Hi, I'm a newish landlord and could use some advice.
I have a tenant moving out this month who has generally been a good tenant other than she is moving out a few months early (although our market is super hot so not a problem). I inherited her from the previous landlord, who did not collect a pet deposit or ask any pet fees for her dog or two cats.
Well, the dog has absolutely wrecked the hell out of a large set of blinds by chewing on them. They will definitely have to be replaced.
The problem here is that there are several other windows in that room with the same color blinds. The color is apparently no longer available, so to have them all match again, we will have to replace all of them.
The tenant took it upon herself to order new blinds for just the one window, but they are not the same color, nor do I know whether they will actually fit the window and will need to get them installed. They won't arrive until about a week after she has moved out.
She has been contacting me multiple times a day now to say that she really expects to get her full deposit back, saying that it's inappropriate to have "custom color" blinds in a rental so this isn't her fault, etc. She is also trying to switch to a "video walkthrough" to get her deposit back faster. Of course that is a no-go.
So my questions:
1) How would you handle the blinds situation? It does seem a little unreasonable to ask her to pay for the blinds for the entire room, but I'm also not excited to eat that cost or have mismatched blinds due to damage that she caused?
2) Any other words of wisdom on security deposit management/walkthroughs/etc?
Thank you so much in advance!
