What is expected of you when you move out of a rental in the USA?

I live in NZ, your list sounds just right to me, it’s what I would expect to do if moving out of property and what I hope the previous person in my new house will have done before I move in.

@I’m not sure about the shampoo carpets? It seems that would be the owner’s job unless I had obviously done something terrible to them.

Not here. Generally you have to leave the place as you found it, clean and with all walls free of picture hanger marks. Painting and rug shampooing would usually be done by the landlord. If there were any damage to anything, however, the security deposit could be kept by the landlord.

Of course, individual leases may specify other conditions but that is my general understanding.

I lived in the US and in Ecuador. In the US I had to complete a checklist very similar to what you describe (in addition, I had to clean the fan and make sure the walls had no stains). I lived in an apartment complex where the main complain by former tenants was that management would see the smallest thing and go the extra mile to deduct money from your deposit. I cleaned the place and left it cleaner than when I moved in, and no money was deducted :)

In Ecuador, you are expected to do the same, however, no checklist involved.

Sounds about right. Here, in Canada, you would also be expected to repaint the unit in neutral tones if you had used ‘decorator’ colours i.e. anything other than a pale beige/tan or white.

^ You have to repaint the whole thing? That’s too much to ask I think.

I help manage a few apartments in Chicago.

We expect the place to be empty and swept clean, but we assume it won’t be perfect and we hire cleaners afterwards to do a better job.

Only if someone leaves a huge mess (food, furniture, broken fixtures, appliances) do we try to extract money. It is a rare occurrence.

We fix holes from nails & such in the walls and paint as needed.

I don’t know if this is typical. We do have tenant-friendly laws.

^^ That’s kind of what I said which was my experience and my kids when they moved out of apartments.

Oh man… This question does not make me happy.

It is actually fucking hilarious and makes me want to burn management companies.

I was renting from a management company in 2000. They were called something like FairWay and were out on Highway 99. Every month I had to take the bus for hours to pay my rent. This was before paying on the internet was a thing.

So one morning I was all haggard from doing janitor work at a bar and go in to pay rent. A hour later I am on the payroll cleaning recently vacated apartments. This was about a month before I was going to Europe for a month so I was doing everything I could to get money.

So I was doing the cleaning for a company I was renting from. In a month I would move out and my coworkers would clean my place.

First.. I knew exactly what was expected. They would walk through and say not good enough and we would have to clean more.

So I move out… And I know how to clean to meet their standards. The shit was exactly what they wanted.

And they still charged me for cleaning stuff I know was totally to their standards.

My buddy lived in a apartment upstairs too. When he moved out he got the same fucking amount of deposit back. And my place was much cleaner. I compared our itemized bills and they were identical.

Basically.. They always gave you back 85$ of the security deposit. Unless you went over.

In the US, just as long as the place is clean, in the same condition you moved in, you’ll get your deposit back. I’ve never had a landlord give me a list of items to clean upon moving out but that could depend on the landlord.

@johnpowell When I wrote it down it didn’t sound that bad, but it was tough. Moving to a new place and cleaning that place and the place we were leaving as well as moving etc., I was told by the renting company that they do not give back deposits unless they simply cannot argue but argue they will.

The bins were also a strange thing because I have to go there on the day the council empties them and then place them back. There was just regular rubbish in them not moving rubbish. The council only empties a few bins once a month. They charge £70 a bin.
@AshlynM Same in SA you just clean as you would a regular home, I know though some people are not clean, in this case, I am a bit of a clean freak. When I moved certain items like the massive fish tank there was dust on the skirting board. It’s tough renting I feel for many reasons.

