Bad tenat paint touch up at move out

[Ned J.]

Need some opinions....

We have a rental in TX (we live in CA, self manage)....tenant just moved out and there are dozens of poorly done paint touch ups....like 10-11 walls have badly done hole patch and paint work done...wrong sheen etc. The current tenant claims they were there when he moved in...... in going through my records, my move in agent and the tenants placing agent have no record of a move in condition sheet filled out by the tenant.

Lease states that if the tenant does not submit one, the house is considered damage free.

House bought in 5/2014..all new paint....one tenant previous for 12 months...this tenant for the remaining time until now.

My agent did the walk through post last move out and did not note any issues where she felt I needed to repaint except one room, which I did.

Since its so many walls in different rooms, the estimate is $1000 to repaint these areas.

So the recent tenant is claiming they were there already and its normal wear and tear and is my responsibility to fix.

My position is that there is no documentation of his claim and if he had just left them alone I could have fixed the issues way cheaper since it would have been done correctly from the start....it would have been way better to just leave a bunch of nail holes in the walls than have blotchy paint everywhere

Opinions?

An yes....I'm learning that I need to document move in/move out condition better...wont le these items be overlooked again...

[Greg H.]

Deduct what you are prepared to defend in court.  Your actually expenses as long as they are reasonable should be acceptable in a JP court. 

Make sure you account for the deposit within the timeline set forth in Texas which is within 30 days of move out and receiving a forwarding address