When I first moved here I lived in temporary apartments. I had one I lived in for a couple of months that had a couple of inexpensive fake leather chairs with arms and backs. One time, I sat down with something in my pocket (a pen? Don't remember) and it punctured a hole in it. That's not normal wear and tear and I had the one chair recovered for the owner. The owner never even knew that the chair had been damaged. That was the only apartment I didn't have issues with of some sort, when I left, as far as I can remember.
I lived in a long-term rental for 4 years in my last apartment. At some time in the past, before we even moved in, the carpet in the dining room had been cut up to make repairs to pipes in the floor. When we originally rented the apartment, they had covered this area with cardboard (along with other areas), ostensibly so that people looking at the apartment to rent it wouldn't ruin the carpet walking on it with their shoes. When we moved in, we found the off-colored patches (it was beige carpeting and some of the patches even had a pinkish hue to them) under the cardboard in the dining room and immediately notified the inmobiliaria who was managing the property (the owner was a diplomat working overseas for Cristina's government and we never saw him until later). Over time, the bad patch job that whoever had performed on the carpet was coming apart at the seams. When we moved out, the owner had returned to Argentina and inspected the apartment and blamed the bad carpet on us and wanted us to replace the entire carpet in the dining room, living room and front hallway, which were all interconnected. I literally laughed.
While in that apartment, we had plumbers out to fix the toilet fixtures many, many times. The toilets used direct in-line valves for the flushing mechanisms, like you find in public bathrooms, i.e, no tanks. They must have been something like 30 years old. The valves leaked often and would get to the point where you had to manipulate the handle to make it flush. Plumbers had a hard time finding the parts for the valves because this particular model wasn't made any more. At one point we paid to have new parts machined.
We never got our deposit back because of the carpet, no matter that we tried to repair everything else that we felt was normal wear and tear, even though I felt we went above and beyond with certain things, like the toilets. I should have pursued this further with renters' rights organizations but I never did.
In our current apartment we agree with the owners that things like the ballasts on the incandescent lights are not normal wear and tear; these are things that have a certain lifetime and is the responsibility of the owners to replace. Even while agreeing, we have been waiting some 6 months to get them replaced because they can't get an electrician to come out (we found out from the last electrician [who they suggested and we were paying] who came out to work on the kitchen after the fire that they don't pay their bills). The lack of lights in this particular area isn't a big problem, but I'm probably going to have to replace the ballasts myself. Just after outlaying so much cash to get the apartment back to snuff after the fire, I've been trying to get them to do their part.
You never know what's going to get you, it all depends on the owner and so much of the "normal wear and tear" can be subjective, or at least argued on the part of the owner. Some of it is obviously not normal and shouldn't be placed on the renter, but sometimes you have to do what you need to do to be comfortable in the place you're renting.
I lived in a long-term rental for 4 years in my last apartment. At some time in the past, before we even moved in, the carpet in the dining room had been cut up to make repairs to pipes in the floor. When we originally rented the apartment, they had covered this area with cardboard (along with other areas), ostensibly so that people looking at the apartment to rent it wouldn't ruin the carpet walking on it with their shoes. When we moved in, we found the off-colored patches (it was beige carpeting and some of the patches even had a pinkish hue to them) under the cardboard in the dining room and immediately notified the inmobiliaria who was managing the property (the owner was a diplomat working overseas for Cristina's government and we never saw him until later). Over time, the bad patch job that whoever had performed on the carpet was coming apart at the seams. When we moved out, the owner had returned to Argentina and inspected the apartment and blamed the bad carpet on us and wanted us to replace the entire carpet in the dining room, living room and front hallway, which were all interconnected. I literally laughed.
While in that apartment, we had plumbers out to fix the toilet fixtures many, many times. The toilets used direct in-line valves for the flushing mechanisms, like you find in public bathrooms, i.e, no tanks. They must have been something like 30 years old. The valves leaked often and would get to the point where you had to manipulate the handle to make it flush. Plumbers had a hard time finding the parts for the valves because this particular model wasn't made any more. At one point we paid to have new parts machined.
We never got our deposit back because of the carpet, no matter that we tried to repair everything else that we felt was normal wear and tear, even though I felt we went above and beyond with certain things, like the toilets. I should have pursued this further with renters' rights organizations but I never did.
In our current apartment we agree with the owners that things like the ballasts on the incandescent lights are not normal wear and tear; these are things that have a certain lifetime and is the responsibility of the owners to replace. Even while agreeing, we have been waiting some 6 months to get them replaced because they can't get an electrician to come out (we found out from the last electrician [who they suggested and we were paying] who came out to work on the kitchen after the fire that they don't pay their bills). The lack of lights in this particular area isn't a big problem, but I'm probably going to have to replace the ballasts myself. Just after outlaying so much cash to get the apartment back to snuff after the fire, I've been trying to get them to do their part.
You never know what's going to get you, it all depends on the owner and so much of the "normal wear and tear" can be subjective, or at least argued on the part of the owner. Some of it is obviously not normal and shouldn't be placed on the renter, but sometimes you have to do what you need to do to be comfortable in the place you're renting.
