A move-out walkthrough is not a judgment on how you lived. It is a checklist, and it is roughly the same checklist every time. Knowing what is on it is most of the work.
It usually starts in the kitchen, because that is where the money is. Inside the oven, including the racks and the glass in the door. Inside and underneath the refrigerator, which almost everybody forgets to pull out. Inside every cabinet and drawer, wiped after they are emptied, not before. The range hood filter. The dishwasher seal. Counters, backsplash, and the sink drain.
Bathrooms come next, and the failures there are almost always hard water and grout: the ring at the base of the faucet, the film on the shower glass, the darker line where tile meets tub. Then the whole unit gets checked for the things people stop seeing after a year of living there — scuffs along the hallway walls, nail holes, dust on top of the doors, blinds, vent covers, window tracks, and the light fixtures with insects in them.
Two pieces of timing advice. Clean after the unit is empty, never around the last few boxes, because furniture hides exactly the marks a walkthrough is looking for. And book it for the day before your keys are due, not the morning of, so there is room to fix whatever turns up. If you would rather hand the whole thing off, a move-out clean is quoted as its own job with the appliance interiors itemized, so you know before the walkthrough that the list has been covered.
