PCS Move-Out Cleaning in Huntsville:
From $351, and the Inspection List

A PCS move-out has something an ordinary move does not: a date that will not move. Your report date is fixed, the household-goods pickup is booked around it, and the final inspection sits between the two. That is why the cleaning gets squeezed to the end, and why families end up scrubbing an oven at eleven at night before clearing housing.

This is the PCS-specific companion to our Huntsville move-out cleaning guide. It covers the two inspections you might face (on post and off), how the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act sets your off-post lease end date, what our 49-item move-out clean includes, and how to sequence the clean against the truck.

Peak season is the problem, so start there

The Department of Defense treats May 15 through August 31 as peak moving season, and by its own count more than 65 percent of military moves land inside it, because families move between school years. Redstone Arsenal, Marshall Space Flight Center and the contractor base around them mean Huntsville feels that surge more than most cities: every mover, every property manager and every cleaner is working the same twelve weeks.

What that means for you is simple. Book the clean the week your orders are in hand, not the week the truck comes. Our rate card is the same in July as in January; calendar space is not.

Two different inspections: on post and off post

On post: Redstone Family Housing

Family housing on Redstone Arsenal is privatized and run by Hunt Military Communities as Redstone Family Housing. When you give notice, the housing office schedules your move-out inspection and issues its own cleaning standard and inspection form. That form is the list that matters: get the current copy from the housing office and work to it line by line, because the inspector will.

Redstone is a controlled-access installation, and the cleaning offer in this guide is for the off-post homes around it. If you are in Redstone Family Housing, ask the housing office what it allows before you book any outside company.

Off post: Madison County rentals

Off post it is your landlord's or property manager's walkthrough, and Alabama's deposit statute sets the rules. Under Ala. Code § 35-9A-201, the landlord has 60 days from the termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession to refund the deposit or send an itemized list of what was withheld. Both have to have happened, so if you hand back the keys before your lease actually ends, the clock starts on the later date, not the day you moved out. Normal wear and tear cannot be charged. You have to give a forwarding address in writing, so put it in the same email as your notice. A landlord who misses the 60-day window owes you double the deposit.

For a PCS family the 60 days matter more than usual: you will be at the next duty station when the refund or the deductions arrive, in no position to argue about a baseboard. Photograph every room after the clean, inside the oven and refrigerator included, and email the photos to yourself for the time stamp.

The SCRA sets your off-post lease end date

If you signed a fixed-term lease, PCS orders let you end it early under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Deliver written notice to the landlord together with a copy of your orders, by hand, by private carrier, or by mail with a return receipt. On a lease paid monthly, the lease and your rent end 30 days after the next rent due date that follows your notice, and the landlord cannot charge an early-termination fee.

Worked example: rent is due on the 1st and you give notice on May 25. The next due date is June 1, so the lease ends 30 days after that, at the start of July. You pay June's rent, and you have until then to be out, cleaned and inspected. Put the clean in the last week, after the truck.

That termination date is the real deadline. Household-goods pickup, the final walkthrough and the key return all get worked backward from it. This is general information rather than legal advice; the installation legal assistance office reviews leases and SCRA notices for service members at no charge.

What the 49-item move-out clean covers

Move-out is our most complete residential clean: 49 items, priced by square footage, from $351. It includes the things an inspector opens and a maintenance clean leaves alone:

• Inside the oven, inside the refrigerator, and the inside of the kitchen cabinets
• Baseboards hand-detailed throughout, not dusted from a distance
• Windows and blinds wet-wiped in every room, sills dusted
• Reachable ceiling fans and vents, light switches, mirrors and glass, doors and door frames
• Kitchen: stovetop, backsplash, hood exterior, microwave inside and out, countertops, sink and chrome, pantry floor and door, top of the refrigerator
• Every bathroom: shower, tub, toilet and the area around it, faucets polished, counters, ledges, cabinet exteriors
• Laundry room: outside of the washer and dryer, sink and counters; floors swept, vacuumed and mopped in every room; cobwebs gone

The full list is on the move-in/out cleaning page. Send us your lease's move-out addendum, and we will tell you on the call which of its items sit outside the 49 so nothing is assumed on either side.

What it costs, and why the number holds

Move-out cleaning starts at $351 and is priced from the home's square footage, not by the hour and not after an estimator's visit. For a standard residential home, whoever answers the phone during business hours reads the rate card and gives you a firm price on the call. That is the number billed.

It changes for exactly two reasons: you add scope after the quote, or the home was described differently at quote time (square footage, bedrooms, baths, pets). What the crew finds on arrival is not one of them. For a family trying to clear housing on a date, a number that holds is the whole point.

Every clean is done by background-checked employees covered by $2 million in liability insurance. If the inspector flags something we missed, tell us within 24 hours and we re-clean it free.

A PCS move-out timeline that fits around the truck

1. Orders in hand (four to eight weeks out): give notice under the SCRA with a copy of your orders and your forwarding address (on post, notice goes to the housing office). Call us for a price and pencil in a date: one to two weeks ahead is the floor for any move-out clean, and in peak season do all of this the same week.
2. Household-goods pickup booked: confirm the clean for the day after the packers leave. An empty house cleans faster and better than one being packed around.
3. Pickup day: walk the empty rooms and note anything the packers scuffed. That is a damage item, not a cleaning item, and you want it on record before the inspection.
4. Clean day: the crew works the 49-item list plus whatever from your lease's move-out addendum was agreed on the call.
5. Before the inspection: photograph every room, oven and refrigerator open, and email the photos to yourself.
6. Inspection and keys: off post, the landlord's 60-day clock runs from the termination of the tenancy and delivery of possession, whichever is later. Keep the written record of both dates.

Frequently Asked Questions