Normal wear and tear vs damage: an item-by-item guide to what you can actually charge

You walk the empty unit the day after the keys come back, and the list writes itself: nail holes in the living room, traffic lanes matted into the hallway carpet, one snapped blind slat in the bedroom, a chip in the tub the size of a thumbnail, a refrigerator missing a crisper drawer. The deposit is sitting in the bank, your state's return deadline is already running, and every item on that list has to land in one of two buckets before you can write the statement.

The rule has the same shape in every state: you cannot deduct for normal wear and tear, and you can deduct for damage beyond it. What no statute gives you is the item-by-item sorting, which is where most deposit fights actually start. This page is that sorting, about 40 verdicts across walls, floors, windows, and appliances, each with a typical cost, followed by the useful-life caveat that caps even the legitimate charges.

The test that sorts every item

Normal wear and tear is the deterioration a unit suffers from ordinary, intended use over time. Damage is what negligence, accident, abuse, or an unapproved alteration leaves behind. The working test is a single question: would this condition exist if a careful tenant had lived here for the same period? If time alone would have produced it, it is wear, and the rent you collected already paid for it. If it took a dog, a cigarette, a wrench, or a wall-mounted television, it is damage, and the deposit exists for it.

Two refinements keep the test honest. First, quantity converts wear into damage: six small nail holes are wear, forty holes plus three drywall anchors are not, because no ordinary use requires them. Second, dirt is its own category. Cleaning is chargeable to the extent it restores the unit to its move-in condition, and that claim is only provable against a dated baseline, which is what a signed move-in and move-out inspection checklist exists to create. Rent covers use. The deposit covers misuse.

Walls, paint, and doors

• A modest number of small nail holes is wear. Hanging pictures is ordinary use, so the spackle and touch-up paint, maybe $20 in materials, is your cost.
• Dozens of holes or torn-out anchors are damage. A TV mount ripped through drywall is beyond ordinary use; patching and repainting one wall runs $150 to $300.
• Paint dulled or faded by two or three years of living is wear. Sunlight and ordinary scuffing come with occupancy, so the routine turnover repaint is an operating cost, not a deduction.
• Crayon, marker, grease, or smoke bonded into the paint is damage. So is an unauthorized accent wall; charge the prorated cost of returning that surface to its original color, not a whole-unit repaint.
• Scuffs along hallways and behind doors are wear. A doorknob punched through the drywall behind it is damage, and a $4 doorstop at make-ready is the cheapest insurance in this guide.
• A hole in a hollow-core door is damage. Doors do not fail that way on their own; replacement runs $150 to $250 installed.
• Sticking doors, worn knob finish, and loose hinges are wear. Houses settle and hardware ages.

Floors and carpet

• Matted traffic lanes and minor seam fraying are wear. Walking on carpet is what the tenant paid rent to do.
• Sun-faded carpet near a window is wear. UV did it, not the tenant.
• Pet urine in the pad, bleach spots, dye stains, and burns are damage. Run the proration below before you write the number.
• Stains that come out with professional cleaning are a cleaning charge, not a replacement. Bill the $40 to $80 per room if your lease and state allow it; charging replacement for a recoverable stain gets an entire itemization rejected.
• Hardwood finish dulled along walk paths is wear. Deep gouges, pet scratches through the finish, and black water rings from unattended plants are damage; refinishing runs $3 to $5 per square foot.
• On vinyl and laminate, fine scratches are wear. Burns, deep cuts, and planks swollen by standing water the tenant never reported are damage.
• Cracked grout is wear; a tile cracked by a dropped pot is damage. Swapping one tile is cheap if you kept attic stock from the install.

Windows, blinds, and fixtures

• Blinds faded brittle by sunlight are wear. Mini blinds are a short-life item no matter who lives under them.
• Bent, snapped, or missing slats and torn cords are damage. At $15 to $40 a blind, replace rather than argue.
• Screens rotted by sun are wear; screens torn or pushed out are damage. Rescreening runs $20 to $50 per window.
• Foggy double-pane glass, loose cranks, and sticky sashes are wear. A cracked pane is damage unless your move-in photos show it was already there.
• A broken light fixture or ceiling fan pull is damage. A burned-out bulb is rarely worth a line at move-out.
• A missing smoke detector, or one with the battery pulled, is chargeable. Photograph it, replace it, and put it on the statement.

Appliances, kitchens, and baths

• Discolored oven interiors and worn drip pans from ordinary cooking are wear. Caked-on grease that takes a crew hours to cut is a cleaning charge.
• A missing crisper drawer or a snapped refrigerator shelf is damage. Parts run $40 to $90, and an order receipt supports the line.
• Worn faucet finish and a sink scratched dull are wear.
• A chipped tub or sink from a dropped object is damage. A repair kit costs about $30 if you do it yourself; a professional reglaze runs $350 to $600 and should be prorated by the fixture's age.
• Mildew in grout from poor ventilation is a cleaning item. Rotted subfloor under a leak the tenant never reported is damage of the most expensive kind, which is why leases require prompt leak reporting.
• Missing stove knobs and burner pans are damage. Small dollars, but real ones.
• A garbage disposal killed by bones or a spoon is damage; one that dies of age is wear.
• Knife cuts and burns in a countertop are damage; a finish dulled by years of wiping is wear.
• Cabinet hinges loosened by use are wear; doors swollen from soaking or saturated with grease are damage.

The useful-life caveat that caps every charge

A damage verdict gets the item onto the statement; it does not get you the full replacement invoice. Every finish and fixture in the unit was wearing out on a schedule before the tenant arrived, so the amount you can defend is the value that remained:

Charge = replacement cost × (useful life − age at move-out) ÷ useful life

Useful life is the input worth documenting. The IRS assigns carpet and appliances a five-year recovery period in a residential rental in Publication 527, which makes five years the most defensible carpet number in a dispute, and interior paint generally argues out at two to four years. Ruined three-year-old carpet on a five-year life is chargeable at 40 percent of the invoice. Ruined six-year-old carpet is chargeable at nothing, however obvious the fault. The worked examples are in the guide to charging for carpet and paint, and the same recovery periods drive the depreciation calculator at tax time. You can only bill for the life the item had left.

Turning verdicts into a deduction statement

Sorting the items is half the job; the other half is paperwork on a deadline. Most states give you somewhere between two weeks and 45 days to return the balance with an itemized statement, and a missed deadline or one padded line can cost you the entire deduction, sometimes with a penalty multiplier attached. The full lifecycle of deadlines, escrow rules, and returns is covered in the security deposit guide for landlords. Each line should name the item, state which side of the test it fell on, and show the proration arithmetic; the deposit return letter template has that structure built in. If the tenant pushes back anyway, the guide to preparing for a deposit dispute in small claims covers the evidence order that holds up.

I self-manage my own small portfolio from two time zones away, so move-out sorting often happens over a contractor's photos. In rents.ai, each item that survives the test on this page gets logged as a deposit deduction with its own description and amount, the returned balance is computed as the deposit minus the sum of those lines, and the deposit's status and return date are recorded alongside them. What it will not do is make the wear-or-damage call for you or track your state's deadline and deduction limits; the verdicts and the statute reading stay your job.