Should you clean the carpet between tenants?
YUCK. Any landlord who asks this question should be forced to live in their own rental property resplendent with wall-to-wall nastiness. Let’s see, can we guess what my answer is? OF COURSE!!! I don’t want to live with someone else’s dirt – why would I expect a tenant to be interested in renting a property that is poorly maintained? This is a particular peeve of mine…I can remember moving into a SFH in California and hearing my 5 year-old daughter ask about the Rice Krispies in the carpet…it wasn’t cereal – it was filthy, vile carpet embedded with decades of ???. The carpet was gone the next morning. So, yes, clean the carpet. I always have it cleaned professionally and tenants can cover the cost of the cleaning…but as a landlord, make sure that you replace the carpet within a reasonable amount of time – nothing lasts forever.
