Carpet Resposibility

I am no legal mind but I am a renter and a landlord (long story). Anyhow, my understanding is that your landlord can’t charge you the full cost of a new carpet. If they did your landlord would have profited off replacing the carpet instead of being made whole again. Your landlord should only be able to charge you the cost of replacing the carpet minus wear and tear minus the depreciated value of the carpet. For example, if the carpet is depreciated at 5 years, you lived there for 5 years and it was new at the time of move in, the carpet has to be replaced anyhow. It is basically at the end of it’s useful life and is technically worth nothing. It goes by how they depreciate their carpet on taxes. Some people use 5 years and some use 10. 7 years is a general accepted standard to estimate. In your case…

You lived there five years so the carpet only has two years of useful life left before it is worth nothing.
2/7=28.6% useful life left
$1200 (replacement carpet)x.286=$343.20

The carpet at the time you were moving out should only be valued at $343.20 and that is all you are really responsible to replace because the landlord has already received the benefit of the first five years of depreciated value while you were renting the place.

Again, I’m no lawyer but this is my understanding of carpet replacement. Don’t forget that if the carpet was only damaged in certain areas and they replaced the carpeting in the whole unit it is additionally dishonest of them in my opinion. They should attempt to repair and then replace.