My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: TX
Question: I'm curious how:
A. if the words "normal wear and tear" are typed on a document that means paint typically is expected to last 3-5 years and carpet lasts 5-8 years where any loss of service life expectancy is prorated.
but;
B. if the words "abuse" or "damage" appear on a document, in this case caused by "pet urine", then even after the typical service life of both paint and carpet have expired under "normal wear and tear" guidelines, the landlord can make the ex-tenant pay over $13,000 to redo the entire house to appeal to buyers to be sold?
It's stunning how the landlord can arbitrarily choose words to indemnify them from the standard cost of doing business a landlord would typically do in refurbishing a 74-month rental and instead seek to be subsidized by the ex-tenant for a sum greater than the total of 6 months of rent.
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________
Facts:
I rented 3/2/2 house for 6 years & 2 months with pet deposits paid for 2 dogs ($350 1st dog, $500 2nd dog) where I was given a 30-day notice of termination of the lease that had expired and had been month-to-month for some time... with the option to buy. I bought a different house instead of the landlord's home and now it appears the term "RETALIATION" applies as not only will I not get my $1,595 security deposit back, I'm losing the deposit plus being charged an additional $12,000+ for things such as; $6,500 for carpet, $5,000 for paint, $1,600 for new baseboards, $1,160 for a new interior door, etc. It also appears as if the $850 in pet deposits isn't even applied to this asinine charge.
Property info:
The landlord's 2091 sq. ft home was built in 2006 and lived in by landlord, rented out, re-occupied by landlord and then rented to me after she divorced and moved out of state.
Flooring: tile in bathrooms (2), hallways and kitchen. Carpet in living, dining, office & 3 bedrooms is over 6 years old.
Paint: 2 bedrooms with 12 year old builder flat paint, remaining rooms painted in semi-gloss enamel by LL evident by poor finish & poor coverage.
Move-out:
The landlord moved to Chicago before I moved into her house and her friend/agent/broker husband & wife team representing her moved to Florida years ago thus on move-out day no one came to walkthrough with me and I was told to lockup and a locksmith would change the locks.
Move-in:
I'm just learning about the blacklight test after reading on this forum so while the landlord may have performed a blacklight test after I moved out a blacklight test was not performed to verify neither the landlord's cat nor her ex's male dog left the carpet in perfect condition and I have my doubts given the physical evidence of clearly restricting a dog's access within the house that was left for me as described below:
Pre-existing Pets:
It should be noted that other dogs (previous renters and the landlord's ex's male Golden Retriever) and allegedly the landlord had a cat (I think a Persian) lived in this house before my dogs with the landlord's ex-husband's male dog who lived there until the day before I moved in. With regards to the landlord's ex-husband's male dog - I thought it was *peculiar* to see at least 6 baby gates in a house WITH NO CHILDREN when I moved in (they're still there when I moved out) and it was also *peculiar* to see signs of an animal confined in various rooms for some reason such as there were and still are scratch marks on the garage side of the interior garage door, scratch marks in the door jamb trim in the guest bathroom at a height above the doorknob indicating possibly long confinement for some reason and scratch marks on the drywall next to the door jamb in one of the bedrooms. Initially I thought the baby gates were because the LL's ex's dog chased the LL's cat but, in hindsight, maybe the dog was peeing and that's why LL left as many baby gates as there are doorways that transition from tile to carpeted rooms.
Also noteworthy that my dogs who allegedly caused $13k in damage on 6+ to 12 year old paint & 6+ year old carpet from their alleged pee fetish have not urinated once in the new house which was also previously occupied by dogs. In addition, my female Rottweiler was in heat when we moved to the new house so it seems logical that being in a new territory previously occupied by other dogs with one dog in heat and the male dog completely bothered that animals who would allegedly cause $13k in damage would seize this opportunity to continue their alleged bad habits yet that's not the case... 30+ days later there's no pee in the new house. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks yet my 13 year old geriatric Rottweiler with severe hip dysplasia who is nearly blind hasn't peed in a month at the new place and it's not like he was peeing all over the house for 6 years seeing as I work a lot from home and was available to let the dogs out.
Anyone who knows anything about wild or domestic canines & felines knows that if they smell a message from another animal in the form of urine they often respond in kind.
