Latest / Logosofia no Dia a Dia / How to Patch Walls and Keep Your Deposit in Israel
Transcript
- [Prompt] custom: As you know, we are leaving our rental apartment and almost done moving our belongings to the new pl | Hosts: corn, herman [Response] Corn: You've packed every box, cleaned every corner of the apartment, and now you're standing in what used to be your living room, staring at a wall. It's got holes from baby-proofing anchors, a divot where the smart smoke detector pulled plaster off, and a dark scuff behind where the chair sat for two years. That wall is now the only thing between you and your deposit. Herman: It's June thirtieth — peak moving season in Israel. Thousands of tenants are in exactly this moment right now. Boxes are in the new place, the old place echoes, and there's one wall, or three walls, that need fixing before the landlord shows up. Corn: Daniel sent us this one. He's in the thick of it — moving out, patching walls, trying to figure out what "reasonable wear and tear" actually means when the law won't define it. He wants a practical guide: what materials you need, how to handle stubborn wall anchors, when a repair is good enough to stop, and how to document everything so you're not at the mercy of a landlord who decides your deposit is suddenly a renovation fund. Herman: The legal backdrop here is genuinely maddening. Israeli tenancy law — Hok HaSekhirut — says you return the property in its original condition minus reasonable wear and tear. But it never defines what that means. Not in the statute, not in the regulations. It's a blank space that landlords and tenants fill in with whatever keeps them up at night. Corn: Which is why most tenants either over-repair, spending hours on touch-ups nobody would ever notice, or under-repair, assuming it'll be fine, and then lose hundreds or thousands of shekels from their deposit. Herman: The drilling thing is where this gets absurd. Virtually every tenant in Israel drills. There was a survey on the real estate forums last year — ninety-four percent of tenants drill at least once during a lease. For shelves, baby gates, smart home devices, security cameras. Daniel mentioned he's got a one-year-old — of course he drilled for baby-proofing. That's not damage. That's living in an apartment with a child. Corn: Yet landlords routinely deduct for holes as if you took a hammer to the place. And Israeli landlords have remarkably few statutory obligations. There's no requirement to paint between tenants, no standard depreciation schedule for wall condition. The entire burden of returning the apartment to some undefined standard falls on you. Herman: Let's start with what the law actually says — and more importantly, what it doesn't say. Corn: The core of it is in the Hire and Loan Law, and the practical interpretation has been shaped by small claims court rulings over the years. The tenant's obligation is to return the property in the condition they received it, accounting for deterioration from normal use. That's the phrase — normal use. Not pristine condition, not freshly painted, not zero evidence of human habitation. Herman: Here's where the ambiguity bites. What's normal use over one year versus four years? Is a scuff from a dining chair normal? What about twelve holes for a baby gate system? The law doesn't give you a checklist. It gives you a principle and then walks away. Corn: Which means the practical standard gets set by what small claims judges have actually ruled. And the pattern that's emerged is fairly consistent: if you made a genuine, visible effort to repair, and what's left is cosmetic imperfection rather than structural damage, courts tend to side with the tenant. Herman: There's a case from Tel Aviv small claims court in twenty twenty-three — a landlord demanded the tenant pay to repaint an entire wall because the touch-up wasn't a perfect color match. The court rejected it. The judge said the tenant's repair was, quote, reasonable under the circumstances. The color was within one shade on a paint fan deck. That's the threshold we're working with. Corn: The law creates this grey zone, but the grey zone actually has edges. It's not infinite. And understanding where those edges are is what lets you stop repairing and start documenting. Herman: The landlord doesn't get to demand a factory reset on the apartment. They get to demand that you didn't leave holes in the walls and gouges in the plaster. If you filled the holes, sanded them smooth, and touched up the paint — even if you can see the patch if you squint from six inches away — you've probably met your obligation. Corn: There's another case worth knowing about. Haifa small claims, twenty twenty-two. Tenant lived in the apartment for four years. Landlord demanded eight thousand shekels to repaint the entire place, citing scuff marks and fading. The court reduced it to zero. Four years of normal living produces normal aging. That's a landlord's business cost, not a tenant's liability. Herman: That's the crucial distinction: wear and tear versus damage. A hole from a screw is damage if you leave it unfilled. It becomes wear and tear once you fill it, sand it, and paint it, even if the repair isn't invisible. A black scuff from a chair is wear and tear. A fist-sized hole in the drywall is damage. The line isn't that hard to find once you look at the case law. Corn: With that legal fog in mind, let's get into the actual repair work. Here's exactly what you need and how to do it. Herman: First, know your wall. Most Israeli