Oregon- our tenant moved out. We had a property management company. The tenant damages were around 10k. Are we able to go recoup these cost from the tenant? Do we have a time limit? The management company has not been very helpful. Do I have any recourse? Thanks for your time.
You sound like you are somewhat new to the landlord business, therefore I am going to give you advice accordingly.
You can certainly withhold the security deposit towards valid damages. You can certainly sue for the remainder of the damages that the security deposit doesn't cover. However, your odds of collecting 10k from a former tenant in the short term are slim to none, and in the long term could be equally as slim. Not necessarily because you couldn't win a lawsuit, but because the tenant is unlikely to have any assets that you can attach once you win a lawsuit. The courts only give you a judgment, they don't collect the money for you.
Now, it is very important to understand what damages you can and cannot claim. You cannot claim damages for normal wear and tear. For example, if the tenant lived there 5 years and you never painted the interior during those 5 years, then you aren't going to be able to claim damages for damage to paint. Paint does not have a useful life of more than 2-3 years so you would have had to paint before a new tenant moved in anyway. Another example, lets say the carpet was seriously stained, but the carpet was 10 years old. You aren't going to be able to claim any damages for the carpet because it was past its useful life. (5-7 years). However, if they damaged a good quality carpet that was new or newer when they moved in, you could claim damages for the depreciated value of the carpeting. So, if it was 7 year carpeting (pretty high end) and it was 4 years old when they moved out, then 4 of it's 7 years were used up. You could charge them for 3/7ths of the cost of the carpeting.
So, keep all of that in mind when assessing damages. There is always cost to the landlord when one tenant moves out and another moves in. The longer the old tenant lived in the home the greater those costs generally are. You generally cannot charge a tenant for items that are already past their useful life.