[giftedk]

I am about to go out and canvass some million and half pound houses, but am wondering what tocharge as im a bit shy on my pricing. Whats the most any of you charge and any advice on qouting for these please?

[NWH]

This sounds a bit fishy to me,i don`t suppose your the bloke that lives in that house are you and looking to see if your getting ripped off.

[groundhog]

They would be poor people in my area if their houses are only worth 1.5 million!!!!!!   Seriously though in my opinion you should canvass a high number of houses and charge as much as you think is possible to achieve, if everyone is accepting your prices you are pricing way too low!!! I only expect to get about 40% of the houses I quote for and I am a good salesman, but I price high!

[mark dew]

Sorry ths isn't much help but it is a bit like asking how long a piece of string is.
Unless you are planning to add a 'rich tax' or something i can't see any difference to pricing up one of these houses or a 3 bed semi.
How many windows and what type? Multiply by your rate per window.
Make sure you round the price up though and not down and don't discount because there are more windows than normal.

[Spiceworld]

I got shot down a few days ago for this - but as you are asking:

A WINDOW IS A WINDOW

Why does everyone feel the need to charge more because the house costs more

I'm with mark dew. You will make your money by the extra windows the house has and probably keep the job by not RIPPING THEM OFF.

Just my thoughts 

[giftedk]

This sounds a bit fishy to me,i don`t suppose your the bloke that lives in that house are you and looking to see if your getting ripped off.


nope i wish i was the bloke living in that house, do many window cleaners live in them price house ? lol.

[groundhog]

More than you would think!

[Trevor Knight]

I would advise on houses of this size it is always, in my opinion, better to write to them. Generally speaking, only from experience, you have to get through the electric gate or intercom which really is hard to do.

People in these houses are more cautious about somebody walking around thier property.

I find a letter of introduction enclosing references and insurance certificates helps create a warmer introduction and is always a bit better received than just knocking on their doors?

Still, its each to their own.

I know I prefer to have a letter first than people keep hitting my buzzer on the gate 

[East coast window cleaning Services]

heres my biggest one 5 millions worth

http://www.cleanitup.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=39604.0

[mgba_78]

Lately we have been pricing up loads of big houses, £500k up to £3 million, houses with lots of windows and lets face it bigger houses have more windows, we work it out by time.

Our biggest house the £3 million pound jobbie was done on this principle and we priced it at a day rate of £270, based on 2 men. Customer was happy we were happy.
6 months on we have now got it down to an art form and can knock the house out in 5-6 hours which still leaves enough time for a few more jobs after this is done, nice £££, what we also did was as we got it done quicker than we expected was reduced the price to £240, customer was well chuffed and i think this has acted as a nice bit of PR, remember, she will have friends who also have nice big houses   nothing better than a recommendation!

What we do is look at each wall or section of windows and work out how long it will take, do this all the way round add up totals, we do tend to be a little generous on times, not overly but a bit. Then times it by our hourly rate, easy.
We have done this on the last 6-7 big houses and got every job!!

Its also worth reminding the customer that they do have a lot of windows, we always add the "your house is lovely" touch which they like!

I wouldnt over price just as its a massive house remember big house = big mortgage so its all relative.

Hope that helps

[Easyclean Windows]

i used to do a 6 million pound house 1 day all lead glass in and out £200

[Tosh]

I do a couple of posh properties, but on one with electric gates, indoor swimming pool; stables for 8 horses; underfloor heating; flushing toilets... etc.

But there's not that many windows considering its size; it's like a big bungalow; about 40 windows, so I charge £1.00 per window and added an extra £20 'cos they're loaded and found me by recommendation.   

£60.00 for Wor Lass and I for 90 minutes work.  I wish all my accounts were as nice as this one.

[EasyClean]

I cleaned a £6million house (manager of the pop group Duran Duran) in the pooring rain along with all the others today and told them I won't be cleaning it in the future if they let their vicious dogs out again whilst I'm cleaning their windows because one of them tried to go for me. Personally I don't care how big the house is or worth, I price them all fairly (no rich mans tax) and treat them all the same-(FAIR)!

[Clive McDonald]

I've got one similar tosh(only one), this guys multi.
Walks me round property says you will do it every four weeks and insides every three months (I hadn't given him a price). Anyway it was all a bit quick, I didn't look properly, and I said "outsides £35".

