Hosts ask me for "a price per turnover" like it's one number. It isn't. A turnover on a Las Olas Beach studio and a turnover on a four-bedroom on the Isles with a pool and a dock are two different jobs that happen to share a name. So instead of quoting you a flat rate, here's what actually goes into the number, and how to build a guest-facing fee around it that doesn't scare people off at checkout.
The two ends of the range
Most of what we clean around here falls between two poles.
The beach condo. A studio or one-bed in one of the towers off A1A near Las Olas Beach. There are 3,600-plus condo listings in that pocket, so it's the bread and butter. One bathroom, a kitchenette, a sleeper or a queen, a small balcony. A standard turnover here is the low end of the range. The work is fast, but "fast" assumes nothing unusual, and near the beach something is usually unusual.
The waterfront house. A three or four-bed on Las Olas Isles, private dock, pool, patio furniture, sometimes an outdoor kitchen. Two or three full baths, a couple of king linen sets, and outdoor square footage that a condo just doesn't have. This is easily two to three times the condo turnover, and it should be. You're not paying for more rooms so much as more surfaces that the ocean gets to.
The local cost drivers nobody budgets for
Square footage sets the floor. These are what push it up, and they're specific to living this close to the water.
- Sand. It rides in on feet, towels, and beach bags, and it settles into grout lines, sliding-door tracks, and the ribs of every rug. Vacuuming a beach unit properly takes longer than vacuuming an inland one. On a same-day turn we're also detailing door tracks so the next guest doesn't hear the grind.
- Salt film on glass. Salt air fogs sliders, mirrors, and light fixtures faster than you'd think. A waterfront house with a wall of glass facing the Intracoastal needs that glass done every single turn or the listing photos start lying.
- The pool deck and outdoor furniture. Cushions, loungers, a dock area, an outdoor table. Wiping down and staging all of it is real labor that a lot of cleaners quietly skip, then the review mentions "dirty patio" and you eat it.
- Linen sets. Kings on the Isles versus a queen at the beach is a different laundry load and a different par-stock cost. If you want same-day back-to-backs in season, you need two or three full sets in rotation, and someone has to store, wash, and swap them.
- Rush windows. December through April, and especially spring break from late February into that mid-March peak, checkouts and check-ins stack on the same day. A same-day turn with a hard 3pm deadline costs more than a leisurely one, because I'm holding a crew for your window instead of running two calmer jobs.
One more that only bites in summer: from June through September, a unit sitting empty with the AC nudged up gets humid, and mildew shows up fast on grout and around the tub. If your place goes quiet in the rainy months, a lighter maintenance visit between bookings is cheaper than a deep mold treatment later.
Turning that into a guest-facing cleaning fee
Your cleaning fee is a pricing lever, not a passthrough. Guests already absorb roughly 13% in lodging taxes here (6% state, 1% Broward surtax, and the 6% Tourist Development Tax that Vrbo and direct bookings usually leave you to file yourself through TouristExpress), so they're rate-sensitive by the time they reach that line. A fee that's larger than a night's rate reads as a penalty and hurts conversion, especially on short stays.
What works: set the fee to recover most, not all, of a real turnover, and fold the rest into the nightly rate where it's less visible. On the beach studio that's a modest fee. On the Isles house it's meaningfully higher and guests accept it, because the property clearly justifies it. Then quietly bump the fee in peak season when same-day turns cost you more, and ease off June through September when you're discounting to fill the calendar anyway.
If you run more than one property, price each on its own turnover, not a house average. And know which rulebook each one sits under. A place in Hollywood answers to a separate city license and its own noise device, and Dania Beach and Hallandale Beach each register and tax on their own terms. The cleaning crew can be the same; the compliance and cost math is not.
Want a real number for your unit instead of a range? Tell me the neighborhood, bed and bath count, and whether there's a pool or dock, and I'll walk your listing with you. The particulars are the whole job. Fort Lauderdale STR Cleaning prices them one property at a time.