Landlord refunded Security Deposit, later he wants money back for carpet

By lynn

Hello, Our Landlord gave us back our security deposit in full and said the home was immaculate.  It was cleaned from top to bottom.  2+ months later, he says the carpet smells of our pets and he wants to charge us for a brand new carpet.  We had it professionally cleaned and we lived there 2 years, and it looked great when we moved out.  There is depreciation and it is not fair we pay full price.  In addition, he says that the tile floor (which looks brand new) in the bathroom needs to be ripped out and new tile installed, because our pet had her litter box in there.  The box was on plastic and clean, and we already hired professionals to clean everything wonderfully when we moved.  In any event, we had a professional tile man go to the home for his opinion.  He said he can use a liquid solution on the floor to clean it, and it will be fine.  He said there was a slight smell, hard to detect, and that it made no sense to him because the floor looked clean, white, perfect and apparently they had bleached it.  He recommended this treatment that would be very reasonable in price, and that if there was any residual, this would solve it.  We heard that the Landlord took out the bedroom carpet anyway and wants to charge us full price for all new carpet and pad.  He didn’t give us a chance to see it or provide an alternate solution.  There also has been a history of moisture underneath the home with prior flooding, which could be causing some of these problems of a musty smell, and not the surface issues.  We want to be reasonable, but this seems extreme.  Isn’t there a percentage of the total we would only be responsible for, since we lived there for several years?  (Depreciation for the carpet, and for the tile cleaning treatment, could we pay a percentage, too?)  Can you please help us regarding all of these charges and how to remedy this situation.  (Separately, The day after we moved out, an item of ours was left behind under the counter worth $350 and we found out it was destroyed.  We told the landlord immediately and he told us it was gone.  Isn’t that the same, in that this happened after, and we also have something that was damaged.  Do we have any rights for something we left behind?)  Thank you for your help!

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