House cleaning and home watch in Dunedin
Dunedin, Pinellas County. ZIP 34698.
Dunedin took a town charter in 1899 and a city charter in 1926, and the name came from two Scotsmen, J. O. Douglas and James Somerville, who opened the first post office in north Pinellas and called the place after Dun Eideann, the Gaelic name for Edinburgh. What that history left behind is a walkable downtown with no chain signage in it, a marina on St. Joseph Sound, and a residential grid that filled in street by street across a century instead of arriving as a single master plan. There is no such thing as a typical Dunedin house.
For anyone pricing a clean here, that is the whole point. The largest single build decade in 34698 is the 1970s and the 1980s is next, roughly one dwelling in eight is a manufactured home, and then there are the condominium blocks along the water and the mid-century ranch streets around the golf course. That is four different jobs sharing one town name, and it is exactly why a rate card sized by bedrooms and bathrooms beats a call-out fee: all four read off the same table without anyone inventing a surcharge on the phone.
What it costs in Dunedin
The same published rates we charge everywhere else. A three bedroom, two bathroom home every two weeks is $180, and there is no Dunedin surcharge, because there is no reason there should be one.
| Home | One time | Every 2 weeks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 bed / 1 bath | $155 | $124 |
| 2 bed / 1 bath | $175 | $140 |
| 2 bed / 2 bath | $195 | $156 |
| 3 bed / 2 bath | $225 | $180 |
| 4 bed / 3 bath | $265 | $212 |
| 5 bed / 3+ bath | $310 | $248 |
| Home | Per visit |
|---|---|
| Condo or villa, up to 1,500 sq ft | $69 a visit |
| Home, 1,501 to 2,500 sq ft | $85 a visit |
| Home, 2,501 to 3,500 sq ft | $99 a visit |
| Home, 3,501 to 5,000 sq ft | $119 a visit |
Every rate we charge, including deep cleans, move-outs, add-ons and rental turnover.
What is actually different about Dunedin
- Dunedin faces St. Joseph Sound rather than the open Gulf, with Honeymoon Island and Caladesi sitting in front of it as a barrier. That takes the edge off the surf and does nothing whatever about the salt. Window tracks, hinges, sliding door rollers and anything metal outdoors want a shorter cycle here than they do a few miles inland.
- Honeymoon Island sits at the west end of the Dunedin Causeway, and Caladesi has no road to it at all: the only ways over are the passenger ferry from Honeymoon Island or your own boat. For a household one street off the causeway the practical result is sand, and sand is abrasive rather than merely untidy, so it has to be lifted rather than pushed around.
- The Pinellas Trail runs straight through downtown on the roadbed of the old Orange Belt Railway, more than forty miles of it end to end. A house backing onto the trail takes bikes, dogs and grit at the back door as routine, so the entry and the lanai carry more weight in the checklist than they would on an inland street.
- Dunedin Golf Club is a Donald Ross course that opened on 1 January 1927, and the PGA of America ran its headquarters there from 1945 to 1962, when it went by the name PGA National Golf Club. It joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. Fairway Estates wraps around it, and those are mid-century ranch homes, mostly late 1950s through the mid 1960s.
- The median resident age in 34698 is close to fifty-eight, and at the 2020 census about a third of the city was 65 or over. That shapes the work more than it sounds like it should: more single-story homes, more fixtures to clean around in a bathroom, and more households where somebody is at home during the visit and wants a stated arrival window rather than a vague morning.
The housing stock
Four types inside one ZIP code. Mid-century ranch houses on the streets around the golf course, early 1900s and Craftsman-era homes near Edgewater Drive and downtown, waterfront and near-water condominium blocks, and manufactured homes at roughly one dwelling in eight. Single story is the common case, which shortens a deep clean, and small separate rooms are the common layout, which lengthens it again.
Getting in
Street access with a key or a lockbox for most of Dunedin, which keeps scheduling straightforward. The exceptions are the condominium buildings, where the obstacle is a fob, a lift and a front desk with its own hours rather than a gate, and the gated waterfront communities off the causeway road. Tell us the building and the access arrangement is settled at booking, not on the morning of the first visit.
