Tenant Responsibilities

[AnnaSC]

South Carolina - My husband and I recently vacated a home that we had been renting for over 2 years. During our time there, we had repainted the living room, dining room, hallway, and one of the bedrooms to more neutral colors. Also while we were there, there was a severe water leak under the house caused by a leaking pipe that was fixed by a previous tenant which caused mold in a back closet and some swelling of the hardwood floors. Now, when we got ready to move out, we gave a 30 day notice since we had been residing with no lease for over a year, then brought in two different people to clean up the house - one after the movers pulled the majority of everything out, and then another when we finally had everything out. We patched all the nail holes in the walls and left the touch up paints in case there was anything we missed. When we handed over the keys the house was clean and smelled of cleaner. I get a call from the landlord two days after we leave saying that the baseboards and ceiling fans were dirty - which I know where wiped down because I went back and touched up a few places, and then that the house had a smell that he attributed to our having aquariums in the house and that if the smell didn't air out he was going to have to re-paint the whole house, walls and ceilings and that we would have to bear some of the financial responsibility. Are we responsible above our deposit for anything that he does to the home - especially when there is no way to know if our aquariums caused this "smell" or if it was the leak under the house? I know that most rental properties will clean and repaint as a general rule before a new tenant enters the property - my mother-in-law manages a property that does that - but are private landlords required to do the same? How much responsibility falls on the previous tenant?

 

[seniorjudge]

South Carolina - My husband and I recently vacated a home that we had been renting for over 2 years. During our time there, we had repainted the living room, dining room, hallway, and one of the bedrooms to more neutral colors. Also while we were there, there was a severe water leak under the house caused by a leaking pipe that was fixed by a previous tenant which caused mold in a back closet and some swelling of the hardwood floors. Now, when we got ready to move out, we gave a 30 day notice since we had been residing with no lease for over a year, then brought in two different people to clean up the house - one after the movers pulled the majority of everything out, and then another when we finally had everything out. We patched all the nail holes in the walls and left the touch up paints in case there was anything we missed. When we handed over the keys the house was clean and smelled of cleaner. I get a call from the landlord two days after we leave saying that the baseboards and ceiling fans were dirty - which I know where wiped down because I went back and touched up a few places, and then that the house had a smell that he attributed to our having aquariums in the house and that if the smell didn't air out he was going to have to re-paint the whole house, walls and ceilings and that we would have to bear some of the financial responsibility. Are we responsible above our deposit for anything that he does to the home - especially when there is no way to know if our aquariums caused this "smell" or if it was the leak under the house? I know that most rental properties will clean and repaint as a general rule before a new tenant enters the property - my mother-in-law manages a property that does that - but are private landlords required to do the same? How much responsibility falls on the previous tenant?

This is a common situation between landlords and tenants. Since you did not have the landlord give you the final okay, you may wind up fighting this out in small claims court.

The landlord will say it was filthy and you will say it was in better shape and cleaner than when you moved in.

The judge will then decide who is telling the truth.

 

[AnnaSC]

If he wants to have it recleaned...be my guest, I can see fitting the bill for that if he feels that it is not up to his standards, but I take exception to being told that I may have to pay for the entire house to be repainted when it was just repainted in the last year by us - with his permission - because of this so called smell that he claims was caused by running an aquarium in the house. Since there is no way to prove where the smell came from, whether from running an aquarium in the house or the leak that damaged the back room, can we be held accountable for the cost of repainting?