Whats that smell?? HELP!

[Joshua Vallario]

A tenant just moved out and when I did the final walkthrough, there was a pet odor, but nothing too crazy.  I had my painter come in and paint (he is a personal friend) and I went in the next morning and the entire house smells like vomit.  #1:  Is there a product that I can have my cleaners use to rid the home of that smell?  #2: Can I charge the tenant's security account?  The smell is so bad that I am affraid that it will create an issue with the new tenant moving in If I cannot cure it.  

I know it was not my painter.  The former tenant was in there the prior night removing boxes and items that I identified.  Im thinking she might have done something?  Please help!

[Luka Milicevic]

Definitely first thing would be to identify the source. If it's something that just needs to be removed then that's great. 

After you have removed the source, then you can start eradicating the existing smell. You have already dealt with the walls by painting, so the next thing would be to get the floors up to standard.

If you have carpet doing a thorough cleaning of the carpet is most definitely required and you might even have to go one step further past a professional clean.

First place I purchased; the previous owner must have been a cat breeder because I'm not exaggerating when I say I got a headache from the smell after being in there for 5 minutes. I ended up having to remove all of the carpet after multiple cleaning attempts and paint all of the walls. 

I really tried to save the carpet upstairs because it was newer. Try the following: baking soda on the floors for a day. Vacuum that up. Spray a mixture of vinegar, hydrogen peroxide and dishwashing liquid over the floors. This helped quite a bit. I don't know if it was just in my head or what but I ended up removing the carpet upstairs anyway. The upstairs had a plywood subfloor and after removing the carpet and padding it still smelled like cat urine. I think at this point it was just a mental smell that stayed with me. Anyway, I ended up sanding the subfloor and that got rid of it.

Try the vinegar, H2O2, dishwashing liquid mixture on the carpets after you identify the source! 

Good luck and keep us posted.