How to get your rental deposit back on Koh Samui: the move-out checklist

Most long-term rentals on Koh Samui come with a deposit, and the handover inspection decides how much of it you get back. Landlords and agents make deductions for three things: damage, unpaid bills and cleaning. You cannot clean away damage, but you can make sure cleaning is never the reason for a deduction.

What works is this: move your belongings out first, have the empty home deep cleaned against a checklist one or two days before the inspection, and keep a dated photo report. If the landlord then claims something was dirty, you have the photos.

The inspection follows much the same route almost everywhere, and the landlord or agent will open things.

• The fridge and freezer. The inside, the seal and the drawers. A fridge left shut and switched off for a day starts to smell, and in Samui's humidity mould quickly appears on the seal.
• The oven and hob. Grease on the hob and inside the oven is the most common complaint.
• Kitchen cabinets and drawers. Crumbs, ant trails, sticky shelves.
• Bathrooms. Limescale on shower glass and taps, dark grout and silicone, hair in the drains.
• Wardrobes. Empty, wiped out and free of any damp smell.
• Floors and corners. Especially behind doors and under beds.
• Glass doors and sliding tracks. Salt film near the sea, and sand and red dust in the tracks.
• The terrace. Swept, with the furniture wiped and no leaves or bottles left behind.
• Walls. Marks and scuffs around the beds, the sofa and the dining table.

Use it yourself or give it to whoever does the cleaning. It has the same focus as our move-out cleaning service.

Getting the order right matters as much as the cleaning itself.

1. Move your things out first. Packing and moving furniture spread dust and sand through every room, so a clean done before the movers is wasted.
2. Book the clean for the day after the movers, one or two days before the inspection. That leaves time to put anything right.
3. Defrost the fridge the night before, with a towel underneath.
4. Keep the water and electricity on until the clean is finished. Without them, nobody can clean properly.
5. Tell us the inspection date. If it is fixed, we plan the visit around it.

In the high season, from late December to April, and in July and August, book at least a week ahead, because the schedule fills up quickly.

Be realistic about what a clean can achieve, so the inspection holds no surprises.

• Damage: broken tiles, burns on worktops, holes in walls, stained mattresses. These need repairs.
• Mould from leaks. We remove surface mould from silicone, grout and tiles. Mould coming from inside a wall or from a roof leak will return until the leak is fixed, and that is a repair for the landlord, not a cleaning issue for you. Point it out and photograph it.
• Paint. Some marks wipe off, others need repainting. We wipe where the paint allows, but we do not repaint.
• Lease conditions. Some leases require an AC service or a garden tidy when you move out. Check yours; these are separate jobs.

Disputes over deposits usually come down to one person's word against another's. A dated photo report changes that. After a move-out clean with us, you get photos of every room on WhatsApp, including the fridge, oven, bathrooms and wardrobes, showing how the home looked when you left.

Two things help if there is a dispute:

• Dig out your move-in photos or inventory. If a stain or a crack was already there on the day you moved in, those photos show it was not your doing.
• Forward our photo report to the landlord or agent before the inspection. It sets the standard for the conversation.

To be clear, no cleaning company can guarantee your deposit, because the decision is the landlord's. What we stand behind is the checklist. If we missed something on it, tell us within 24 hours and we will come back and put it right free of charge, before the inspection if the timing allows.

A move-out clean is priced exactly like a deep clean, from 2,300 ฿. A 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom condo costs 3,300 ฿, and a 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom villa 5,000 ฿. The inside of the fridge and oven and the terrace are included, which matters because landlords always check them. The price does not depend on floor area and is the same in every part of the island. For 5 bedrooms or more, or a very large villa, we price the job from photos.

If a property has been left in a very bad state, we assess it from photos and agree the price before the visit, never on the doorstep. Work out the price of your clean:

If you are moving into a new rental, book the same clean before your boxes arrive. The wardrobes, cabinets, fridge, oven and bathrooms are clean before you put anything in them, and the photo report becomes your record of the home's condition when you moved in. When you move out a year later, it is the first thing to send the landlord.

Every clean follows a written checklist and is checked against that checklist and the photos, and you pay once you have accepted the work, in cash or by bank transfer. See how we control quality.