The $1,000 carpet you can only charge $200 for: wear and tear vs damage in LA rentals

Replace an eight-year-old carpet, bill the departing tenant the full $1,000, and you have just written their small claims argument for them. California lets an LA landlord deduct for genuine damage, but it draws a hard line at ordinary wear and tear, and it expects the charge to reflect how much life the item had left. Most deposit disputes start exactly here.

Here is where the line sits, item by item, with the proration math the state itself publishes. General information, not legal advice.

The one-sentence rule

Civil Code 1950.5 allows only what is reasonably necessary to repair damage caused by the tenant or their guests, exclusive of ordinary wear and tear. Since AB 2801, it also says it out loud: no claims for conditions that preexisted the tenancy, and none for the cumulative wear of one or several tenancies. Wear is what normal living does to a unit. Damage is what it does not: burns, pet urine in the pad, a doorknob hole in the drywall.

The math: remaining life, not sticker price

The California Department of Real Estate's tenant guide gives the example. A carpet with a ten-year life is destroyed beyond repair in year eight, and a comparable replacement costs $1,000. The landlord can properly charge $200, the two years of life the tenant took. The same logic applies to anything that ages: the older the item, the smaller the defensible deduction, however bad it looks in the photos.

Carpet

Matted pile along the hallway after a multi-year tenancy is wear. The same guide counts moderate dirt and spotting as wear too. Large rips, indelible stains, bleach spots and burns are damage, still prorated by age.

Paint

The state guide describes one approach that assumes interior paint lasts two years: full cost if the tenant stayed under six months, two thirds between six months and a year, one third between one and two years, nothing after two years. Some landlords assume a longer life, but the logic holds. Repainting is chargeable only for damage or soiling that cannot reasonably be cleaned.

Nail holes and walls

Minor marks and nicks, like worn paint where a sofa rested, are the landlord's responsibility. A large number of holes that need plaster, patching and repainting can justify a deduction, more easily if the unit was recently painted.

Blinds

LA sunlight does most of the work. Faded, brittle slats on a south-facing window after a few years are wear: that is time, not negligence. Snapped slats, missing wands and chewed cords are damage, and on blinds that were already several years old, proration shrinks the charge fast.

The paperwork that makes it stick

Within 21 days of move-out you owe an itemized statement with the supporting documents and the photos taken before and after repairs. Keep any part of the deposit in bad faith and the statute allows damages of up to twice the deposit. The cleanest way to hold the line is a neutral record at both ends of the tenancy: a third-party move-out report from Scoutmyplace, set against the move-in record, turns "worn or damaged" from an argument into a lookup. The full item-by-item breakdown is in our guide to normal wear vs damage in California rentals.

The takeaway. Deduct for what the tenant broke, at the value it had left, with paper to prove it. The deposit exists to repair damage. The passage of time is the landlord's own cost of doing business.