Wear and Tear, etc.

[Tamara R.]

I had some tenants just move out who had lived in our rental for 4 years….and during that time period they “really wore the sh#t out of the place” (to quote my husband). They were not mailicious, but by the looks of things just too lazy to be bothered to take care of things. Everything was brand new when they moved in, and now the place really looks worn out. Here are a few examples:
-granite counter completely chipped around the sink.

-Every single cabinet (bathroom, kitchen) is banged/scraped around the edges and the insides are discolored or deteriorating because they obviously put wet things in them.

-Lots of holes in every single wall from hanging things on the wall and the husband stringing cable to every single bedroom.
-Paint spilled on the carpets in every bedroom and slopped on the walls and baseboards because they decided to paint without our permission (really garish colors of course!).
-Every single carpet had stains all over it (most came out with professional carpet cleaning except the paint and bleach stains).
-Although they hired our cleaner to come for a few hours and then the whole family spent about 5 hours cleaning (along with us) one night, the place still required several more hours of cleaning afterwards.
…and the list goes on and on.
My question is about wear and tear. Is it reasonable to expect tenants to take care of things (ie. not putting wet dishes and other things away in the cabinets..not banging the edges of cabinets when they put things away…not dripping water on outsides of cabinets leaving it… and things of that nature)? Or is that just normal wear and tear? If it isn’t “wear and tear” how do you fix these things (short of replacing everthing) in order to return it back to the condition it was? Going forward, I plan to put linoleum in the bottoms of all cabinets and contact paper on all shelves/medicine cabinets. If it matters, these are not low income tenants..household income about six figures. Together, my husband and I have probable spent 70 hours of our time working on this place, not to mention the contractors we hired to take care of the bathrooms for several thousand dollars.
We own another property 2 doors down that we bought at the exact same time and have never had issues (other than a couple of holes in wall here and there). In the same time period that our above mentioned tenants lived in their home, we had four sets of tenants move in and out of that one with barely any work on our end!