Super high "damage" charge on tenant move-out

[Alan Bosca]

Hi -

Tenant moved out of my condo & put a nick in a wall that looked fairly small to me - photo attached. The HOA took a while to get me a quote and then sent me a $3400 bill to prep & paint the whole wall.

I am planning to take it out of the tenant's security deposit, but does anyone have advice re: the seemingly very high charge. IE can I be sued for passing along the cost, is it my obligation to force the HOA to get second opinions or request a simple patch? Or do I just deduct from sec deposit?

Thanks for any input.

For some reason these posted sideways, but here are photos.

[Kyle J.]

$3400 to fix that is completely unreasonable. (I’ve paid less than that to have a whole house painted.) I actually would consider that bordering on normal wear and tear and wouldn’t even charge a tenant for repairing it because I could fix it in a few minutes for a couple dollars worth of supplies. 

In any event, I would expect the tenant to fight it and if it were to go to court I would expect you to lose as I can't see any judge upholding that charge. So before you end up eating the bill, I'd definitely push back on the HOA.