How to determine damages with smell

[Josh Darley]

BP,

I went to do a final walk through today after a the lease expired in a SFH after two years. The house smelled absolutely horrible, a little bit of cigarette smoke and a lot dog pee. We had visited the property only a couple times over the last year (lesson learned), and it did not smell this way. We had an idea the tenant was a smoker, but were under the impression that she only smoked outside. The carpet needs to be replaced as not only does it house smell horrible, but there are a few tears that do not look repairable. The carpet was nowhere near new, so how would I determine how much she is responsible for versus how much of it was on me. Is that just a useful life calculation? Aside from the smell and the couple tears, we would definitely not be replacing it before renting again. How would I go about proving that the smell is so bad that it needs to be replaced. The photos of the tears would not warrant replacing the whole thing, but the smell definitely would. How do you go about proving something that is subjective such as smell?

Thanks,

Josh 

[Nathan Gesner]

Smell is very subjective and impossible to prove in court. However, you can take photographs of the carpet before tearing it out, and then take more photographs of the back side because that will show all the stains from urine.

You can use a "life expectancy" chart, but those are very conservative and unrealistic for our purposes. For example, I've seen carpet that was two years old and it looked like it was ready to be replaced. I've also had carpet that was 30+ years old, white, and still looked brand new!

Rather than base it on "life expectancy" from when it was brand new, I consider remaining life expectancy before the tenant occupied. If it was in decent shape and still had five years of life left in it (assuming normal occupancy, turnover every 12 months) then I would probably charge them 50% replacement cost. If it was much older, I would charge a lower percentage. I've also charged the tenant for the cost of professional cleaning and odor removal, but then applied the money towards replacement flooring costs.