Deducting from Deposit

[Roy Gutierrez]

Hi guys,

The renter that left my property just asked for an itemized list of deductions, I told him that I won't be returning any of his money after he left me with a flea infestation in the house that is still not under control after 3 1/2 weeks. I just want to make sure that I'm covered well , these are some of the stuff that I want to deduct :

- I've had to vacuum for fleas about 15 times so far (takes me at least an hour each time), I will for sure be north of 30 vacuums if not more when this is over and done, if I try to hire a cleaning lady for this no cleaning lady will come for a $40 job, so I'm thinking of charging him $30 per vacuum. If I'm losing money for performing my trade (computer programmer) can I charge my trade's rate for this?

- Materials it's no problem, I have the receipts

- I put the house for sale, also thought of maybe doing a short term rental but any thought of that went out the window with the infestation, even for the house sale of course this delayed me since I was consumed with this problem,  but regardless if it's for sale or not, if it delayed me a month that would normally have been available to rent, can I deduct the month rent I lost from their deposit? For example, their last day was 7/31, usually I would be renting the house again by 9/1 so if I was re-renting the house can I say that in theory (even though I'm selling but still delayed even that because of the infestation) you have delayed me so I have lost rent, I will deduct that from the deposit?

- My time researching, going to buy stuff to beat this, basically my personal/business plans for October went out the window because of this issue.

- What about issues that could take 1+ months to figure out the final number? (because the infestation could still be going on), I will absolutely will not rent this if I don't have 1 full month of 0 fleas, even if you don't see any they could come back if there are eggs waiting to hatch.

I appreciate your input, thank you!