What is normal wear and tear?

Normal wear and tear is the standard that is used in the rental industry to determine if the tenant is responsible to pay extra for their use of a rental property.

The biggest challenge in this area is determining what constitutes normal wear. Although legislators spend a lot of time making laws about the rental industry, they do not spend any time addressing normal wear, which happens to be one of the most common landlord/tenant disputes.

Landlords have a few resources available to them. The first being the book published by NOLO called “California Landlord’s Rights and Responsibilities”. The second is an expert contractor or handyman who can give their opinion on the particular system or item that may have been damaged. The third resource is an industry expert such as a property manager.

If you have an item that you are uncertain about, please feel free to give me a call. I will give you my opinion based on the information that you provide.
Bill Ausen
Broker
American Heritage