Your UK landlord seems vastly out of line unless they arranged an explicit contract to do that stuff in advance. Especially on certain parts such as:

Shampoo carpets (and give evidence and receipts) – LOL no!
Clean skirting boards – never seen this called out
Wash windows – no
Dust light bulbs and replace any not working – no
Empty all rubbish bins (even when you are moved out) – maybe but WTF are they going to charge you if you forgot to empty a pail?
Cut grass in garden – LOL (but in UK they do expect you to do that in general, which surprised me too especially since they provided a crappy broken down lawnmower)
Tidy garden – hehe
Vacuum and clean floors – maybe sort of – I have seen one US landlord pocket some deposit for not cleaning the floors to their satisfaction somehow
Clean all cupboards inside including kitchen etc., – picky
There were curtains so they had to be dry cleaned – DRY CLEANED by the renter? no
Clean the S Bend on the toilet – LOL NO!
Remove any mold or limescale on any items – Hmm.
Remove all cobwebs if any – landlord’s cleaners are arachnophobes?
Clean extractor fans – WTF no
Bath and sink plug clear of blockages – actually I called my landlord when there are blocks I couldn’t easily clean.

When I rented in the UK, I saw many prospective apartments, and I had seen some pretty bad apartments before in the USA, but compared to the USA, the UK apartments for rent were on average in dismal condition, ranging from unclean (e.g. covered in dead spiders) to “it’s a great deal but new tenants are expected to repair holes in the floor and walls” to mostly-sort-of-ok.

In the USA, it depends on the landlord and the place. Some landlords want to steal your deposit for any excuse, but they’re generally not supposed to unless they have exceptional expenses. Usually the landlord is expected to repaint for the new tenant and get everything in order. But a cleaning deposit is like $100–200, so if they want you to dry clean drapes and do plumbing work and spend days cleaning everything, it’s going to cost/take way more than that. so it seems to me they’d just be trying to abuse their landlord position to try to get gullible and shame-conditioned people to do stuff so they come out even more ahead than they already do as landlords.

In the places we have rented, I have filled out the damage report meticulously, as well as time stamped photos of the condition, thus documenting everything. Then, because I ran a cleaning business for 30 years, I have always left our rentals in better condition than when we moved in. I suppose it was a matter of integrity for me, but our landlords always loved us and I’ve always got my deposit back, unless the cleaning fee was written into the rental contract from the get go. I did have one landlord say that there would be nothing for their cleaners to do when we left.

I rented privately once and in the lounge was a horrible square of dark carpet. I wasn’t in the flat much and I rarely stepped across this carpet and when I did it was in my slippers. Nevertheless when I was moving out the landlord asked if I had shampooed the carpet. I just looked at her and thought to myself that a good shampooing would destroy that crappy piece of carpet. I wasn’t sure she was serious but she was and she deducted the cost from my deposit. Whether the carpet was subsequently cleaned I would doubt.

I think that this is about common curtesy.

When I moved out of an apartment in San Antonio Texas I was given no guidelines as to how well the apartment should be cleaned. So I clean it up like I would like to have it cleaned if I was the owner.

Where ever I saw dirt I cleaned it. I paid special attention to the gas stove. I disassembled it completely and clean each part separately and reassembling it.

I made that place shine. I guess I blew the manager’s mind as she told me that she never seen an apartment vacated so clean.

@snowberry and @flutherother Well our ‘landlord’ loved us too. Since here they inspect the place every 3 months and take photos. (haha). However, no matter how much they love you they love your deposit more and will do anything to get it off you. My place was clean and like flutherother said, the carpet was so old and threadbare, if you had commercially cleaned it, it was have been reduced to its framework. The carpet is I know 30 years old. The place was not painted nor that clean when I moved in like @Zaku mentioned I found it dismal when I got there, it smelled like sweaty socks. However, when I left it was sparkling within the constraints of very, very old fittings all around the time it was built in the 70s.

Very capitalistic I feel, since we are not speaking of a private landlord but one that has the backup of the rental agency. Plus, here in the UK, we pay for his water council tax. In SA the landowner pays that. That stops people owning tons of properties.
Where I have moved now, the landlord has repainted, to a sparkling white, brand new carpets, sparkling windows, sparkling new white stuff, new floor in kitchen and bathroom and frankly I am thrilled! However, he is my father-in-law lol, he’s awesome!

@LornaLove Did you marry your boyfriend? Is this the one you met online a long time ago? Congratulations!!