Noteworthy:
Unbeknownst to me, the landlord was waffling between moving back into the house or selling it the entire time I lived there and what prompted her to terminate my lease and put the house up for sale was my asking if I could get a cat for my daughter. Cat urine was the reason she said no and that was that, however, I'm not shocked that after discussing her apparent wealth of knowledge of the damages from cat urine that she would want me to fund refurbishing her home due to dog urine.
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________
CHARGES:
CARPET (6+ years old) - $6,500:
According to the carpet cleaning company landlord specified I had to use (who I voluntarily paid to clean the carpet plus had them clean the tile & scrub grout lines when I moved out), the co-owner of the carpet cleaning company said the carpet in the house is "cheap" which "doesn't hold up to traffic" and "after 6 years she should give you a break on the carpet". I'm unaware of the total age of the carpet but it's older than the 74 months I lived there.
PAINT (6+ & 12 years old) - $5,000 total; $2,500 for walls & $2,500 for trim:
I never painted any room with a new color or anything to alter the "AS IS" condition stated on my lease when I moved in. Most of the walls & trim were painted by the landlord before I moved in which is evident by the amateur finish e.g. missed or thin spots with both rollers & brushes, bad cutting in around non-painted surfaces (vanity, mirrors, trim, etc.), trim half painted in 6yr old white and half in 12yr old builder "white" that's kind of yellow, the trim was painted around the door but the door itself still sports 12yr old builder paint and other things I can see having been a professional painter before. Also noteworthy that walls in rooms not featuring 12-year old builder paint in a flat finish were painted by the landlord in semi-gloss enamel paint which we all know is popular because it's *washable*... because it's an enamel... hence the reason it's used on trim, bathroom walls and sometimes on regular walls. If it'll hold up to condensation on the paint from daily hot showers it seems logical it would hold up to sporadic drops of moisture be it urine or a super soaker water gun.
Other than the sheen of the walls matching the sheen on the trim telling me they were painted in semi-gloss enamel, I also know they're painted in enamel because a dog leaned against the walls in certain spots repeatedly during the 74 months I lived there which left oils from their coats on the wall that discolored it which took a few wipes with a damp sponge to remove the oil spots. That means it's an enamel which is both washable and not effected by topical moisture be it a wet sponge or urine.
TRIM (12 years old) - $1,600:
All of the trim in this house is MDF (sawdust glued & pressed into boards), including in the tile areas, where in spots the builder didn't do a good job with caulk to seal this cheap, moisture-vulnerable material and seeing as one has to use some sort of mopping (e.g. moisture via mop water or steam) to clean tile - the MDF is already damaged by the time you notice it swelling, spreading and warping. I wanted to illustrate this to LL but I was denied a walkthrough so, again trying to be a good guy and being the person who occupied that house longer than anyone on Earth, I texted a long list of what I noticed and among them was trim warped from insufficient caulk to seal it and years of sitting next to tile that requires liquid or steam to be cleaned.
I am being charged for a windowsill for water damage as the 12 year old builder trim paint and cheap MDF trim were no match for a wet bathtub toy and I have no problem being liable for that.
FRENCH DOOR (12 years old) - $1159
The door to the office where the tile in the hallway meets the carpet in the office is MDF with glass panes and the bottom of the door which is above the tile is RAW MDF - meaning neither the builder nor the landlord applied any enamel paint to the bottom to seal the extremely porous surface that is raw MDF so when steam from my mopping the tile reached the raw MDF it caused it to swell. LL blames urine but it came in contact with a Shark steam mop every week.
You can't buy MDF French doors at Lowe's or Home Depot because the lowest quality they sell today is a composite door which means raw, unpainted surfaces won't swell and peel from moisture but you can buy MDF online and have it shipped for half of this charge, however, this is about the price of a composite French door with labor.
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________
Opinion: RETALIATION
The landlord ("LL"), her friend/agent/broker (husband & wife team, "Party") and the lender the friend/agent/broker referred me to ("Lender") had decided among themselves that I was buying LL's home and this astronomical charge from LL and Party advising her is retaliation for not buying her home.
