Guerrilla Window Cleaning

A Plymouth mum turned guerrilla window cleaner to tackle her neighbour's filthy house - because it was putting people off buying her home.

Plymouth mum turns guerrilla cleaner after neighbour's filthy window put off potential home buyers - A Plymouth mum turned guerrilla window cleaner to tackle her neighbour's filthy house - because it was putting people off buying her home. Sue Pearce had had her home on Hill Park Crescent in Plymouth on the market for eight months, and couldn't understand why it wasn't selling.

It was a remark from one potential buyer that gave her a clue, and prompted her to take action. Sue said: "We were looking to move and had had the house on the market for a good eight months, but had very little in the way of viewings. "One couple that did come to have a look around were joking with me about the appearance of next door - it has always been quite a grubby looking house - and were asking if our neighbours were ‘rough’, as they had young children and wanted a nice area.

"I don’t know why, but it ended up playing on my mind, so I thought I’d try and ask my neighbour to spruce its appearance up. "It was only that house that was REALLY bad. I wouldn’t have done it under normal circumstances. "We hadn’t talked to him much before that and I think he took it amiss as he’s elderly and didn’t want to be climbing ladders.

"In the end, I though the easiest thing was for me to just go ahead and do it myself. "It’s like that saying ‘if you want something doing…’ I think at first, my neighbour felt insulted, but it got the job done as the house is now sold. "We haven’t moved far away and actually saw him at the supermarket not so long ago and I think he sees the funny side of it now as we had a good chat."

Family friend Phillip, who owns londoncleaningsystem, said: "This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of guerrilla window cleaning. It appears to be an increasing trend in London and the surrounding areas. We just hope that it won’t grow to a point where we are all out of a job!"

Dirty Windows Are Big Turn-off For House Buyers

Dirty windows can be a big turn-off for prospective buyers.

Dirty windows? House hunters may shy away: Little things mean a lot, especially to a real estate agent who is trying to sell one listing among many. Two things that may seem little but are really not so trifling when it comes to selling a house: keeping it neat for appointments, and washing the windows.

"The marketplace is monopolized by first-time buyers as well as empty-nesters," said Mark Wade, who sells houses in Center City for Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Fox & Roach Realtors. "Both sets of buyers have one thing in common," Wade said. "They look for turnkey properties; therefore, condition is king, and a strong showing ability is the key to value in Center City."

That's true everywhere else, as well, and it has a lot to do with the way prospective buyers tour a house for sale. "People tend to spend no more than 10 to 20 minutes going through a house," said Leonore Spinelli, an agent with Century 21 Alliance in Moorestown who is a residential interior designer and "virtual stager." "They are looking at the space and flow of the home," Spinelli said. "If the house is well-kept overall, they may not notice that windows that have not been cleaned recently."

But, she added, "cobwebs, bugs in windows, and dirty screens may be indications that the home has not been cared for in other areas. These are peeves of mine when showing a home." Marilou Buffum, associate broker with BHHS Fox & Roach Realtors in Chestnut Hill, said she doesn't notice windows "unless they are awful." However, "the difference between clean and not clean is dramatic," she said.

Clean windows are most important in the fall, when the colors of the leaves shine through and "you can see that they are dirty," Buffum said. Dominik Palaszewski is "chief cleaning officer" of Sofian Cleaning Services L.L.C. in Philadelphia, which he and his wife started 11 years ago as a house cleaning service, "but we were finding great demand for window-washing, so we added it on to the business."

Sofian has a special program for real estate agents for cleaning and maintaining listings while they are on the market, Palaszewski said. Windows should be washed at least twice a year, he said. In the high-rise condominiums of Center City, that is the usual routine, area agents said. Yet twice a year is rare for most houses. Windows in the city tend to get very dirty from dust, grit, and vehicle exhaust, while at properties with many trees pollen gets stuck to windows and makes them tough to clean, Palaszewski said.

Joanne Davidow, vice president of BHHS Fox & Roach and manager of the Rittenhouse Hotel office, said keeping old windows clean can be a chore. If you can't replace your windows, make sure they operate properly, Davidow said, because buyers demand that even older double-hung models work.

