Everywhere we turn, there’s more damage to the house—both major and minor. We’re wondering just how a property manager completely misses major gouges in walls? Or HOLES in doors? Or really badly patched holes in doors?
The lawn was never taken care of so we’ll probably have to start from scratch—and even the sodded front yard is abysmal. All our trees and bushes are dead and you can’t even see the gorgeous landscaping (that we did brand new right before we left) through all the weeds and overgrown grass. :'( >:XX
And what things the property manager did find and tell us about? Fixed shoddily. For example, the holes dug in the lawn by dogs? Filled with wood chips. WOOD CHIPS! And not really even filled since we can still see the holes! And the molding eaten by the dogs? Oh, it was replaced, but they used the wrong nails, left hammer marks, and didn’t paint it. A wall was repainted back to the color we had, but you can see the old color through it.
More tiles were cracked.
The carpet had runs.
Pretty much every room needs to be spackled to fill random holes/gouges and repainted.
They broke a refrigerator door shelf and fixed it with duct tape. Really? A new shelf is $25, which should have come out of a deposit. But the property manager missed it.
And I had to clean up meat juice from three layers of the fridge. WHO DOESN’T CLEAN UP A SPILL LIKE THAT?! (Granted, that was likely from the last short-term tenants and not the last long-term tenants, but still.)
The guest bath wall looks like they literally spewed water on the walls and it dripped down, completely staining the paint.
This cabinet (and the floor) was pristine when we left. Then tenants worked on cars in the garage and spray painted on the garage floor. REALLY? Now it’s a disgusting mess. And that’s not even considering the state of the walls. >:XX
The carpet is more trashed (dirty) in the two months our last tenants were here than the three years we were here. But seeing as how the property manger apparently didn’t do shit, we’re thinking maybe the carpet didn’t get cleaned like she claimed it did, either.
They also left a huge self-built wooden bar in the storage area upstairs that should have been removed—but it was left there for us to take care of. And it wasn’t just “oh move it out of the room”—it was built IN the room so it was too big to just move, so it had to be dismantled. If you looked in the storage area you couldn’t miss it. Ridiculous.
Now, to be fair, we don’t know for 100% sure that ALL the damage was done by the long-term tenants, but it’s most likely. For example, neighbors told us they saw them working on cars in the driveway (completely against the neighborhood rules) and there’s grease all over the garage and workbench—so it sounds like they took the illegal activity inside and that mess is theirs. And some of the other problems we were told about were from them (and were fixed badly). So overall, they were really crappy tenants who didn’t have a good reputation with treating the house well so I’m really sure most (if not all) of the issues were from them. And with the other people only being here 2.5 months, it’s not likely they did much of anything (though I do know it’s possible).
It just makes us sick because 1) it’s a decent chunk of money to fix everything that should have been taken out of their deposits, 2) we were obviously getting shitty service, and 3) we never would have rented to them in the first place had we not been so desperate (eminent bankruptcy having to pay for two mortgages) because they are the ones that “forgot” they had a third dog until after we had negotiated all pet terms and they were in the office signing the lease. So they were shady from the start.