Crazy moving out fees. Is this legal?
For context, I rent an apartment with a roommate in Southern California. We’re both on the lease, and signed in October 2025. So our lease ends this October.
Today, our landlord told my roommate that there’s going to be a carpet removal fee of $1500 upon moving out because we have a dog. I checked over the lease, and nowhere does it mention a carpet removal fee. In addition, she was told if we had lived there 5 years then we wouldn’t be charged that fee. I checked, there’s nothing about that in the lease. There’s a very vague mention of tenants being responsible for “any damages by people or animals beyond normal wear and tear” - but you’d think that’d be for extreme damage from that wording, no? It also mentions emotional support animals being exempt from standard pet fees, so I told the landlord I will be getting her certified as an emotional support animal by my psychiatrist asap. I’m not sure if legally this will make them lose the fee or not since I’m just doing so now. But I figured it was worth a shot. But a carpet removal fee of $1500 seems excessive considering it’s just pet hair and maybe a “dog smell”. Nothing was extensively damaged and we’ve been careful in our apartment. The pet addendum states nothing about move out fees with pets. We were not warned about this ahead of time at all.
I guess I just need someone to advise me in navigating this. I don’t want to escalate it into a legal case but it seems that may be where it’s going.