"You'd be doing me a huge favor if you bought my house" - LL
Once Party referred Lender I never had a reason to speak with Party again because I had no intention buying LL's house. Lender never did produce an approval letter as it is my OPINION they were dragging out the approval process on purpose to limit my options to only having time to purchase LL's house before I'd be homeless with 2 Rottweilers and a child. I didn't have a buyer's agent because I was still waiting on Lender to produce an approval letter, but Party was clearly working with the Lender behind the scenes. Evidentiary support of this exists in the written response I got from Lender when the ONLY address ***I*** *EVER* gave them wasn't the address Party gave them on the LL's house I actually never considered buying. Hours after Lender's flabbergasted written response I get a text from Party offering a lower sale price for LL's home, the address of the property I sent Lender, a comparison in price per square foot between the two, a quote on what they'd charge me to be my buyer's agent on the property I was ACTUALLY considering PLUS, convicted by a guilty conscience, a lie about how I must have sent Party's wife the address of the property I bought that has nothing to do with them... because how could they know anything about the other property if Party and Lender weren't working together behind the scenes?
Whether or not this collusion between Party and Lender to sabotage my options as a consumer violates ethics I surely don't know, but it spooked me and gave me the idea Lender was serving LL & Party's interests instead of mine so I didn't respond to the text and the very next day went from application to approval to an accepted offer in 24-hours through a lender recommended by the agent selling the house I bought. A week before I had to vacate LL's property, Lender called to say, "We still don't have an approval letter for you" where I had to inform him I already bought a house. Shortly after that phone call I get a text from the landlord asking me about my business... clearly Lender contacted Party who then contacted LL.
In a polite way I said all of the homes for sale, including LL's, want top dollar to cash in on the 50% market increase in the last 50 months and her rental home with the bare minimum of everything was competing against homes that homeowners lived in and upgraded from builder-basic as they lived there which were comparable to the same price per square foot LL was wanting for something that hasn't been touched in over 6 years.
I also added as justification for not buying LL's home the fact that 6 years ago when Party showed me the house before I leased it I *specifically* asked about community pool access and I was *lied to* aka fraud. I know it was a lie because Party's main residence was blocks away from LL's home where Party had access to the pool in question but the section I was considering leasing in didn't have access PLUS Party rented LL's house before as well as the rental houses in the same section Party personally owned as rental property. Whether or not this is an ethical violation I also don't know but only getting 1 child in this life and already losing 6 years to a liar where the only time I could take her swimming was on vacation, I needed a place with pool access.
BTW: one reason I deleted Party on Facebook years ago, never spoke to them and had no desire for Party to be involved in my business is because I was lied to and my daughter paid the price.
LL doesn't have money and this is her only rental so I *SPECULATE* she had her mind set to make $100,000 on market appreciation like the house next-door Toyota bought that had been upgraded but her driveway has sunk and cracked, the front walk she had her cut-rate, low quality contractors redo has cracked, exterior trim has warped and pulled away from the house, she hired landscapers to remove St. Augustine she planted and replace with Bermuda sod and these same landscapers who already poorly did 2 previous jobs for her didn't do a good job so the St. Augustine is worse than ever, plus soon-to-be selling the house LL is competing with homes that don't have 12 year old HVAC, appliances, etc and had money spent on them over the years to compete for buyers when they put their homes on the market... all that said... she definitely has a motive to try to get me to subsidize her home beyond the $120,000 I paid in rent on a home that sold for $175k new.
I know she doesn't have deep pockets because after she replaced 14 linear feet of rotted pine fencing with new pine fencing I was asked to live with a broken sink disposal because she couldn't afford to get it fixed. Being a nice guy, I lived with only using 1 sink and having a toilet plunger in the other sink to plunge stinky, standing water whenever I ran the dishwasher the last year + I lived there.
QUESTIONS:
Is it the tenants liability to cover repair or trim when pre-existing paint finishes and caulking of moisture-vulnerable materials done by either the builder or LL prior to move-in and are effected by regular cleaning such as mopping tile as directed by the lease to maintain the property?
Can the tenant be charged for cost to refurbish with better materials than what was allegedly damaged?
This seems horribly unjust and I lack the vocabulary to express how I wish my thread was quibbling over $200 instead of $13k+.
