Ask one question about the condition in front of you: would this have happened to a careful tenant living here for the same number of years? If yes, it is wear and you own it. If no, it is damage and you can look at charging for it. Apply that test to every line before you look at a single price.
It sounds simple because it is. The trouble is that landlords rarely apply it to something they just paid to fix.
What the statutes actually say
Nearly every deposit statute in the country carves ordinary wear out of what a landlord may claim. The drafting varies. The rule does not.
Washington says it in one line:
California goes further and closes the loophole landlords reach for most:
Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.5(e)(2)(A)
no claim for ordinary wear and tear, whether it preexisted the tenancy or occurred during it, and none for the cumulative effect of ordinary wear occurring during one or more tenancies.
That second clause is the one to sit with. Wear does not become chargeable because it finally reached the point of needing replacement on this tenant’s watch. Four tenants each contributing a year of ordinary use produced a carpet at the end of its life, and the fourth tenant did not do anything the first three did not.
Item by item
These are the arguments that come up, in the order they come up.
Paint. Fading, minor scuffs along a hallway, and marks behind furniture are wear. Crayon murals, unapproved color changes, and holes are not. Repainting on a normal cycle is a cost of owning the building.
Nail holes. Small holes from hanging pictures are wear almost everywhere. A wall with thirty anchor holes for a shelving system is a repair. The line is roughly the difference between hanging things and mounting things.
Carpet. Traffic-path thinning, flattening under furniture, and general dinginess are wear. Burns, pet urine that reached the pad, and tears are damage. Carpet has a useful life, so even real damage is charged at remaining value, not replacement cost.
Hard flooring. Scratches from ordinary foot traffic are wear. Gouges from dragging appliances, and water damage from a plant saucer left on wood for a year, are not.
Appliances. A dishwasher that failed at year nine failed. A dishwasher with a broken door hinge did not fail; something happened to it. Interior grime is a cleaning question, not a damage question.
Blinds and window coverings. Sun-brittle slats on a south-facing window are wear, and they get charged anyway more often than they should. Bent slats and torn cords are damage.
Grout, caulk, and tub surfaces. Discoloration and shrinking caulk are wear, and they are maintenance items on a schedule. Chips, cracks, and a surround with the finish scoured off are not.
Doors and hardware. A worn strike plate is wear. A hole behind a doorknob is a repair, though if no door stop was ever installed, that is a maintenance failure rather than a tenant one.
Cleaning. The standard is the move-in condition, not spotless. If the oven was greasy at move-in, a greasy oven at move-out is not chargeable. This is the overcharge that reads worst when it is questioned, and the reason the move-in checklist matters more than anything else on this list.
The math on anything with a useful life
When a line is genuinely damage, the charge is not the replacement cost. It is the value the item still had.
Take a carpet that cost $1,800 and has a ten-year expected life. After six years, it has four years left, so it is worth about $720. If the tenant destroyed it, $720 is the defensible number and $1,800 is the one that gets reduced in court.
Write those four figures on the itemized statement: original cost, expected life, years used, remaining value. A tenant who can follow the arithmetic stops arguing about your motives and starts arguing about the arithmetic, which is a much shorter conversation.
The one thing this math does not apply to is cleaning. Cleaning restores a condition rather than replacing an asset, so it is either owed in full or not owed at all.
Where landlords get into real trouble
Three patterns show up repeatedly.
Charging two consecutive tenants for the same condition. Once you have billed a carpet, it is billed. Doing it again is the fastest way to lose credibility on every other line.
Treating a wear item as damage because the timing was inconvenient. A water heater does not become a tenant expense because it died in month eleven.
Charging replacement cost on a depreciated item. This is rarely dishonest and almost always expensive, because it converts a defensible $700 claim into a disputed $1,800 one.
Deposit statutes in many states add damages on top of the refund when a landlord withholds without a basis, so the downside is not symmetrical. The California version runs to twice the security in statutory damages, under Civ. Code § 1950.5(m). Check what your state does before you argue a marginal line.
Settle it before it becomes an argument
Run the two condition reports side by side and mark each line matched, changed, or missing, then sort the changed lines. Deposit tracking will hold the ratings, the photos, and the pricing on one record, and the deposit calculator will handle the remaining-value math and the return deadline.
California landlords should read the state’s security deposit rules alongside this, since the wear standard there is written more tightly than in most states.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.