Tenant moved out leaving pet urine in carpets- she had no pet

[Kathy Brasby]

We just checked out a tenant. All three bedrooms had new carpet and now reek of pet urine. We're pulling carpets and painting the floor before installing laminate. One problem is that she never paid a pet fee or deposit because she said she didn't have a pet. But she acknowledged that her daughter's dog was there frequently. We tried to collect pet rent but she claimed the dog was a service dog. So we let it go.

Now we have this smell and we plan to charge her for damages. She's threatening to take us to small claims court to get all of her deposit back. We can easily show the stained carpet. Are we in trouble on this? We live in Colorado.  

[James DeRoest]

Originally posted by @Kathy Brasby:

Now we have this smell and we plan to charge her for damages. She's threatening to take us to small claims court to get all of her deposit back. We can easily show the stained carpet. Are we in trouble on this? We live in Colorado.  

 Charge her for the carpets and your time for laying the new floor. Show the depreciation for carpets in your calculation, if they cost $1500 and have a lifetime of 7 years, the tenant wrecked them in 2 years, then claim for the 5/7th of the $1500. If you are showing yourself as honest and proper whats a judge likely to do?

To determine your time value, easiest thing to do is get a couple of quotes from a carpet shop for laying x'000 square feet of carpet and go from there. Carpets don't lay themselves.

Even better if you have the original receipt - which you should have for the IRS anyway.

And if the judge doesn't want to reimburse your time in a judgement, he'll just cross it off the list. He isn't going to toss the entire claim because of one bad item that you are claiming for, he'll merely say that you can't claim that because of xyz. But make sure the items your claiming are listed separately.

As for going to court - heck - enjoy it! It's always fun to go to court. Win or lose, whatever, make your case. Personally and business wise, I've been sued 3-4 times and I've never lost. Always a laugh. It's not like you're going to jail!