Have my first lease ending in a few days and will be doing my first inspection after the lease. I don't anticipate there really being much to have to charge for as they were great and tidy tenants, but I know there is a chip out of a flooring transition piece and a large scuff on brand new tile installed before they moved in. Are these things considered petty or would you ding tenants for replacement or buffing out or anything like that?

In your experience, what rises to the level of charging the tenant and what do you consider normal wear and tear and just let it ride?

We almost always have to charge for stove drip pans & oven cleaning - that's the most common stuff that gets dirty. Occasionally a window blind will get messed up & we charge for that.

If we are doing whole wall paint or sheetrock repair, we charge $35/hour to do it. We don't charge for minor touch-ups. Flooring is a hard one - if it's ruined, we'd have a problem but scuffs & chips will happen. We've tried color match pens, stain, etc. & those do pretty well. Goof Off works on a lot of flooring scuffs - just test it first.

If they don't bother to do much on move out (bathroom dirty, kitchen appliances a mess, etc.) we will hire a cleaner & charge them. We patch small art hanger holes & touch up paint ourselves & consider that normal wear & tear. That said, we have a conversation when they move in about not using molly bolts, screws, framing nails to hang art. TV wall mounts are the worst but we allow it - we tell them there is $100 repair on move out if it's bad.

Yea I would nedd to read the lease agreement again but it stated something about reasonable amounts of nails per room but nothing major. We also include that the home is to be professionally cleaned upon move out as well which is happening Monday I believe. I'm fairly certain they added some curtains or blinds in the kitchen area and as long as they leave them installed I am ok with that as we had added some in several other areas prior to moving out.

For the issues I mentioned I was thinking something like $100 because it will take my time to do it but won't really cost too much, I just have to be able to source that transition again.

My biggest thing is I just want to be reasonable. They were good tenants and have no reason to try and nickel and dime them. Appreciate the insight.

Next year I have a 3 year tenant moving out and they have 3 kids and a dog so I imagine that one will be a doozy.

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Next year I have a 3 year tenant moving out and they have 3 kids and a dog so I imagine that one will be a doozy.

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Guaranteed. We have mostly 1/1 & 2/1 apartments & houses, so we get very few small kids. It was our plan.

That's probably the way to go. They DID run the pool pump without water all the way to the proper level and I had to replace it, otherwise we're perfect. Walk through will be this week but my wife will do it so I have to really tell her to pay attention to everything. I only noticed those two items when I was there for a showing recently. Didn't go through house with a fine tooth comb.

A lot more holes than we thought. Move out company patched them but we painted them. Not sure how to deal with that.

Texas law says you can't charge them for normal wear and tear. So the tile and holes are acceptable.

I'm a little less sure about drywall anchors, they require putty. More than just painting nail/tack holes.