I provide my tenant a refrig as a convience/courtesy; if it breaks it’s soley my discretion if I want to replace it – otherwise it’s on the tenant.
My tenant finally left for good today, I decided to pull up the carpet and determined the entire house needs to be re-carpeted (cat/dog urine stains).
Of course he (tenant) is denying any damage from his pets and blaming me.
He stated he spoke with an attorney who told him that I would have to prove a pet never was in the house prior to the tenants occupancy.
How do I prove I never has an animal in the house (which is the case)? (sorry for the thread hi jack)[/quote]
So I now manage about 70 units.
1: Re Fridge:
If the fridge is an advertised amenity, keeping it in good repair is not discretionary.
If you have a special agreement that puts that particular repair on the tenant, you might get away with this strategy but I wouldn’t bet on it holding up. Also, its pointless. The repair bills on these are cheap (pm me if you need info) and cost to rent for not having a functioning fridge is huge.
2: Re Carpet:
Carpet has a useful life of 5 years. If its older than that, you will have a hard time proving any damages even with photos. If you pulled the carpet up yourself to look at the pad and subfloor, then you already incurred the cost of re-stretching yourself through your inspection. That cost responsibility is squarely on you. And that is usually the largest component of my re-carpeting costs. Do the math. If the carpet was new and the tenant usage time was only 6 months, then follow him for the replacement costs minus 10% of useful life minus some amount for the stretching.
However, in the future, get the cheap neutral stuff at Lowes and collect a larger deposit for the pet.