apartments have walls that are either emulsion-painted plaster or textured paint over concrete. The textured ones are trickier because you can't just sand smooth and paint — the texture won't match. But we'll get to that. Corn: Your basic toolkit: spackle — that's shpachtel in Hebrew, you'll find it at any hardware store — a small putty knife, fine-grit sandpaper, between one-twenty and one-eighty grit, and matching paint. Herman: The paint matching is the step people skip, and it's the one that makes the difference. Take a chip of your wall paint — use a utility knife to peel off a small piece, about the size of a shekel coin — and bring it to any paint store. Tambour, Nirlat, they all do gaven matching. It's computerized color matching, and it's standard. Costs maybe twenty shekels for a sample pot. That pot will cover every touch-up in the apartment. Corn: Now let's walk through the three most common damage types. First, small nail and screw holes. These are the easiest. Take a dab of spackle on your putty knife, press it into the hole, and smooth it flat against the wall surface. You're not building a mound — you're filling a void. Let it dry completely, usually an hour or two. Sand it flush with the surrounding wall. Touch up with your matched paint using a small brush or even a fingertip for tiny holes. Herman: Second type: plastic wall anchors that won't come out. This is where people panic and start digging into the wall with pliers, which creates a crater that then needs mesh tape and multiple filler layers. Do not do that. Corn: The decision tree here is simple. Can you grip the anchor with needle-nose pliers and pull it straight out without tearing the surrounding plaster? If yes, pull gently, then fill the hole as a standard screw hole. If no — and this is most anchors that have been in the wall for years — stop pulling. Herman: Instead, take a utility knife and cut the protruding plastic collar flush with the wall surface. Then take a screwdriver or a punch, place it against the cut end of the anchor, and tap it with a hammer. The anchor will push through into the wall cavity. It'll fall down inside the wall. That's fine. That's where it lives now. Fill the surface hole with spackle, sand, paint. Nobody will ever know. Corn: The expanding nylon anchors, the molly bolts, the ones that flare out behind the drywall — those you definitely cannot extract without destroying the wall. Cut them flush and push them through. This is the standard repair method, and courts accept it. You are not required to perform surgery on your walls. Herman: Third type: plaster divots. This is what Daniel described with the smart smoke detector — when you remove something that was mounted, and a chunk of plaster comes with it. These are annoying because they're shallow but wide, and if you fill them in one thick layer, the spackle will crack as it dries. Corn: The fix is thin layers. Apply a thin coat of spackle with your putty knife, filling the divot but not building above the wall surface. Let it dry. Apply a second thin coat. Let it dry. Maybe a third if the divot was deep. Then sand flush and paint. The whole process takes a few hours, but most of that is drying time. You're doing other things in between. Herman: For textured walls — the ones with that rough, stippled finish — you have two options. Option one: after filling and sanding, use a small sponge or a stippling brush to dab paint on in a pattern that approximates the surrounding texture. It won't be perfect, but from three feet away under normal light, it'll disappear. Corn: Option two, and this is the one I'd recommend for anything bigger than a screw hole: there are spray-on texture products. You can get them at hardware stores. They're aerosol cans that spray a splatter texture. Practice on a piece of cardboard first, then spray your patch. It blends surprisingly well. Herman: Now, the good enough threshold. This is where most tenants either stop too early or keep going forever. The standard you're aiming for is: does this pass a three-foot visual inspection under normal lighting? Corn: Not six inches. Not with a flashlight. Not with your nose against the wall. Three feet, normal daylight or ceiling light. If you can't see the repair from that distance, you're done. If you can see it but it's subtle — a slight texture difference, a barely perceptible color variation — you're still done. Herman: The Tel Aviv case I mentioned earlier established exactly this. A color mismatch within one shade on a paint fan deck is not damage. A slight texture difference where a hole was filled is not damage. The court's language was reasonable under the circumstances, and that phrase does real work. It means the standard is effort and outcome, not perfection. Corn: This is where the psychology of it matters. You've been living in this apartment. You know where every patch is. You're going to see them because your eye goes straight to them. The landlord, walking through for the first time, won't. They're looking at the apartment as a whole, not at the two-centimeter patch behind where the baby gate used to be. Herman: Here's a practical rule: do your repairs, then leave the apartment for twenty minutes. Walk around the block. Come back in with fresh eyes. If nothing jumps out at you from the doorway, you're good. Corn: Once you've done your repairs, the real question is: is it enough? And if it's not, what do you do next? Herman: This is where we shift from repair technique to strategy. Because the diminishing returns