He is a stubborn man and has only sold three properties in his life (one to me, one to a friend of a family, and that property). 

Airbnb CS was useless, so we spent hours getting out the stains the best that we could.  

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?

I had a case where I was weeks away from the sheriff actually evicting a seriously stubborn tenant, and an interested buyer for the home actually went to the home and worked with the current tenant to have them leave so they could move in. 

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.

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

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.  

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. 

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.