Karim set up a one-person cleaning business in Bayonne. He has a second-hand floor machine, a van and two clients who came by word of mouth. What he wants to know now is how to find cleaning contracts that last, with professional clients: building lobbies, physiotherapy practices, small offices. The sites he has read suggest paying to receive quote requests, joining a franchise or downloading a contract template. All useful, but none of them tells him who to call on Monday morning. This page starts there: which tool finds which client, what it really contains, and what it costs once everything is counted.
The short answer. To find cleaning contracts that come back every month, start with the common areas of apartment buildings. In France that contract is signed by the building's managing agent (the syndic), and the list of managing agents is public and free. In Bayonne, according to the national register of co-owned buildings kept by Anah, the French housing agency (file of 5 October 2026), 736 co-owned buildings are run by a professional managing agent, and those 736 buildings are held by 49 firms. Forty-nine doors to knock on, not 736. The same file gives the size of every building, so you know where to start.
Which tool for which contract
You do not look for a cleaning contract in the same place for every kind of premises. Four families of clients, four lists, all of them open without buying anything.
| Premises to clean | Who signs | Where the list is | What it gives you | What is left to do |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common areas of an apartment building | The managing agent, on behalf of the co-owners | Register of co-owned buildings (Anah, on data.gouv.fr) | Name and company number of the agent, address of every building, number of units | Find the firm's phone number or email |
| Health practices | The practitioner or the practice manager | Google Maps listings | Name, address, phone, website, opening hours | Group the practitioners who share the same premises |
| Offices and shops | The manager | Google Maps listings | Name, address, phone, website, opening hours | Set aside chains whose cleaning is decided at head office |
| Public buildings | The local authority, after a tender | Public procurement notices | Specifications and deadline | Put together a bid |
The last row is a different trade: contracts for schools and town halls go through published notices, in France notably the official bulletin of public procurement notices (BOAMP), and require a full bid file. The first three can be worked this week, with a spreadsheet and a phone.
Bayonne, counted on 5 October 2026: 49 doors for 736 buildings
The register of co-owned buildings is a file that every managing agent must keep up to date for the buildings it runs. Anah publishes all of it on data.gouv.fr, refreshed daily, downloadable without an account. We opened the file of 5 October 2026 and counted what it says for a single town, Bayonne.
- 1,446 co-owned buildings are registered there. 736 declare a professional managing agent, all with a current mandate.
- Those 736 buildings are spread across 49 distinct managing agent establishments, each identified by its SIRET company number.
- The largest firm alone holds 87. The top ten hold 494, or 67.1%. The top twenty hold 642, or 87.2%.
- At the other end of the list, 13 agents run a single building in the town.
In other words, ten good conversations put you in front of two out of three Bayonne buildings that have a professional managing agent. A quote platform will not tell you that: its job is to pass on requests from clients who come forward. The register hands you the full map before the first call.
Second lesson: of those 49 firms, only 6 declare an address in Bayonne. Ten are in Anglet, nine in Biarritz, the rest in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Pau, Hendaye or further away. Searching a map for "managing agent Bayonne" therefore misses most of the firms that decide for the town's buildings. One caveat: the address in the register is the one the agent declared, and a national network may have a local branch that does not appear there.
The recipe works for any French town. Across the whole country, the same file counts 318,891 co-owned buildings with a professional managing agent, run by 4,669 establishments. To read the file column by column and filter it on your town, see our page on the French managing agent database. If you work in another country, the question to ask is the same: who signs for the building, and does a public body publish that list?
Building size tells you where to start
For every building the register gives the number of main units, meaning homes, offices and shops, without cellars or parking spaces. That is enough to estimate the work before you travel. Here is the breakdown of Bayonne's 736 buildings with a professional managing agent, in the file of 5 October 2026.
| Building size | Number of buildings |
|---|---|
| 1 to 10 units | 308 |
| 11 to 20 units | 152 |
| 21 to 50 units | 177 |
| 51 to 100 units | 72 |
| 101 to 200 units | 23 |
| More than 200 units | 4 |
The median building has 13 units, and 460 buildings out of 736 (62.5%) have 20 or fewer. That is good news when you start alone: a lobby, a stairwell, a bin room is a job one person can hold without a team. The 27 blocks with more than 100 units need staff and equipment; they can wait.
In practice, sort your file by managing agent, then by number of units. You go into the call knowing how many buildings the firm runs in Bayonne and how many have fewer than twenty units, and you ask for a scope you can actually deliver.
