Tenant subtly damaging property?

[Tyson S.]

Summary if you don't want to read the whole post: Tenant thinks they will be able to buy the house they are in from me and may be intentionally damaging property to get free repairs prior to buying the house. Don't have any concrete proof but am unsure of how to proceed.

I have a delicate situation that hasn't turned badly yet but is setting off warning signals and was hoping to get some advice.

A fairly new tenant has been submitting numerous repair requests.  The first few seemed quite legitimate as I personally went to check them out and even repaired some of the smaller issues.  Some larger issues cropped up that I wasn't able to deal with so I called a contractor I was familiar with.  This is when some of the dubious repair requests started coming in and now the contractor has passed on comments made to him by the tenant that are worrisome.

There was some sagging subfloor that needed to be replaced from water damage prior to my ownership.  During the repair of the subfloor, the tenant made multiple comments to the contractor about needing new carpet in the bedroom (it's about 5 years old).  Has not made this comment to me yet.  After these comments had been made, the tenant claimed there were rips and tears in the carpet resulting from the repair of the floor.  The contractor had mentioned to me they noticed damage in areas they weren't working in.  The repair was in one area of the bedroom and the carpet damage appeared in the other side.

The tenant also mentioned to the contractor multiple times that they were going to buy the house from me.  I've never had any discussion about the house being available for sale.

The comments about needing new carpet and buying the house makes me worried that the tenant is intentionally sabotaging the property to get "free" repairs in the hopes that they will eventually own the home.

How would you proceed at this point? I don't have any concrete proof as it's a bit of a he said, she said thing with the contractor and tenant but I have a good relationship with this contractor and carpet damage seems like a petty thing to deny damaging.  In fact, they damaged some wiring during the floor repair and fixed it, no questions asked, but balked at the carpet damage.

Thanks in advance.