Charges to Tenant without move-in documentation

[Austin Welty]

Western NY State

We moved into a town-home community about a year and a half ago. The process was pretty rushed because we were moving from out-of-state and had limited options locally.

They said because our credit was so good and income relatively high, no security deposit required. My wife did the move-in walkthrough, but there was no documentation signed by either her or the landlord (this is common I guess in this community?)

We were the second tenants in this otherwise brand new townhome. The previous tenant obviously had a dog that urinated on the carpet regularly, the smell was pretty obvious. My wife noted that and they shampooed the carpet a few times, but still there was some odor noticeable. We weren't happy but had nowhere else to go at the time, after already moving in so we went with it and tried to keep the windows open all day when the weather permitted. Over time it went away.

We are now moving out and concerned that they are going to try and charge us for the carpet. Our neighbors recently moved and said they had similar circumstances (no security deposit or move-in inspection) and they got charged $1,000 for carpet repairs.

We're concerned they're going to do the same to us - there's some minor stains on the carpet, some issues with fraying at the edges, but what I would consider minor issues. Because there's no documentation of the state of the apartment (dumb on me) when we moved in, could they try and blame all the issues from us and previous tenant on us and come after us for total carpet replacement?

Move-out walk-through is tomorrow, but the property manager told my wife it's basically a joke and they come through and do a much more thorough walk-through later....sounds very sketchy. I told my wife to take as many pictures as possible, but you can't take pictures of odor.

It seems to me that we would have a case to argue they can't come after us for anything without  move-in inspection documentation - what are your thoughts?