Who's paying for this carpet cleaning?
We have a vacancy, an upcoming open house, and a whole bunch of dog smell. I'm looking for input on a couple fronts.
I need to start with background. We closed on this duplex a week ago. We agreed to let one tenant out of her lease early because she's way under market rent, so this gives us a chance to boost it by like $300-$400/month. This side is in good shape, so we listed it and want to do an open house on Saturday with only a few minor fixes.
On her way out, she got a $50 deal for some carpet cleaning. They did that yesterday. The carpet looked pretty good when he was done. The rest of the place was really clean (it was super clean even when we did our first walk through before making an offer), so she gave me the keys and a forwarding address and I told her, verbally, that everything looked good and I didn't see any need for deductions from her deposit.
Today, I put on my handyman pants and went by to knock out a couple of the fixes. I walked through the door and was hit by a wall of dog smell. Like, I stole the sheet off her dog bed to dress up as a ghost for halloween. It's really strange. It was far stronger than at any other visit.
So, now I have two problems:
1) Should I and can I charge her for a proper carpet cleaning to get out this smell, even though I already told her everything seemed ok?
2) How do I get this smell out TOMORROW? Is a thorough carpet cleaning my best bet? Is it possible that the cheap-o cleaning got some dormant dog smell wet and all it really needs is to finish drying out again? We have this open house Saturday. I can try to cover it up with another smell, but I don't know if that'll work, and I certainly don't want an overpowering dog smell during our open house.
Thoughts?