A guide for owners of new and nearly new homes in Fort Bend's master-planned communities, from Fulshear's fast-growing subdivisions to Sienna and Cinco Ranch: builder dust, new finishes, association rules and what a cleaning visit will and will not handle.
West of Houston, new houses are not the exception. Sugar Land itself was assembled from planned communities, Cinco Ranch and Sienna each grew into small cities of their own, and Fulshear went from a village to a city of new subdivisions in about a decade.
A new home is clean in a different way than an older one. It has fresh finishes that are easy to damage, construction dust that keeps turning up for months, and association rules the new owner is still learning. This guide covers all three.
First Colony, begun in 1977 by a consortium led by Gerald Hines, covers about 10,000 acres of Sugar Land. The city then grew by annexing more planned areas: Sugar Creek in 1986, First Colony utility districts in 1995 and 1997, Avalon in 2006 and RiverPark in 2010. Telfair followed on former state prison farm land sold in 2003.
Building has since pushed west and south. Cinco Ranch opened in 1991 and now holds about 15,098 homes. Sienna, a 10,800 acre community in Missouri City built by Johnson Development, grew from 13,721 residents in 2010 to 20,204 in 2020. Fulshear grew fastest of all, from 1,134 people in 2010 to 16,856 in 2020, an increase of about 1,386 percent.
Even after a builder's final clean, fine drywall and sawdust settles inside cabinets, on top of door frames, in window tracks and inside air conditioning returns. It keeps appearing for weeks as the system circulates it. In a hot climate where the air conditioning runs most of the year, the vents and filters are where most of it ends up.
Before unpacking, a Moving Clean is the most thorough start: it covers inside the cabinets, drawers, oven and refrigerator along with the deep clean detail work. After move-in, a One-Time Deep Clean picks up the dust that arrives with boxes and furniture. Change the air filter early and again a few weeks later.
A cleaning visit is not construction cleanup. Cleaners do not remove paint drips, grout haze, stickers baked onto glass or adhesive residue from new flooring, and they do not haul packaging, scrap lumber or leftover materials. Those belong to the builder's punch list or a construction cleanup crew. Get them done before the first house cleaning, so the visit can focus on the home itself.
Moving heavy furniture is outside every service as well. If you want floors cleaned under a large piece, move it before the visit, and leave appliance repair or servicing to the maker's technicians.
New homes often come with surfaces that are unforgiving in the first year. Treat them gently and they last.
Planned communities here usually come with deed restrictions and an association. Cinco Ranch is split between two: homes east of Katy-Gaston Road belong to the Cinco Residential Property Association, and homes west of it belong to Cinco Ranch Residential Association II. Learn which one is yours and what its deed restrictions say.
Sugar Land tells residents to store trash and recycling carts according to their HOA deed restrictions, ideally in the garage or behind fencing. Residents there choose 65 or 95 gallon carts from Republic Services, which holds the city's residential contract. A new family with a lot of moving cardboard may want the larger cart, and cleaners will put household trash into your carts where you keep them.
Many new home owners start with a Moving Clean before they unpack, then a Recurring House Clean once the house is lived in. Large new homes with several bathrooms and young families tend to do well bi-weekly. A smaller or easy-care home can be monthly. The recurring cleaning guide explains how to choose, and the move-in guide covers setting up trash, recycling and bulky pickup in a new Sugar Land home.
The questions Sugar Land homeowners ask most often about this topic, answered plainly.
TotalCare Cleaning will service Sugar Land and surrounding areas with background-checked cleaners and is insured up to $1 million. Re-clean guarantee: if we missed something, tell us by the end of the next day and we come back to fix it. Beyond Clean. TotalCare.
