Where the facts come from
Renting rules come from the regulators and the law in each state: Consumer Affairs Victoria, the NSW Government, Queensland's Residential Tenancies Authority, Consumer Protection in WA, the ACT Government's Renting Book and each state's legislation website.
Safety lines come from health departments and workplace safety regulators, such as the Better Health Channel, NSW Health, SafeWork NSW and WorkSafe Victoria. Housing and renter figures come from the 2021 Census, and we name the area each figure covers.
Every fact is recorded with the page it came from and the date it was read. When a page uses one, that source goes in the list at the foot, so you can read the original for yourself.
When the official page won't open
Some official sites wouldn't load when we checked them. South Australia's renting facts come from the Legal Services Commission's Law Handbook, and what we say about professional cleaning in Tasmania comes from the Tenants' Union of Tasmania. On those pages we name who said it, so you can weigh it up.
Rules we write by
- A state's rule stays in that state. Bond limits, deadlines and the words for landlords and tenants all differ, so we never borrow one state's rule for another.
- The law sets a standard for how clean a rental has to be, and that's what we report. We never say a renter has to hire a professional, except in the narrow cases a state's own rules set out.
- No prices for cleaning. A business quotes once it understands the job.
- No promises about outcomes. A clean can't decide an inspection or a bond refund, and we don't pretend it can.
- Safety lines say what not to do and when to get a specialist, and they stay close to the health or safety source.
- Fumigation is pest control, so we never list it as a cleaning job.
- Dates travel with the rule. When a law starts on a set date, the page names the date and the state.
Gaps we've left on purpose
WA and NT law doesn't address a lease term asking for a professional clean when there's no pet, so our pages report that and stop. We couldn't open the NSW Act itself when we checked, so our NSW pages work from the standard tenancy agreement and NSW Government pages, without section numbers from the Act.
Where a rule isn't clear, it stays a gap. We don't fill it from memory or from another website.
Who writes the pages
Pages are written by the Cleaner Scout team and checked against their sources before they go up. We're not cleaners or lawyers, and nothing here is legal advice. For a decision about your own tenancy, ask your state's renting authority.
Reviews and job photos come only from cleaning businesses in the Cleaner Scout network that have given their OK, and they're shown without names, faces, vans or addresses.
Some photos here are illustrations made with an AI image tool. None shows a real job or a business in our network.
When a rule changes
When a rule changes, the page is corrected and its date changes. Rules pages show the date they were last checked, and if a regulator updates its own page, that's the version we follow.