If a client has old windows, Lisa Fazio of Weichert Realtors in Jenkintown said, "I open and close every [one] so a home inspector won't pick it up, even though a window painted shut is considered a cosmetic item."

To wash windows, Palaszewski said, he and his crew often must use a knife to break through layers of paint that have been applied over the years. Not only does he wash the windows inside and out, but he cleans the frames and the bottom ledge, which tends to get the dirtiest, routinely. Storm windows are washed, as well, he said, and the screens are cleaned, too.

A rambling house with 30 double-hung windows and storms will take a full day to clean, while the same number of new windows will take half a day, he said. Sofian charges $8 for a new window, $12 to $15 for a double-hung, Palaszewski said, adding that his prices "are pretty standard."

One Hundred Thousand Spent... And Still - Dirty Windows

What's that? Yes, we did say window-washing. Over one hundred thousand dollars spent in legal fees, all over window washing.

Tripping on Stipulations: A Condo Board Tries to Game the Bylaws ... and Fails: Don't count your bylaw amendments before they're hatched, and watch out when attorneys suggest an end-run around homeowners trying to stick to their rights. So go, at least, the lessons in a recent case involving an Upper East Side condominium board — which lost a lawsuit against a unit-owner over the crucial, critical, monumental issue of window-washing, then won a malpractice case against its own attorneys.

What's that? Yes, we did say window-washing. Over one hundred thousand dollars spent in legal fees, all over window washing.

In 2005, the condo board of Bridge Tower Place Condominium — a 38-story luxury high-rise at 401 East 60th Street, designed by Costas Kondylis and completed in 2000 — sought access to the wraparound terrace of the building's sole penthouse. The board said it wanted to install a scaffold to perform inspection and make repairs, and apartment-owner Robert J. Luzzi  — then the executive vice president and chief marketing/creative director with the fashion retailer New York & Company and now chief marketing officer of Ann Taylor Stores — said OK.

At about the same time, however, unit-owners were lobbying the board to undertake a building-wide window-washing project. The board determined that the easiest and most economical way to do this was to use the scaffolding already installed on Luzzi's terrace.

Gotta Know When to Scaffold 'Em - Not so fast, said Luzzi — and with the board evidently standing fast, he filed a lawsuit against the condominium in June 2006 seeking to permanently forbid the board from using his terrace as a scaffolding hang for washing the building's windows. He also sought a declaration that he was not required to grant such access.

The board hired the law firm Starr Associates, which assigned attorneys Evan Schieber (no longer with the firm) and Andrea L. Roschelle . The attorneys arranged for a "stipulation" — an agreement between attorneys, with the clients' permissions, designed to simplify litigation — that said the condominium would not perform any window washing from Luzzi's terrace and would allow the board to amend the bylaws in the future to provide that unit-owners could not deny the board access for window-washing purposes. The apparent plan, said the court in Board of Mgrs. of Bridge Tower Place Condominium v. Starr Assoc., LLP, "was that the stipulated injunction would be temporary, until the By-Laws could be amended."

Bridge Tower Place, luxury condominium (38 stories, 219 apartments) with... dirty windows.

Tricky thing about words and wording, though: The stipulation said that the condominium "is permanently enjoined from erecting scaffolding or any other form of access to the Premises … for purposes of exterior window washing …"  It also said, however that "[n]othing contained in this stipulation is intended or shall be construed to limit or impair the parties' right or obligations under the condominium's declaration and by-laws…," which the court said both the board and Starr Associates took to mean "that the Stipulation would accomplish the Condominium's goal of using Luzzi's terrace as an anchor for scaffolding that would allow the Condominium to wash the exterior windows of the building." Both Schieber and the attorney for Luzzi signed off on it.

On the Amend: So the condo board went ahead and amended its bylaws in October 2006 to allow it access from Luzzi's terrace in order to wash the windows. All well and good, right?

Wrong. Funny thing about that stipulation phrase "permanently enjoined": It seemed to say that the board was enjoined (i.e., prohibited) permanently (i.e., permanently) from erecting scaffolding on Luzzi's terrace for the purposes of window washing.

