So I’m out walking on my lunch hour and I pass a rental property on my own street — not one my property management company manages — and there’s a huge mess of trash left all over the sidewalk. The trash company already came through this morning, picked up what they wanted, and left the rest. Some of it’s the former tenants’ fault. Some of it isn’t — I actually saw someone earlier picking through the bags, pulling out what they wanted and tossing the rest on the ground.
And it got me thinking about a question I get from rental property owners all the time: what can I actually charge a tenant’s security deposit for when they move out and leave a mess?
The Damage Nobody Talks About: Your Equity
Here’s the thing. That pile of trash on the sidewalk isn’t just ugly. It’s damaging. It’s damaging to the neighbors. It’s damaging to the rental property owner, even if that owner doesn’t have a personal relationship with the neighbors. You still have standing in the neighborhood. You still own a property there. And an unsightly mess on the sidewalk is reducing your equity — and reducing every neighbor’s equity too. When one property on the block loses value, everybody on the block loses value.
So the landlord looks at this mess and thinks, “I’m going to hit this tenant’s security deposit hard.” But here’s the rub: you can’t charge them for as much as you’d like.
What You Can’t Charge a Tenant For
Let me be direct about this. In Philadelphia — and honestly this applies to landlords just about anywhere — you cannot charge a tenant’s security deposit for:
- Being a bad person.
- Being annoying.
- Being disrespectful.
- Leaving the windows open (unless actual damage results).
- Leaving the AC blasting on their last day.
And this comes up a lot. I don’t know why, but tenants are always leaving windows wide open when they vacate. Sometimes with no screens. AC cranked. Heat cranked. Property exposed to the elements. It’s odd behavior — I doubt they lived that way — but it’s incredibly common at move-out.
You come in, close the windows, turn off the AC, wipe up a little water, and… that’s it. No real damage. And even though it feels disrespectful, my property management company just has to walk away from that. You can’t charge for irritation.
What You Can Charge For
Now, here’s where landlords miss out on money they’re actually entitled to. You can charge the tenant for the reasonable cost of cleaning up their mess — even if you clean it up yourself.
Read that again. You don’t have to actually pay a contractor to make a charge against the security deposit. You just have to charge a reasonable amount of what it would have cost to hire someone to clean it up.
So if a tenant leaves a giant pile of loose trash out front — which happens all the time, they run out of trash bags and stop caring — you can go clean it up yourself and still bill their deposit a reasonable cleanup fee.
Dump Fees
My property management company will regularly charge tenants for a dump run. When the trash exceeds what the City of Philadelphia will pick up — furniture, mattresses, construction debris — the contractor has to haul it to the dump, and that dump fee comes out of the security deposit. Same principle: if you do it yourself, you can still charge the reasonable amount it would have cost.
Actual Damage from Open Windows
If open windows result in real damage — a bird gets into the property and you have to pay to remove it, or rain gets in and warps a hardwood floor — now you have something to charge for. Oddly enough, in all my years managing rental properties, I’ve almost never seen open windows actually cause damage. It’s usually just water on a sill that wipes right up. Frustrating, but not chargeable.
Document Everything With Photos
Whatever you’re charging for, back it up with photos. Take pictures of the mess before you touch it. Describe it in writing. Then charge either a cleanup fee, a dump fee, or the cost of actual repairs — whichever applies. If a tenant ever pushes back or takes you to court, those photos are the difference between winning and losing.
This is the same discipline you should be using on the whole move-out process. If you want more on how deposits should be handled from start to finish, I’ve talked before about how security deposits work in Philadelphia and what a proper tenant move-out inspection should look like.
The Bottom Line
You can’t charge a tenant for being disrespectful. You can charge them for the reasonable cost of undoing the mess they made. Cleanup fees, dump fees, and actual repair costs are all fair game — even if you do the work yourself — as long as the amount is reasonable and documented.
The disrespectful stuff without damage? You have to let it go. I know that’s not what a lot of landlords want to hear, but that’s the reality.
I’m just a humble Philadelphia property management company owner, doing my best to answer your rental property investing questions. Happy rental property investing.