curve on wall repair is steep. Your first pass gets you eighty percent of the way there. Your second pass gets you to ninety percent. Your third pass might get you to ninety-two percent, but you've now spent an extra two hours for a two percent improvement that nobody will notice. Corn: At that point, your time is better spent on documentation and legal preparation. Because if your landlord is going to be unreasonable, no amount of spackle will satisfy them. You could repaint the entire apartment and they'd find something else. Herman: The documentation protocol is straightforward. Before you start any repairs, take photos of every damaged area. Use a ruler or a coin for scale — this matters, because a photo of a hole with no reference object can look like a crater or a pinprick depending on how you frame it. Corn: Then take photos during the repair — spackle applied, sanded, painted. Then take after photos in the same lighting conditions, from the same angles. You're creating a visual timeline that shows you identified the issue, addressed it, and achieved a reasonable result. Herman: Compile everything into a timestamped document — a PDF is ideal — with each photo and a one-line description. Kitchen wall, left of window, screw hole filled and painted. Send this to your landlord via email or WhatsApp at least forty-eight hours before the final inspection. You want a written record, and you want it in their hands before they walk through the door. Corn: This does two things. It shows you've been thorough and conscientious, which sets a tone. And it creates evidence that, if you end up in small claims court, is basically decisive. The Israeli Consumer Protection Association published data last year showing that tenants win about seventy percent of deposit disputes when they have photo documentation. Without it, that number drops sharply. Herman: Small claims court in Israel — beit mishpat letviot ktanot — is accessible. The filing fee is about one percent of the claim amount, capped at around four hundred shekels. You don't need a lawyer. You show up with your photos, your timeline, your correspondence with the landlord, and you explain what you did. The process is designed for exactly this kind of dispute. Corn: Under Israeli law, the landlord must provide an itemized list of deductions within thirty days of lease termination. If they don't, or if the deductions aren't backed by receipts — an actual painter's invoice, not a number they made up — you have strong grounds to dispute. Herman: Here's a red flag to watch for: if the landlord claims the entire apartment needs repainting because of a few scuff marks, that's bad faith. Courts have ruled repeatedly that normal scuffing from furniture, shoes, and daily life is wear and tear, not damage. The landlord's desire for a freshly painted apartment between tenants is a business expense. It's not your problem. Corn: Let's talk about the inspection walkthrough itself. Do it during daylight hours. Harsh shadows from direct sun actually help you — they make imperfections harder to see, not easier. Bring your documentation on your phone. Have your repair kit in the car — spackle, sandpaper, paint, putty knife. If the landlord points out something you missed, offer to fix it on the spot. Herman: That offer does two things. It shows good faith, which matters if this escalates. And it often defuses the situation entirely — the landlord sees you're reasonable, they relax, and the walkthrough becomes collaborative instead of adversarial. Corn: If the landlord tries to get you to sign something releasing the deposit without a written inspection report, don't. If they say we'll figure it out later, insist on a written list of issues right then. Verbal agreements about money are nearly impossible to enforce, and later almost always means you'll get less back than you expected. Herman: Let's boil all of this down into a concrete checklist you can use right now. Corn: Step one: fill all holes with spackle, sand flush, and touch up with matched paint. Step two: for anchors that won't come out, cut them flush and push them into the wall cavity — do not dig them out. Step three: take timestamped before, during, and after photos of every repair, with a ruler or coin for scale. Herman: Step four: compile those photos into a document and send it to the landlord at least forty-eight hours before the inspection. Step five: keep your repair kit in the car during the walkthrough so you can address anything on the spot. Step six: if the landlord demands unreasonable deductions, file in small claims court. With documentation, you have strong odds. Corn: The good enough mantra: your repair does not need to be invisible. It needs to be a fair effort. Israeli courts consistently side with tenants who made a genuine attempt, even if the result isn't perfect. Herman: The one thing not to do: never sign a waiver or release of your deposit without a written inspection report in hand. If the landlord won't put it in writing, don't sign. Corn: One last thing before we wrap — and it's a question worth sitting with. The reasonable wear and tear standard in Israel is broken. It's undefined, it's inconsistently applied, and it puts tenants in the position of guessing what a judge might think. Should tenants push for legislative reform — a clear depreciation schedule for common damage types, defined thresholds for what's wear and what's damage? Or is the ambiguity actually useful because it gives courts flexibility to rule based on circumstances? Herman: