needed to work 3 & a half days to make enough to get by on, and by then that was all I was interested in doing.

I kept a few choice ones, but I had just about had enough of window cleaning and was happy to sell it on. A couple of years earlier I had sold another large chunk of my round to another pair that worked for me. The one guy had worked for me for 7 years too! But they tend to leave in the end and if they are any good they set up their own round.
After 15 years of employing workers I'd had enough, which was why I sold the rest of the domestic round to the other guy when he decided to leave.

Anyway, background info over.

With accounts you have had for years it is very easy to fall behind with putting up their prices. you tend to know your customers personally too after several years and trying to put up a ~£6.50  house by £3.00 to the level it should be at is almost impossible to do
However.....If you are taking on the work for the first time then it is easy to do so
And now I am all as keen as mustard because of changing over to WFP I am making sure that my prices are way up there, not silly prices, you do that and you will soon lose your customers.
I'll tell you what  too, WFP didn't happen a moment to soon for me, a lifetime of working up ladders, and I could only see a lifetime in front of me where it would be imposible to do anything else, my qualifications were CSE's
And the ladder work just gets harder, and you realise more and more as time slips by, just how dangerous it is to work day in, day out  off ladders.
Thank god I took the plunge! (thats into WFP and not off the top of a ladder )
Anyone out there reading this who is thinking about changing over to WFP, DO IT!
It's turned my life around in a major way, well, my working life anyway!

Ian

Err.............I kind of drifted off topic there

[Duke]

you're right though, my story was similar....gawd bless the pole ....at over 50 now...I'm too old to get excited about ladders anymore...

[cleanandmean]

Hi All and Happy new year
My lowest price is 7.50 , but mostly 8.50 for a 3 bedroomed terraced, my god 2.50.......Dont under sell your services fella.

[Ian Rochester]

Like with everything else, the region or area you are operating in to a certain extent governs your prices.

I would agree £2.50 is much too low, you are being busy fools working for that, and generally anyone who is doing it for that price is not declaring it to the taxman.

We have a broad assortment of houses from council properties full of one parent families and OAPs who struggle to afford having their windows cleaned every couple of months, to large mansions who are charged £100+ each time for the privilidge  of us coming to clean their windows every 3 weeks.

We always try to remain constant when pricing, basing it on number and type of windows to be cleaned.  But, when you go to do a house for the first time and their is a Ferrari and Range Rover parked outside, you do tend to work to the higher end of the scale, plus a bit!!!!

Back to the question - average price 3 bed detatched house, 10 - 11 windows - £6.00 - £7.00, conservatory min £3.00.

Ian

[Londoner]

£10 for a typical three bed semi. That is the normal price in North West London.
I heard of one lady who was quoted £15 last week.

Its easy to be cheap, especially when you want the work but it does you no good in the end.

The trouble is you get all sorts of bandits who are on the dole, or more commonly now assylum seekers who aren't supposed to work, they just want ready cash .

[denzle]

650 customers, average price per house is just over £12:00
I wouldn't get out of the van £2:50.

[Grafters Cleaning Services]

I imagine that prices vary from region to region, here in the south (southampton) I/we start at £6-00 min although I do clean a few pensioners bungalows (only 3 windows) for £4-00 each. When I first started many years ago 3 bed council houses averaged about £1-50-£2-50 depending on terrced or semis. I think that regardless of where you are located £2-50 is far to low.

[wayne99]

i'm in the north east and my average is £12.00, wont get out the van for less than £6.00 and that is if its 1 window or 5

[matt]

3 bed semi --- 9 quid

min charge --- 5 quid

the min charge is for people who say, oh can you just do the upstairs 4 windows

[pjulk]

My minimum charge is £8 for that very reason can you just do the two upstairs at the front.

I say yes that will be £8
Then they say i didn't think it would be that much.
I then tell them how much the whole house is and usually get it but not always.
One i picked up last week 4 upstairs windows and i am charging her £8 and she is happy with that. I told her for an extra £4 i would do the whole house but she insisted she only wanted the 4 upstairs windows cleaned.

Paul

[tightswerve]

Been window cleaning 8/9 moths now and have mainly under priced jobs.

So now I quote a fair price and have only been challenged once about price. So we met half way I quoted £15 and he thought £10 so we agreed every month at£12.(large de-tached)
The thing is if you do quote too high u can always come down a little.

Steve Wright 

[rosskesava]

I started working with a friend early last summer (here in the Brighton area) and the round he had he bought off someone for about £200. He was doing the driving for the person's round anyway and it consisted of a muddled round all over the place (about 2 hours work a day) and some prices were so ridicously low that I couldn't believe it. i.e. £8.00 for a 5 bedroom detached house with leaded glass and a conservatory. Our earnings to start with were abysmal.

However, it was all we had so we did them and got new business still at a fairly low price because we needed the work. Bit by bit, as our books filled up so our prices went up.

The same 5 bedroom detatched that was £8 would now be £25 to £30. We have just got one job in a huge country house for £70 for about 1 1/2 hours work.

There are people prepared to pay good prices for good quality work and we now concentrate on good class areas.

The very cheap jobs - those are nearly all gone to someone else.

The price around where I live (3 bedroom council semi's) is between £7 and £10.

Cheers

Ross