That's how Luzzi saw it when he again denied the board access to his terrace for window-washing purposes. And that's how New York Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse saw it, too, in May 2007 when he denied the board's motion for window-washing access. In fact, DeGrasse issued a permanent injunction against it. There's that tricky word again - "permanent." The appeals court, the state's highest, affirmed the ruling in June 2008.

Long story short, the condo board hired private-practice attorney David Bolton to suit Starr Associates for malpractice for "failing to obtain the intended purpose of the Stipulation." Starr blamed it on "the vagaries of the courts" and, anyway, they didn't "guarantee" the stipulation would produce any particular result.

But as Judge Melvin L. Schweitzer wrote in his Dec. 12, 2012, decision granting the condo board summary judgment against the attorneys, "This argument is specious. Defendants clearly believed that they had procured the sought-after result, and the Condominium was reasonable in believing that such was the case. Defendants' contention that the fault is with the courts for coming to a wrong conclusion concerning the wording of the Stipulation is equally specious."

Lesson for lawyers: Probably not a good idea to say it's all the judge's fault. And Starr tried to blame condo-board president Andrew Margulis, a lawyer himself, as well, saying Margulis was micromanaging. The court found no evidence of that, and in fact cited the last e-mail exchange between Margulis and Starr attorney Schieber, in which Schieber said Luzzi's counsel "has made all of my requested changes. I am signing and returning it to him — unless you have an issue." Margulis responded, "That's fine. I'll leave it to your judgment." As the court wrote, "[D]efendants' choice to blame Margulis and the Condominium for their own failings is unfortunate, to say the least."

Lessons for condo and co-op boards: Watch out for that word "permanently." And don't try to change the rules midstream, especially when doing so targets one homeowner specifically, unless there is seriously no other choice for the good of the condo or co-op. After all, and here's a new mantra to remember, there's more than one way to wash a window.

The Windows That Couldn't Be Washed Are Getting A Clean

The curved bank of windows on the front of the Dane County Courthouse has not been cleaned since the building opened in 2006. The county has decided they will be cleaned by a Milwaukee contractor.

Remember this? The Windows That Can't Be Washed.

After five years, filthy courthouse windows to get a wash: More than five years after they were installed, the curved bank of windows on the front of the Dane County Courthouse will get their first cleaning. And it couldn’t come a moment too soon. The windows, now opaque due to dust, grime, bird droppings, cobwebs and other filth, have proven difficult to clean in lean budget times but will finally be washed by a Milwaukee window cleaning contractor, said Dane County Director of Administration Travis Myren.

Because of the design of the courthouse, the windows can’t be reached using a standard window cleaner’s platform. Myren said he doesn’t know when the cleaning will happen, but it will probably be on a Sunday because a boom truck will likely have to be parked in front of the courthouse on South Hamilton Street, blocking some traffic. The contractor, Al’s Window Cleaning, will be paid $3,600 to clean the windows. Myren said the money comes from putting off cleaning other county windows.

District Court Administrator Gail Richardson contained her delight about the upcoming cleaning. “Yes, I’m very pleased to know that the Department of Administration has found a contractor who can and will clean the front windows,” Richardson said. But as to whether the next cleaning will take another five years, Myren wouldn’t make predictions. “Unfortunately I don’t know what the budgets are going to look like next year or the following year,” Myren said. “We’re limited to providing cleaning projects with the funds we have available.”

Two years a go when they needed cleaning then. Spot the difference.

Sainsburys Offer Free Window Cleaning

Residents plagued by 10 months of dust offered window cleaner as compensation: UK supermarket giant Sainsbury's is compensating dozens of residents plagued by 10 months of noise and dust from the building of a new store – by paying for a window cleaner. More than 40 residents will have their windows cleaned as a 'goodwill gesture' before the opening of the firm's Newcastle store on November 3. But families whose Ashfields New Road homes back on to the development have been left insulted by the offer of a window-cleaner. They had expected hundreds of pounds of Sainsbury's vouchers after putting up with noise and dust from the building site for months.