As smart home devices proliferate — smart locks, sensors, cameras, smoke detectors — the drilling issue is only going to grow. Tenants need to know their rights before they sign a lease, not just when they're moving out. Next episode, we're flipping the lens: what happens when you're the landlord and a tenant leaves damage behind? Corn: If this was useful, share it with someone who's moving. Moving season doesn't end on July first. And now: Hilbert's daily fun fact. Hilbert: In fifteen twelve, a navigator in the Comoros reported seeing a bright flash on the moon's dark limb that lasted several seconds — possibly the earliest recorded observation of a lunar impact event, though astronomers at the time dismissed it as weather or madness. Corn:...right. Corn: This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop. Find us at my weird prompts dot com, or email the show at show at my weird prompts dot com. We're back next week. Corn: The thing that makes this legally maddening is that Hok HaSekhirut gives you a principle — return the property minus reasonable wear and tear — and then provides exactly zero definitions, no schedule, no examples, nothing. It's like being told to bake a cake without being told what a cake is, and then getting penalized if the landlord doesn't like what you pulled out of the oven. Herman: The landlord's side of the equation makes it worse. Israeli landlords have remarkably few statutory maintenance duties. There's no obligation to paint between tenants. No standard depreciation schedule for wall condition. No requirement to refinish floors after a certain number of years. The entire burden of returning the apartment to some acceptable state falls on the tenant, and acceptable is never defined. Corn: You get this dynamic where tenants are guessing, landlords are reaching, and the deposit becomes a bargaining chip rather than a security instrument. The ambiguity isn't a bug in the system — in a weird way, it's the system. Herman: Because here's what happens in practice. The landlord walks into the apartment you've lived in for three years. The walls aren't as bright as they were. There's a faint rectangle where your sofa blocked the sun. There are filled and painted patches where shelves used to be. None of this is damage in any meaningful sense, but the landlord sees an opportunity to fund a refresh, and the law gives them just enough fog to try. Corn: The drilling paradox is where this fog thickens into something almost comical. Ninety-four percent of tenants drill. That survey from the real estate forums last year wasn't surprising to anyone who's ever rented in this country. You drill for shelves because Israeli apartments have minimal built-in storage. You drill for baby gates because you have a one-year-old who's discovered mobility. You drill for smart smoke detectors, security cameras, blackout blinds, curtain rods. Herman: Daniel mentioned baby-proofing specifically, and he's right — some drilling is effectively essential. If you have a toddler and a staircase, you're drilling a gate into the wall. That's not a lifestyle choice. That's not hanging a decorative mirror. That's safety. Yet landlords treat every hole as if it's extraordinary, as if the default state of a rental apartment is zero holes forever. Corn: The law doesn't distinguish. It doesn't say holes for safety are different from holes for decoration. It doesn't say twelve holes over three years is different from twelve holes in one afternoon. It just says you're responsible for damage beyond reasonable wear and tear, and then leaves everyone to argue about what that means. Herman: What's emerged from small claims rulings is a kind of common-law standard that's more practical than the statute suggests. Judges have consistently drawn a line between structural damage and cosmetic imperfection. If you filled the hole, sanded it, and painted it, you've repaired it. The fact that the repair is visible under close inspection doesn't make it damage — it makes it a repair. Corn: The problem is that most tenants don't know this. They're standing in their empty apartment at ten p.the night before the inspection, panic-spackling, convinced that if the landlord can see a single patch they'll lose five thousand shekels. And landlords know tenants don't know. The information asymmetry is part of what makes the whole thing work against the tenant. Herman: There's another layer here that's specific to Israel. The rental market is tight, turnover is high, and many landlords view the deposit less as security against genuine damage and more as a moving-out bonus. Not all landlords — plenty are reasonable — but enough that the pattern is recognizable. The deposit deduction has become a ritual, and the ambiguity in the law is what enables it. Corn: When we talk about repair technique in a minute, the goal isn't perfection. It's removing the landlord's ability to point at something and say there, that's damage. Once the holes are filled and the scuffs are painted, what's left is an apartment that's been lived in. And lived in is not the same as damaged. Herman: Your basic shopping list. Spackle — shpachtel, every hardware store in the country carries it — a small putty knife, sandpaper between one-twenty and one-eighty grit, and matching paint. The paint step is the one people skip because it seems like a hassle, and it's the difference between a repair that vanishes and one that glows under ceiling light. Corn: Getting the paint matched takes fifteen minutes. You take