Question: I'm curious how:
A. if the words "normal wear and tear" are typed on a document that means paint typically is expected to last 3-5 years and carpet lasts 5-8 years where any loss of service life expectancy is prorated.
but;
B. if the words "abuse" or "damage" appear on a document, in this case caused by "pet urine", then even after the typical service life of both paint and carpet have expired under "normal wear and tear" guidelines, the landlord can make the ex-tenant pay over $13,000 to redo the entire house to appeal to buyers to be sold?
It's stunning how the landlord can arbitrarily choose words to indemnify them from the standard cost of doing business a landlord would typically do in refurbishing a 74-month rental and instead seek to be subsidized by the ex-tenant for a sum greater than the total of 6 months of rent.
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________
Facts:
I rented 3/2/2 house for 6 years & 2 months with pet deposits paid for 2 dogs ($350 1st dog, $500 2nd dog) where I was given a 30-day notice of termination of the lease that had expired and had been month-to-month for some time... with the option to buy. I bought a different house instead of the landlord's home and now it appears the term "RETALIATION" applies as not only will I not get my $1,595 security deposit back, I'm losing the deposit plus being charged an additional $12,000+ for things such as; $6,500 for carpet, $5,000 for paint, $1,600 for new baseboards, $1,160 for a new interior door, etc. It also appears as if the $850 in pet deposits isn't even applied to this asinine charge.
Property info:
The landlord's 2091 sq. ft home was built in 2006 and lived in by landlord, rented out, re-occupied by landlord and then rented to me after she divorced and moved out of state.
Flooring: tile in bathrooms (2), hallways and kitchen. Carpet in living, dining, office & 3 bedrooms is over 6 years old.
Paint: 2 bedrooms with 12 year old builder flat paint, remaining rooms painted in semi-gloss enamel by LL evident by poor finish & poor coverage.
Move-out:
The landlord moved to Chicago before I moved into her house and her friend/agent/broker husband & wife team representing her moved to Florida years ago thus on move-out day no one came to walkthrough with me and I was told to lockup and a locksmith would change the locks.
Move-in:
I'm just learning about the blacklight test after reading on this forum so while the landlord may have performed a blacklight test after I moved out a blacklight test was not performed to verify neither the landlord's cat nor her ex's male dog left the carpet in perfect condition and I have my doubts given the physical evidence of clearly restricting a dog's access within the house that was left for me as described below:
Pre-existing Pets:
It should be noted that other dogs (previous renters and the landlord's ex's male Golden Retriever) and allegedly the landlord had a cat (I think a Persian) lived in this house before my dogs with the landlord's ex-husband's male dog who lived there until the day before I moved in. With regards to the landlord's ex-husband's male dog - I thought it was *peculiar* to see at least 6 baby gates in a house WITH NO CHILDREN when I moved in (they're still there when I moved out) and it was also *peculiar* to see signs of an animal confined in various rooms for some reason such as there were and still are scratch marks on the garage side of the interior garage door, scratch marks in the door jamb trim in the guest bathroom at a height above the doorknob indicating possibly long confinement for some reason and scratch marks on the drywall next to the door jamb in one of the bedrooms. Initially I thought the baby gates were because the LL's ex's dog chased the LL's cat but, in hindsight, maybe the dog was peeing and that's why LL left as many baby gates as there are doorways that transition from tile to carpeted rooms.
Also noteworthy that my dogs who allegedly caused $13k in damage on 6+ to 12 year old paint & 6+ year old carpet from their alleged pee fetish have not urinated once in the new house which was also previously occupied by dogs. In addition, my female Rottweiler was in heat when we moved to the new house so it seems logical that being in a new territory previously occupied by other dogs with one dog in heat and the male dog completely bothered that animals who would allegedly cause $13k in damage would seize this opportunity to continue their alleged bad habits yet that's not the case... 30+ days later there's no pee in the new house. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks yet my 13 year old geriatric Rottweiler with severe hip dysplasia who is nearly blind hasn't peed in a month at the new place and it's not like he was peeing all over the house for 6 years seeing as I work a lot from home and was available to let the dogs out.
Anyone who knows anything about wild or domestic canines & felines knows that if they smell a message from another animal in the form of urine they often respond in kind.
