I was able to terminate the lease early, she wouldn't pay for repairs to the house (carpet stains/cleaning, a broken floor tile etc) and gets off the utilities, but paid a termination fee equivalent to the leftover rent.

Are they to check for issues needing repairs, stains, preventative maintenance issues?

In short, you need working windows, no cracking/chipping paint inside/outside, smoke and CO2 detectors inside, no overgrown greenery/trees outside, no holes in the walls, if you have carpet inside - it can't have stains or rips in it, and some other small stuff.

I recently placed in a class a unit (almost $2k/ft value) because it is beach unit and expect higher water contact (normally class a gets real wood).Carpet in common areas in short run is cheap but long run will cost more than concrete stain or LVF.  

I'm actually going to post a similar question about stain removal & replacement :-).Anyway, my cleaners do run a load of laundry during the turnover cleaning. 

It is difficult to maintain, it scratches, it warps, it stains, it needs to be cleaned with cleaners made for wood floors, pets tear it up, it transfers noise, it shows wear patterns, etc. 

Later, we stripped off the old patterned wallpaper inside the house and saw that the walls were covered in water stains.

We had tenants renting for 4yrs, when we got to the property after they moved out we noticed a large oil-stain in the driveway as well as various other smaller oil stains in the driveway.

Most importantly: theft, deep cleans, odor removal, stained linens.

Tenant now requests a water softener (we live in a very hard water area) due to clothes not being clean, stains, etc.