What counts as fair wear and tear?

Fair wear and tear is the ordinary deterioration a home picks up just from being lived in — and a landlord can't charge for it. That's the part most deposit arguments turn on: a tenant is responsible for damage they caused, not for the fact that a place is a little more worn than the day they arrived. The awkward catch is that South Africa's Rental Housing Act names fair wear and tear exactly once and never defines it. So the line between wear you absorb and damage you can bill for gets drawn case by case — which puts a lot of weight on what the Act actually gives you to work with, and on where the genuinely hard calls sit.

The Act names it once — and leaves it undefined

Here's the whole of what the statute says. Section 4(5) lists a landlord's rights and includes the right, on termination of the lease, to "receive the rental housing property in a good state of repair, save for fair wear and tear." That phrase — "save for fair wear and tear" — is the only time it appears, and the Act's definitions section doesn't define it. There's no schedule of what wears out when, and no test spelled out in the legislation.

What the Act does give you is the opposite pole. The outgoing inspection exists, in section 5(3)(f), to check "if there was any damage caused to the dwelling during the tenant's occupation" — and section 5(3)(g) limits any deposit deduction to the "reasonable cost of repairing damage to the dwelling during the lease period." So the statute frames the question as a contrast: on one side, fair wear and tear, which a landlord takes on the chin; on the other, damage caused by the tenancy, which the tenant pays the reasonable cost to put right. The line you're looking for is the line between those two.

Beyond that contrast, the working meaning comes from ordinary practice rather than the statute: fair wear and tear is generally understood as the deterioration that follows from normal, reasonable use and the simple passage of time — as opposed to harm caused by negligence, misuse or accident. That's the lens most landlords, agents and tribunals reach for. It isn't a definition the Act hands you, so treat it as a guide to judgement, not a rule you can quote at someone.

Wear or damage? The clear cases

Held to the Act's actual question — was this caused during the occupation, or is it the place ageing? — a lot of everyday examples aren't close. The deterioration of normal living sits on one side; a specific, avoidable act sits on the other.

The pattern down the left is time and ordinary use doing their work; down the right is a particular thing that happened during the tenancy. That's the same distinction section 5(3)(f) draws.

The cases that don't have a clean answer

Plenty of real disputes aren't on either list, and it's dishonest to pretend they resolve neatly. Worn carpet after a long tenancy is the classic one: at some point ordinary wear accounts for most of its condition, and how much is "fair" depends on how long the tenant was there and what state the carpet was in to begin with. Scuffing that has tipped over into needing a full repaint; limescale on taps; mould in a poorly-ventilated bathroom — each of these turns on the specific facts, including who was responsible for maintenance and airflow, not on a rule you can look up.

This is the honest heart of it: there is no fixed formula, no statutory list of how long a carpet or a coat of paint is meant to last, and no percentage that settles it. Where the parties can't agree, a Rental Housing Tribunal or a court decides on the facts in front of it. Anyone who tells you fair wear and tear has a bright line is selling certainty the law doesn't provide.

What tips a borderline call

When a case does sit on the fence, a few things reasonably push it one way or the other. None of them is a number, and none is in the Act — they're the practical considerations a fair-minded assessor weighs:

• How long the tenant lived there. A longer tenancy earns more wear. The same flattened carpet reads very differently after a short let than after many years.
• The condition it started in. An item already worn or ageing at move-in can't be charged back as if it were new — which is exactly what the incoming inspection is there to record.
• Whether it fits ordinary use. Deterioration consistent with a household simply living there leans towards wear; harm that implies carelessness, a one-off accident or misuse leans towards damage.

Why the move-in record is what settles it

Notice that every borderline factor points back to the same thing: you can only tell wear from damage if you know the condition the place started in. The Act's own test is "damage caused during the tenant's occupation," and you can't establish what changed during the tenancy without a record of where it began. That's the entire job of the incoming and outgoing inspections — a dated before-and-after that turns "this looks worn" into "this specific thing changed, and here's the proof." Without it, fair wear and tear collapses into two people's memories, and memory isn't evidence.

So the useful question at move-out isn't "is this place perfect?" — no lived-in home is, and the Act never asks for one. It's the narrower, fairer question the statute actually poses: did this tenancy cause this, or did time? Answer that honestly, item by item, against what you recorded on day one, and most of the fair wear and tear argument simply falls away before it starts.