Noteworthy:
Unbeknownst to me, the landlord was waffling between moving back into the house or selling it the entire time I lived there and what prompted her to terminate my lease and put the house up for sale was my asking if I could get a cat for my daughter. Cat urine was the reason she said no and that was that, however, I'm not shocked that after discussing her apparent wealth of knowledge of the damages from cat urine that she would want me to fund refurbishing her home due to dog urine.
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________
CHARGES:
CARPET (6+ years old) - $6,500:
According to the carpet cleaning company landlord specified I had to use (who I voluntarily paid to clean the carpet plus had them clean the tile & scrub grout lines when I moved out), the co-owner of the carpet cleaning company said the carpet in the house is "cheap" which "doesn't hold up to traffic" and "after 6 years she should give you a break on the carpet". I'm unaware of the total age of the carpet but it's older than the 74 months I lived there.
PAINT (6+ & 12 years old) - $5,000 total; $2,500 for walls & $2,500 for trim:
I never painted any room with a new color or anything to alter the "AS IS" condition stated on my lease when I moved in. Most of the walls & trim were painted by the landlord before I moved in which is evident by the amateur finish e.g. missed or thin spots with both rollers & brushes, bad cutting in around non-painted surfaces (vanity, mirrors, trim, etc.), trim half painted in 6yr old white and half in 12yr old builder "white" that's kind of yellow, the trim was painted around the door but the door itself still sports 12yr old builder paint and other things I can see having been a professional painter before. Also noteworthy that walls in rooms not featuring 12-year old builder paint in a flat finish were painted by the landlord in semi-gloss enamel paint which we all know is popular because it's *washable*... because it's an enamel... hence the reason it's used on trim, bathroom walls and sometimes on regular walls. If it'll hold up to condensation on the paint from daily hot showers it seems logical it would hold up to sporadic drops of moisture be it urine or a super soaker water gun.
Other than the sheen of the walls matching the sheen on the trim telling me they were painted in semi-gloss enamel, I also know they're painted in enamel because a dog leaned against the walls in certain spots repeatedly during the 74 months I lived there which left oils from their coats on the wall that discolored it which took a few wipes with a damp sponge to remove the oil spots. That means it's an enamel which is both washable and not effected by topical moisture be it a wet sponge or urine.
TRIM (12 years old) - $1,600:
All of the trim in this house is MDF (sawdust glued & pressed into boards), including in the tile areas, where in spots the builder didn't do a good job with caulk to seal this cheap, moisture-vulnerable material and seeing as one has to use some sort of mopping (e.g. moisture via mop water or steam) to clean tile - the MDF is already damaged by the time you notice it swelling, spreading and warping. I wanted to illustrate this to LL but I was denied a walkthrough so, again trying to be a good guy and being the person who occupied that house longer than anyone on Earth, I texted a long list of what I noticed and among them was trim warped from insufficient caulk to seal it and years of sitting next to tile that requires liquid or steam to be cleaned.
I am being charged for a windowsill for water damage as the 12 year old builder trim paint and cheap MDF trim were no match for a wet bathtub toy and I have no problem being liable for that.
FRENCH DOOR (12 years old) - $1159
The door to the office where the tile in the hallway meets the carpet in the office is MDF with glass panes and the bottom of the door which is above the tile is RAW MDF - meaning neither the builder nor the landlord applied any enamel paint to the bottom to seal the extremely porous surface that is raw MDF so when steam from my mopping the tile reached the raw MDF it caused it to swell. LL blames urine but it came in contact with a Shark steam mop every week.
You can't buy MDF French doors at Lowe's or Home Depot because the lowest quality they sell today is a composite door which means raw, unpainted surfaces won't swell and peel from moisture but you can buy MDF online and have it shipped for half of this charge, however, this is about the price of a composite French door with labor.
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________
Opinion: RETALIATION
The landlord ("LL"), her friend/agent/broker (husband & wife team, "Party") and the lender the friend/agent/broker referred me to ("Lender") had decided among themselves that I was buying LL's home and this astronomical charge from LL and Party advising her is retaliation for not buying her home.