Monica and Peter Wainwright (pictured) considered putting their two-bedroom terrace home up for sale after 43 years living in the street because of the disruption. Retired teacher Mrs Wainwright, aged 65, said: "We have completely lost a summer as we haven't been able to sit outside – nobody can give us that back. "I have cleaned the windows twice myself because they were so dirty you couldn't see through them. "Sainsbury's has said the window cleaning is the final offer and we have not even had an apology. "I don't want to stand in the way of progress but to be offered something worth £5 for what we have been through is horrendous."

The new Sainsbury's is being built on the former Newcastle College site. Retired gardener Mr Wainwright, aged 69, said: "This is an insult. I won't be shopping in the new Sainsbury's store even though it's next door. I'd rather go to Morrisons. "We had no trouble living next to the college. The only noise was when the students were coming in, dinner time or at going home time. But that was during the day and Sainsbury's will be open from 7am to 11pm." 

 Alan Rushton, who has lived in Ashfields New Road for 10 years, today labelled the window-cleaning offer as "derisory". The 59-year-old, who runs an electrical supplies shop, said: "I shall have the windows cleaned and I want the frames doing because they are filthy. We have had a lot of dirt and dust and we couldn't use our garden all summer because of it." Sylvia Butler, chairman of Ashfields New Road Residents' Association, lives on the opposite side of the road and has called in Newcastle MP Paul Farrelly. She said: "These people have had to put up with so much. It would have been nice for Sainsbury's to offer them at least a week's worth of free groceries."

Residents can expect their free window-cleaning service over the next fortnight. A letter to residents from Sainsbury's project manager Gary Mudge, below left, states: "Sainsbury's would like to offer you the opportunity to have your windows cleaned free of charge. "We are arranging for a window-cleaner to visit the properties in close proximity to the site to carry out window cleaning." In a statement to The Sentinel, Mr Mudge added: "Dirty windows was the most common complaint. "We believe window-cleaning is the fairest way to offer a goodwill gesture to those directly affected. "So far a large number of residents have taken us up on this offer."

Dirty Houses Don't Sell

Dirty houses don't sell: We just showed a few homes in Dunwoody today to a buyer and what we heard just reinforced what we already knew - dirty houses don't sell. Nobody likes to walk into a house that smells, is dirty, has cobwebs, grease on the kitchen counters, the carpeting is stained, moldy grout in the baths, and you can't see through the windows...

When a home is not clean, it distracts the buyer from noticing what counts - the best selling features aren't even noticed - floor plan, square footage, design elements - because the buyer is fixated on the dirt and the unpleasant odors and just can't get past it.

By far, when preparing a home for sale, the best money invested is with a professional cleaning service. Everything needs to be super clean - starting with the kitchen, including the refrigerator, onto the baths, including the grout, the floors and baseboards, the ceiling fans, window treatments - especially when the curtains hold all sorts of odors - from smoke to pets...

According to the National Association of Realtors, buyers are used to seeing as much as 25 percent of available inventory as new. Brand new means clean. That's the competition, and the closer the home owner / seller can get the buyer to think of the house as new, the likelier the property will sell.

More than 33 percent of home buyers prefer a home less than 10 years old, yet the typical home purchased by all buyers is 12 years of age. This tells us that condition is very very important. And if you take a community like Dunwoody, where the average age of a home is 30 plus years, there could be a lot of layers of potential dirt to be dealt with in order to make a home to feel fresh and clean. So here's the ROI... for every dollar spent on cleaning could mean thousands kept as equity...and who doesn't want to get the most amount possible on the sale of their home?

Hospitals Windows Not Cleaned For 14 Months

AN MSP hit out last night after learning a hospital’s windows have not been washed for 14 months. Mary Scanlon called for an urgent clean-up at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, where the frames are so filthy a visitor thought they were frosted And the Tory slammed NHS Highland after they admitted the last window-wash was in May 2008. She said: “The Government claims combating hospital infections is the top priority, yet there seems little point if the windows are not cleaned for over a year. “If the windows are filthy, you have to ask yourself what else is.” Visitor Chic Henderson, 63, was disgusted to see the grime-covered frames at Raigmore. He said: “They were so dirty they looked like they had been frosted.” An NHS spokeswoman said most windows at the hospital will not be cleaned for another two months. She added: “It’s specialist companies that are used to clean the inside and outside.