Around Dunedin
These are sections of this page on purpose, not pages of their own. A separate page per neighborhood would be four words of difference each and nothing anyone needs.
- Downtown and Edgewater Drive
- Early 1900s through mid-century, walking distance to the marina and the trail, and a retail core with no chain signage in it. Original material, real wood, and small rooms with a great deal of trim in them. That means a lighter hand and more minutes per square foot, not fewer.
- Fairway Estates
- Wrapped around Dunedin Golf Club, the Donald Ross course the PGA of America used as its headquarters between 1945 and 1962. Mid-century ranch homes, mostly late 1950s to mid 1960s, single story, on larger lots than the downtown grid.
- Dunedin Isles
- Waterfront and near-water streets a short way north of downtown. Salt reaches everything on this side, so a house on a canal or on the sound is on the shorter maintenance cycle whether or not anybody is living in it that month.
- The condominium blocks along the water
- Not one community but a run of separate buildings, each with its own board, its own fob and its own front desk hours. Getting in is the entire scheduling problem here, and it gets solved once per building rather than once per town.
The year in Dunedin
Two calendars overlap here. The winter season fills the town from about January and spring training adds to it, because the Blue Jays have trained in Dunedin every spring from 1977 onward and are the only major league club never to have moved its spring home. Then it empties. A house shut up from April wants the home watch schedule; a house that takes short-term guests over the winter wants the turnover schedule; and a good many Dunedin addresses want both inside the same twelve months.
| When | What is happening | Which service |
|---|---|---|
| April and May | Closing up, before you fly north | Home watch |
| June to November | Hurricane season, and a check after a storm | Home watch |
| September and October | Opening up, and a clean before you land | Cleaning |
| October to April | Recurring cleaning while you are in the house | Cleaning |
| All year | Turnover between guests | Rental turnover |
Where you will and will not find us in Dunedin
Marginal in the map results, for the same reason Tarpon Springs is marginal: those results track a verified address and ours is in Palm Harbor, a few minutes up the road but not in Dunedin. Ordinary search results are the realistic play for this page. What it is built to do is put the Dunedin detail and the published rate in front of you without a form standing in the way first.
More detail
- House cleaning
The full checklist, what is not included, and how the first visit is priced.
- Home watch
The sample visit report, in the exact format you get after every visit.
We also work in East Lake, Palm Harbor, Tarpon Springs, Trinity, Oldsmar and Clearwater.
Questions we get asked in Dunedin
- Do you hold a City of Dunedin business tax receipt?
- No, not today. Dunedin requires one from businesses operating inside the city limits, which is a tax registration and not a judgement about the work, and Florida asks for nothing at state level for residential cleaning at all. We would rather set both of those out here than let you assume it either way.
- Our place is a condo rather than a house. Do you clean those?
- Yes, and the figure comes off the same table by bedrooms and bathrooms. What differs is getting in. Buildings here run on a fob, a lift and a front desk with set hours, and several boards want a vendor on file before a key changes hands. Give us the building name when you book and that is arranged in advance.
- We are one street off the causeway. Does the sand really make a difference?
- It does, and it is why the entry, the lanai and the sliding door tracks get their own lines in the checklist for a house on that side. Sand is abrasive. Dragged across a tile floor it dulls the surface over a season, so it gets lifted rather than pushed around, and the door tracks get done rather than skipped.
- Our house is from the 1950s. Is that harder to clean than a new build?
- Different rather than harder, and it changes what can honestly be promised. Older Dunedin stock means more separate rooms, more doors and more painted trim per square foot than an open plan of the same size, and original floors that want a specific product rather than whatever is in the caddy. Tell us what is under the carpet and what the windows are, and the walkthrough settles the rest.
Get a number for your Dunedin home
Send the bedroom and bathroom count, roughly how big the home is, and whether you want cleaning, home watch or both. You get a written figure back the same day, taken straight from the tables on this page.
Monday to Saturday, 09:00 to 18:00. Email gets answered the same day.