Need Help with Unreasonable Flooring Replacement Charge in Manhattan

You are welcome to fight it in housing court...and the court may help you get a payment plan up and running....but honestly flooring and flooring contractors are expensive, I can't imagine it would be settled for less than 4k.

What exactly did your dog do? Are they scratches? Or is it pee that soaked thru the wood? Post some photos.

If it's just scratches, they should be able to sand and refinish the floors.

If it's the latter, it would require replacement of that wood. And a flooring subcontractor might be more comfortable replacing all the floor rather than trying to swap out some of the planks.

Not to say that your landlord isn’t necessarily trying to screw you over, however you have to realize the following challenges with “patch repairs”- 1. Some flooring supply is no longer made so they’d have to replace the whole thing so everything matches 2. If hardwood floor and they just patch the area that was damaged, they still need to sand and stain the entire apt to match. So just because it might be an area of the floor that was affected, unless it’s a relatively new construction or renovation where the floor stock is still available so the vendor can just replace that particular area, then often times it actually does require replacing the entire floor.

I love dogs more than people but even if you had an elderly or sickly dog you could have been a responsible adult and pet owner and cleaned up promptly or properly protected your floors. I had a dog with kidney issues for the last 6 years of her life and put padding in place for the mattresses and floors to avoid this exact thing. There are plenty of people who legitimately are taken advantage of by shitty landlords, but you are just someone who is not realizing how disgustingly you treated your home.

They're trying to rip you off and get you to pay for brand new flooring when your dog damaged a small portion of what was most likely very old flooring.

It would be like getting into a fender bender and demanding that the guy who rear-ended you and dented your bumper buy you a brand new car.

I would make a lowball counter-offer ($500) and tell them that you're not going to be taken advantage of for a brand new floor for the building that already had decades of wear and tear beyond whatever damage your dog caused. Consider implying that you're headed back to your own country soon.

Refuse to pay and let them try and sue you.