"You'd be doing me a huge favor if you bought my house" - LL
Once Party referred Lender I never had a reason to speak with Party again because I had no intention buying LL's house. Lender never did produce an approval letter as it is my OPINION they were dragging out the approval process on purpose to limit my options to only having time to purchase LL's house before I'd be homeless with 2 Rottweilers and a child. I didn't have a buyer's agent because I was still waiting on Lender to produce an approval letter, but Party was clearly working with the Lender behind the scenes. Evidentiary support of this exists in the written response I got from Lender when the ONLY address ***I*** *EVER* gave them wasn't the address Party gave them on the LL's house I actually never considered buying. Hours after Lender's flabbergasted written response I get a text from Party offering a lower sale price for LL's home, the address of the property I sent Lender, a comparison in price per square foot between the two, a quote on what they'd charge me to be my buyer's agent on the property I was ACTUALLY considering PLUS, convicted by a guilty conscience, a lie about how I must have sent Party's wife the address of the property I bought that has nothing to do with them... because how could they know anything about the other property if Party and Lender weren't working together behind the scenes?
Whether or not this collusion between Party and Lender to sabotage my options as a consumer violates ethics I surely don't know, but it spooked me and gave me the idea Lender was serving LL & Party's interests instead of mine so I didn't respond to the text and the very next day went from application to approval to an accepted offer in 24-hours through a lender recommended by the agent selling the house I bought. A week before I had to vacate LL's property, Lender called to say, "We still don't have an approval letter for you" where I had to inform him I already bought a house. Shortly after that phone call I get a text from the landlord asking me about my business... clearly Lender contacted Party who then contacted LL.
In a polite way I said all of the homes for sale, including LL's, want top dollar to cash in on the 50% market increase in the last 50 months and her rental home with the bare minimum of everything was competing against homes that homeowners lived in and upgraded from builder-basic as they lived there which were comparable to the same price per square foot LL was wanting for something that hasn't been touched in over 6 years.
I also added as justification for not buying LL's home the fact that 6 years ago when Party showed me the house before I leased it I *specifically* asked about community pool access and I was *lied to* aka fraud. I know it was a lie because Party's main residence was blocks away from LL's home where Party had access to the pool in question but the section I was considering leasing in didn't have access PLUS Party rented LL's house before as well as the rental houses in the same section Party personally owned as rental property. Whether or not this is an ethical violation I also don't know but only getting 1 child in this life and already losing 6 years to a liar where the only time I could take her swimming was on vacation, I needed a place with pool access.
BTW: one reason I deleted Party on Facebook years ago, never spoke to them and had no desire for Party to be involved in my business is because I was lied to and my daughter paid the price.
LL doesn't have money and this is her only rental so I *SPECULATE* she had her mind set to make $100,000 on market appreciation like the house next-door Toyota bought that had been upgraded but her driveway has sunk and cracked, the front walk she had her cut-rate, low quality contractors redo has cracked, exterior trim has warped and pulled away from the house, she hired landscapers to remove St. Augustine she planted and replace with Bermuda sod and these same landscapers who already poorly did 2 previous jobs for her didn't do a good job so the St. Augustine is worse than ever, plus soon-to-be selling the house LL is competing with homes that don't have 12 year old HVAC, appliances, etc and had money spent on them over the years to compete for buyers when they put their homes on the market... all that said... she definitely has a motive to try to get me to subsidize her home beyond the $120,000 I paid in rent on a home that sold for $175k new.
I know she doesn't have deep pockets because after she replaced 14 linear feet of rotted pine fencing with new pine fencing I was asked to live with a broken sink disposal because she couldn't afford to get it fixed. Being a nice guy, I lived with only using 1 sink and having a toilet plunger in the other sink to plunge stinky, standing water whenever I ran the dishwasher the last year + I lived there.
QUESTIONS:
Is it the tenants liability to cover repair or trim when pre-existing paint finishes and caulking of moisture-vulnerable materials done by either the builder or LL prior to move-in and are effected by regular cleaning such as mopping tile as directed by the lease to maintain the property?
Can the tenant be charged for cost to refurbish with better materials than what was allegedly damaged?
This seems horribly unjust and I lack the vocabulary to express how I wish my thread was quibbling over $200 instead of $13k+.
Cleaning and Repairs: Tx - After 74mo Ll Charging $13,000+ for Pet Damage: New Paint, Carpet and Trim
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