Does move-out cleaning include carpet cleaning?

Half of it, honestly. A move-out cleaning vacuums your carpet thoroughly — “Floors vacuumed and mopped” sits on the published 38-item checklist — but shampooing and hot-water extraction are a separate carpet trade, not part of the visit at JAS or most cleaning companies. Whether you need both crews comes down to one sentence in your lease.

What the move-out clean does for your carpet — and where it stops

The carpet work inside a move-out clean is real work. With the furniture gone, every carpeted room gets slow vacuum passes with nothing to steer around — the traffic lanes, the edges, and the closet floors that haven’t seen a brush roll since the day you moved in. An emptied unit is the best vacuuming day a carpet ever gets. On the published scope of our move-out cleaning that line reads “Floors vacuumed and mopped” — part of the 38 items + full photo archive PDF, in a 5–7 hour visit with a 2–3 person team, starting at $409 for a 1 BR · 1 bath and running to $719 for a 4 BR · 3 bath.

What that scope does not include is shampooing. What people call shampooing — or steam cleaning — is hot-water extraction: heated solution driven into the fiber under pressure and pulled straight back out, on machines with solution tanks, recovery tanks, and drying hours. That’s a separate trade, and JAS doesn’t sell it — we’ve drawn the full line between the two jobs in does a cleaning service shampoo carpets?. This post is for the version of the question with a security deposit riding on it.

Read the carpet clause: the three postures a lease takes

Before you book anything, find what your lease actually says about carpet. Miami leases land in one of three places:

• The lease is silent, or says “broom clean.” That standard is about an empty, vacuumed, debris-free unit — thorough vacuuming is the carpet half of it, and a move-out clean covers it. No extraction receipt needed.
• The lease says “carpets professionally cleaned.” In practice that wording usually means hot-water extraction with a receipt from a carpet company. A house-cleaning invoice, however thorough the visit, generally isn’t what the clause is asking for — plan on both crews.
• The lease names a method or demands receipts at handoff. Some clauses spell it out: steam cleaning, a licensed carpet company, receipts handed over with the keys. Take it literally, and keep the paper.

What a landlord can ultimately deduct is a matter between your lease, the condition of the unit, and Florida’s landlord-tenant rules — we’re a cleaning company, not your lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. But the operational move is simple: if the clause is vague, ask your landlord in writing, before the walkthrough, what they expect for the carpet. A two-line email now is cheaper than a deduction argument later. The rest of the deposit playbook — what to clean, what to photograph, what to hand over — is in what to clean to get your full security deposit back.

What the walkthrough actually looks at

Our move-out page’s own FAQ names the items landlords check most: the kitchen, bathrooms, empty cabinet and drawer interiors, reachable surfaces, and spot-cleaning of wall scuffs. Carpet gets read by eye and by nose — stains and odor — not with a moisture meter or a demand for proof of shampoo, unless your lease made a receipt part of the handoff. The visit’s scope, item by item, is in what’s included in a move-out cleaning in Miami.

Two details worth planning around. Appliance interiors are walkthrough staples but sit outside the base checklist — on the published add-on line: empty refrigerator $49, inside oven $49, or the oven + refrigerator bundle at $89 — so add them rather than assume. And eligible completed visits include a CleanCheck photo report with one-tap forward to landlord: you hand over dated proof of the unit’s condition, though — as that page itself puts it — the deposit decision always rests with your landlord.

Two crews, one walkthrough: the order that works

If your lease does demand extraction, sequence the week instead of cramming the last day:

• Movers out first. Both crews work better in an empty unit, and the vacuum reaches carpet the furniture covered for years.
• Move-out clean second. Schedule it for the gap between the movers leaving and the walkthrough. The published lead time is 24–48 hours minimum — and end-of-month dates fill first, because most leases turn over then.
• Carpet extraction last. Extraction companies vacuum before they wash as part of their own process, but nobody wants a cleaning crew walking across damp carpet — or a landlord stepping onto it at the walkthrough. Leave the AC running until the carpet is dry, which in Miami humidity means keeping the power on past the carpet appointment, not cutting utilities the same afternoon.

Budget-wise, extraction is the carpet company’s line item, with its own price and its own receipt — not a hidden fee inside ours. The full cost math for the cleaning side, including what moves a quote up or down, is in how much does move-out cleaning cost in Miami.

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