He said "you can't possibly do it for that you'll go skint."
After some haggleing we agreed on £60, and £100 for the insides. He also insists on paying cash,

[groundhog]

mgba, why lower your price when the customer has agreed to it, crazy way to go about business if you ask me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :

[Pat Purcell]

Almost all of our domestic jobs are Hi-end homes, Its just the nature of the beast over here , window cleaning is expensive so its mostly well -to-do people pay for professional window cleaning
For people who are well off, while its important to them that the job be done right its equally as imoportant that they trust the person doing the job
When you get the chance to price an expensive property ask your self the question, Why are YOU there? and not any of the other window cleaners around your area
Its usually because of a referral from another customer who you have done a good job for and proved yourself trustworthy and honest
So in all likelyhood barring your price being way over the top you all ready have the job
I wouldn't call it a rich tax more of a self confidence tax

[Ian_Giles]

For the most part, to ,me anyway, the price of the house is irrelevant, around here there are a great many million pound plus houses, hell 100m from me a neighbour has just sold her house for £234k...not a million is it? But it's a small house, just a 2 bed terrace in truth with just enough room to park her car!

If I do a price for some little old granny on a state  pension I'll do my best to keep the price very tight, I'm well aware that just 50p will make a difference to her.

On a large, well to do house then it will be at the other end of my charging scale so to speak.
I do one house that were it sold it would be well in access of 500k, possibly more than a million...I charge them £25.00, 3 floors all georgian windows, front only - 20 windows with an average of 12 quite large georgian panes per window - I'm there and gone in 20 minutes.
Were it some little old granny in there living on a state pension I'd be a fiver cheaper is all.

Yesterday I priced up a huge building, a private nursing home.
I walked around it a few times as I puzzled out how best to price it up, I would normally break it down into £1.00 segments, but there were only about 80 such segments...£80 would be ridiculously cheap though...

So I did as someone said here in an earlier reply, I broke the building down into separate sections instead and asked myself "How much would I want for this chunk?"
So I priced it in £15 to £25 chunks, it still only came out at £150 tops, so I added an extra £50 for good measure, unofficially I've got the job, hopefully it will be no more than a few hours work.

Not got time now, but I'll stick the photo's i took of it on here...

I priced this self same place up with tosh some little while ago, at that point they wanted inside and out done and they found the price too tasty for them!

If this place was a private house, owned by some mega rich millionaire I'd probably be charging another £50 on top again.
Nursing homes are on a budget, can be hard to get a top price, cheapest gets and so on.
when you look at the building you have an impression of a vast amount of windows so you know instinctively that you are going to be able to charge a considerable amount of money to do the job.

On other houses that may be in the million pound plus bracket, they may not necessarily have huge amounts of windows, and again, instinctively you'll know at a glance that it'll be perhaps 30 or 40 minutes work.

Just like another window cleaner who is a friend of mine does, I've now started charging a £1.00 a minute per minute worked (think about it)

On expensive properties, this seems to work well.

I'm not talking about what you may perceive as your hourly rate, thats a very different thing.

time I was at work...

Ian

[Alex Gardiner]

Value of the house is usually irrelevant as in our area we cover holiday villages where a 4 bed detached house is worth £1 million but the same house 15 miles away goes for £190,000 so you have to just work out a fair price.

Our most expensive house we do is worth £80 million (stately home) it does not really matter what we charge as they only want us to do the job due to trust issues. We first quoted for this job on a daily rate and agreed that we would do a third of the property each time we visited so many times a year. We have kept the price the same now for 8 years but our days work has changed from 7 hours to 2 hours with WFP.

[mgba_78]

mgba, why lower your price when the customer has agreed to it, crazy way to go about business if you ask me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :

We dont want to seem like we are taking the pee, we thought it would take all day and it didnt, also as i said it is a good piece of PR.

We are happy to earn £240 for 5 hours work with no travelling (not that crazy is it), we tend to price at £40 per hour for 2 men so by our standards it still is over priced!!!!

We do not ever lower our price once quoted, EVER!

Its just we were way over price compared to the last cleaners but they did do a crap job, for the sake of £30 I feel we have done the right thing and the customer was well happy to say the least.

[Londoner]

We have a lot of big and very expensive houses round here but I don't do them. A lot of them are difficult customers and they are no mugs. Thats how they got the big houses in the first place.