That leaves 710 buildings outside this count: 118 declare a volunteer managing agent and 592 do not state the type of agent. There is no firm to call there: a letter addressed to the co-owners' association, at the building's address, remains the clean route.
Practices, offices, shops: the public listing is your list
For other professional premises, the most practical source is the Google Maps listing, which each business fills in itself: name, address, phone, website when there is one, opening hours. The phone number is there as soon as the business has entered it, with no go-between.
The most useful point for you is elsewhere. A cleaning contract is signed per premises, not per practitioner, and in a shared practice each practitioner can have a separate listing at the same address. So sort your list by address and group the listings that share the walls. Your real list is counted in premises, and the addresses where several practitioners work come first: one visit, several rooms.
That is the job done by an extraction of Google Maps listings with CSV export: you pick an area and a set of trades, you get a table with name, address, phone and website, and you sort it by address in your spreadsheet.
The email address is not on the listing: it is on the business's own website, when there is one. Be careful: the website shown is sometimes an online booking page, not the practice's own site. For the others, you can look up the email address published on the site instead of guessing it. Look at the number too: in France, one that starts with 06 or 07 is a mobile line, not a switchboard.
What a client list really costs
The register and public listings are paid for in hours. Market solutions work the other way round, and each has its logic.
- Quote request platforms. Their strength: the client is already looking. Their model: you pay per request received or by subscription, and the same request may go to several companies. The real cost is measured in requests paid for per contract signed.
- Files sold by the line. Their strength: ready at once, in the right format. Their model: every line counts, duplicates included. In a shared practice, that means one line per practitioner for a single premises to clean.
- Subscription and credit tools. Their strength: fine filters and refreshed data. Their model: the subscription also runs during the months when you are on site and calling nobody.
- Public sources. Their strength: you know where each line comes from and on what date. Their cost: the time to download, filter and remove duplicates.
In every case, three things make up the final bill: duplicates, email addresses that no longer answer, and the time spent putting the file back in order. If you write to managing agents rather than call them, one check is worth doing before you send: make sure your emails land in the inbox and not in spam.
The first contact: ask to be consulted
You do not sell a contract to a managing agent over the phone. Cleaning the common areas is a contract of the co-owned building, which the agent signs on its behalf. French law (article 21 of the act of 10 July 1965) provides that the co-owners' general meeting sets an amount above which several companies must be put in competition. So the property manager regularly needs names to consult.
Your request comes down to three points: speak to the manager who looks after the Bayonne buildings, tell them the size of job you take, and ask to be added to the companies consulted the next time a cleaning contract is put back on the table. Note the date and the answer in your spreadsheet, firm by firm. With 49 lines, the follow-up fits on one page.
What you are allowed to do with these contact details
The register of co-owned buildings is published under France's Open Licence 2.0: you may reuse it for your business, provided you cite the source and the date of the file. For the contact itself, the French data protection authority, the CNIL (page in French), sets out the rule between professionals under GDPR: you may write to a professional without prior consent if your message relates to their occupation, as long as you inform them and give them a simple way to refuse. Generic addresses such as contact@ are not covered by those rules.
For the phone, since 11 August 2026, cold calling consumers is banned in France without prior agreement (Service Public, updated 11 August 2026, in French). A managing agent reached on its switchboard about the buildings it runs is a company. A practitioner reached on a mobile is an individual, and the line is less clear. When in doubt, send a letter or drop by the practice.
Frequently asked questions
How do you get cleaning contracts when you start on your own?
By aiming at buildings your size. In Bayonne, 460 of the 736 buildings with a professional managing agent have 20 units or fewer (Anah file of 5 October 2026). Ask agents for that precise scope rather than for a contract in general.
Does the register give the managing agent's phone number?
No. It gives the agent's company name, SIRET number, activity code and declared town, then the address and number of units of each building. The phone number is then found on the firm's Google Maps listing or website, starting from its company name.
Should you call the large agents first, or the small ones?
Both. The top ten firms hold 67.1% of Bayonne's buildings with a professional managing agent: that is where the volume is. The 13 agents that run a single building in the town can be reached in thirteen short calls, and a manager based far from the town may need a local name.
How do you win public cleaning contracts?
By answering the notices published by public bodies, which in France you can read on the BOAMP. It is a separate process that requires a bid file.
Does the method work outside Bayonne?
Yes, anywhere in France. The file covers the whole country: filter it on the name of your town and run the count again. The number of agents and the spread of sizes change from one town to the next, which is why it pays to count before you call.
For the full picture, see all the guides for building a targeted list without buying one.