New owner charging tenant for 13yr old carpets.


Until last month, my wife and I rented a house for 3.5 years in
southern AZ. Recently, the original owner decided to sell the
residence. The new owner, who had never once seen the residence until
just two months before our lease expired, assumed our lease for the 28
days from the date the house closed until the date we vacated, and our
1.5 month's rent security deposit was passed to her. No new lease or
legal notification of this was given to us.

When we moved in, the carpet was in poor condition. The original
landlady made the claim that it was "damaged by her dogs" and not to
worry about our dog. In fact, the carpet was so old, it was pulling up
at the boundary to the tile in the hallway and kitchen, and I had to
put down wooden thresholds to prevent further damage and hide the
tears.

The new owner is now claiming damage to the carpet, and deducting the
complete cost of replacing the carpet (more than 2/3rds of our
deposit).

Some relevant points:

1. The carpet was of poor quality and is now over 13 years old -- well
beyond even the most generous (for the landlord) depreciation duration.
It should have been replaced when we moved in, and we have a document
signed by the original owner attesting to its poor condition (sadly no
pictures).

2. The new owner presumably factored the current condition of the
carpet into her buying price. Doing that, *and* charging the tenants
for replacing the carpet strikes me as "double-dipping" (a practice
which to me the AZ law seems to implicitly encourage, as a "bonus" on
the closing terms between owner and buyer). The carpet was completely
unchanged in the last 28 days.

Any recommendations on how best to approach getting our refund? To my
thinking, even if we had carved our name in the carpet with a soldering
iron, it had zero residual value when we originally moved in, much less
3.5 years later. Add to that the fact that the carpet was already in
very poor condition, and I actually *repaired* tears in the carpet, and
I cannot abide giving any of my deposit to this unscrupulous owner, who
wants new carpet at my expense.

.

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