My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: pennsylvania
We leased a rental property to a family of 4 for 3 years. They were allowed one dog but soon after their grandmother moved in and she had a cat. I said that was fine. Sometime in the 2nd year a 2nd dog showed up without anyone saying anything to me. They moved out abruptly before thier lease was up and agreed to pay the rent until a new tenant could be found. I allowed them to use their two month security deposit for the last two months rent, a mistake in retrospect. They did not want to have the property shown until they were out but my realtor got them to agree to one showing. He called me right after and said the place smelled real bad. They used a cleaning company that they used to clean the place and it smelled fine, almost perfumed, when they moved out but the kitchen was a mess, food still in the fridge, food on the walls and bathrooms were untouched. Cleaning people apparently accidentally turned the gas on one of the burners and it was on for three days before my wife noticed it, apparently I don't smell very well anymore. I cleaned the property and we began showing it, about 20 showings all started with people seeing the garage full of their stuff they refused to move and ended up with people smelling the bedroom the grandma lived in with her cat. The smell had been covered up and was coming back as summer approached and it got hotter. I informed the tenants of the problem renting it due to the smell and they had their cleaning company come out and steamclean and they finally moved out their stuff. The place smelled OK after that but while painting the trim in the bedroom in question I found one corner that smelled horrible. I peeled back the carpets and found the bottom of the carpets were stained dark yellow with cat urine. I sniffed all the carpets and found another bedrrom and the hallway had bad smelling corners. Peeling them back gave the same results. We finally rented it by replacing those carpets and sealing the floor with Kilz. We informed them of this and gave them three estimates sent by certified mail. They finally signed for it and emailed us a formula they found online to prorate them because they didn't like ours. The carpets were one year old when they moved in so we used their formula and sent it back to them. They stopped all communication with us so we took them to small claims court for about $1400, total replacment cost being about $1900. They are now countersuing us for the cost of their cleaning company services (they own the company), about $1100, and the cost of pest control over 3 years, about $1000. They never approached us about any pest problem and we never agreed to have the services done. We signed no contract for any of these services and we also feel the cleaning services were done poorly and would not have paid $1100 for someone to vaccuum for us and perfume the rugs. I can't speak to the quality of the pest control service but I have a friend who does that for me and would have had it done much cheaper had I been approached. Sorry for the long post just wanted to get all the details I could think of in and get any input form you guys. We go to court next week and just want to be prepared as possible.

