$12,000 Turnover!! Is this normal for less than 3 year tenant.

[Jasper Zimmerman]

Hello,

I'm a new investor with one unit in Indianapolis, IN. I'm an out of state landlord with a property management company taking care of the house. The tenants recently moved out and the property management company sent a quote from their vendor with the list of repairs totaling $12,000. This is a 3 bed 1 bath house that is 1128 sqft. The repair work consists of drywall repair, painting the whole inside of the house, replacing flooring with LVP in 3/4 of the house, a few other minor repairs.

Is this a normal turnover price tag for a 3 year tenant?

Is my PM company and their vendor gouging me? 

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Jasper Zimmerman:

Hello,

I'm a new investor with one unit in Indianapolis, IN. I'm an out of state landlord with a property management company taking care of the house. The tenants recently moved out and the property management company sent a quote from their vendor with the list of repairs totaling $12,000. This is a 3 bed 1 bath house that is 1128 sqft. The repair work consists of drywall repair, painting the whole inside of the house, replacing flooring with LVP in 3/4 of the house, a few other minor repairs.

Is this a normal turnover price tag for a 3 year tenant?

Is my PM company and their vendor gouging me? 

I'm in a small town with few options. It would cost me around $5,000 for flooring and $2,500 for painting walls. Add drywall repairs and "other minor repairs" and I could see it creeping up to $9,000. But there are many variables involved.

Your title asks, "Is this normal for less than 3 year tenant?" No, it is not normal. Even $3,000 is not normal.

An average Tenant will leave some minor damages and cleaning, costing you 50% of their security deposit or less. Nationally, I suspect fewer than 20% of all renters lose their entire deposit and fewer than 10% will leave enough cleaning and damages to eat up more than their deposit will cover (not counting unpaid rent).

This is not normal, and Tenants don't cause $12,000 in damages in just a few months. This took place over a long period of time. So why didn't your PM catch it and put a stop to it? Do they have proof of inspections over the last three years? At a bare minimum, they should have inspected once a year before offering a renewal. Your tenant renewed twice, so there should have been at least two inspections.

Either I'm missing something important or your PM is actually costing you far more than their management fee.