Tenant left the house with minor damage

[Cali Skier]

We typically give back the rental deposit to our tenants, because our tenants typically leave the house in good enough shape where we don’t have an issue.We had a renter that let their adult son live with them. Their adult son smoked in the house, and when he moved out, he drove a U-Haul trailer onto the lawn to load it.  I was taking pictures of the lawn and the neighbor came out and told me yeah he drove the U-Haul onto the grass and parked there overnight.

The damage is kind of minor and I think it will correct itself, the smoking in the house was isolated to a back bathroom and you can hardly notice it, they didn’t mow the backyard, I had to do it for them, it kind of just needed this first mowing of the season and they didn’t do it, they also left the stove dirty.   They were there for a year, they did not hang anything on the walls, nor did they hang a TV on the wall.  

We have it rented again, actually two weeks after they moved out.   I did not pay anybody to repair the front grass, I did not pay service pro to fix the cigarette smell. I mow the yard myself, andI have no receipts for the damages. Honestly I’m just super irritated that they disrespected my property.

I’m curious if any of you would charge some kind of deposit fee for these minor infractions?  I do realize this is the nature of the business and I should probably just get over it.  

What are your thoughts

[Drew Sygit]

Quote from @Cali Skier:

We typically give back the rental deposit to our tenants, because our tenants typically leave the house in good enough shape where we don’t have an issue.We had a renter that let their adult son live with them. Their adult son smoked in the house, and when he moved out, he drove a U-Haul trailer onto the lawn to load it.  I was taking pictures of the lawn and the neighbor came out and told me yeah he drove the U-Haul onto the grass and parked there overnight.

The damage is kind of minor and I think it will correct itself, the smoking in the house was isolated to a back bathroom and you can hardly notice it, they didn’t mow the backyard, I had to do it for them, it kind of just needed this first mowing of the season and they didn’t do it, they also left the stove dirty.   They were there for a year, they did not hang anything on the walls, nor did they hang a TV on the wall.  

We have it rented again, actually two weeks after they moved out.   I did not pay anybody to repair the front grass, I did not pay service pro to fix the cigarette smell. I mow the yard myself, andI have no receipts for the damages. Honestly I’m just super irritated that they disrespected my property.

I’m curious if any of you would charge some kind of deposit fee for these minor infractions?  I do realize this is the nature of the business and I should probably just get over it.  

What are your thoughts

You have three options:

1) Return deposit and not worry about it.

2) Pay someone to fix the issues and deduct from deposit, return the rest. 

3) Try to "game" the system and deduct from deposit what you think is "fair" and hope tenants don't challenge you or take this to courts.

How much effort do you really want to put into this?