a utility knife, peel a chip off the wall about the size of a shekel coin, and bring it to any Tambour or Nirlat. They do gaven matching — computerized color matching — and sell you a sample pot for maybe twenty shekels. That one pot covers every touch-up in the apartment. Herman: Now the three damage types you'll actually face. First, small nail and screw holes. Dab of spackle on the putty knife, press it into the hole, smooth it flat. You're filling a void, not frosting a cake. Let it dry — an hour or two — sand it flush, touch up with paint using a small brush or even your fingertip. Corn: Second type: plastic wall anchors that won't budge. This is where people grab pliers and start yanking, and suddenly a five-millimeter hole is a five-centimeter crater. Herman: The decision tree is simple. Can you grip it with needle-nose pliers and pull it straight out cleanly? If yes, pull, then fill like a screw hole. If no — and this is most anchors after a few years — stop pulling immediately. Corn: Instead, take a utility knife and cut the plastic collar flush with the wall. Then place a screwdriver or punch against the cut end and tap it with a hammer. The anchor pushes through into the wall cavity. It falls down inside. That's where it lives now. Fill the surface hole, sand, paint. Herman: Expanding nylon anchors and molly bolts — the ones that flare out behind the drywall — you absolutely cannot extract without destroying the wall. Cut flush, push through. This is the standard repair, courts accept it, and you are not required to perform surgery on your plaster. Corn: Third type: plaster divots. Daniel mentioned the smart smoke detector pulling plaster off. These are shallow but wide, and if you fill them in one thick gob of spackle, it'll crack as it dries and you'll be doing it again. Herman: First coat fills the divot but stays below the wall surface. Let it dry. Second coat builds it up to flush. Let it dry. Maybe a third if it was deep. Then sand and paint. Total active time is maybe ten minutes spread across an afternoon. Corn: For textured walls — that rough stippled finish on a lot of Israeli apartments — you've got two routes. After filling and sanding, either dab paint on with a small sponge to approximate the surrounding texture, or use a spray-on texture aerosol from the hardware store. Practice on cardboard first. From three feet away under normal light, it blends. Herman: Which brings us to the threshold. The standard is: does this pass a three-foot visual inspection under normal lighting? Not six inches. Not with a flashlight. Not with your nose to the wall. Three feet, daylight or ceiling light. If you can't see it, you're done. If it's subtle — slight texture difference, barely perceptible color variation — you're still done. Corn: The Tel Aviv case from twenty twenty-three drew this line explicitly. A color mismatch within one shade on a paint fan deck is not damage. Minor texture difference where a hole was filled is not damage. The court's phrase was "reasonable under the circumstances," and that means effort plus outcome, not perfection. Herman: There's a psychology to this. You know where every patch is. Your eye goes straight there. The landlord, walking through for the first time, is looking at the apartment as a whole. They're not scanning for your two-centimeter patch behind where the baby gate used to be. Corn: Practical test: do your repairs, leave the apartment for twenty minutes, come back with fresh eyes. If nothing jumps out from the doorway, you're good. Herman: You've done your repairs. Maybe you've done two passes, maybe three. Now you're staring at a patch that's slightly visible from eighteen inches away under bathroom light, and you're wondering whether to go for round four. This is the moment most tenants get wrong. Corn: The diminishing returns curve on wall repair is brutal. First pass gets you eighty percent of the way there. Second pass gets you to ninety, maybe ninety-five. Third pass might get you to ninety-two percent if you're lucky, but you've now spent an extra two hours for an improvement nobody will notice. Herman: That two hours would be far better spent on documentation. Because if your landlord is determined to be unreasonable, no amount of spackle will satisfy them. You could repaint the entire apartment and they'd find a scuff behind the water heater you forgot about. Corn: Here's the rule: after two or three attempts on the same spot, stop. Your time is now more valuable in the documentation phase than the repair phase. Herman: The documentation protocol is straightforward and it's the single highest-return thing you can do. Before you start any repairs, photograph every damaged area. Use a ruler or a five-shekel coin for scale. This matters more than people realize — a hole photographed close-up with no reference object can look like a bullet wound or a pinprick depending on how you frame it. Corn: Then photograph during the repair. Paint touched up. Then after photos, same angles, same lighting conditions. You're building a visual timeline that says: I identified the problem, I addressed it, I achieved a reasonable result. Herman: Compile everything into a timestamped document — PDF is ideal — with each photo and a one-line description. Kitchen wall, left of window, screw hole filled and painted. Send it to the landlord via email or WhatsApp at least forty-eight hours before the final inspection. You want a written record, and you want it in their hands before they walk through the door. Corn: This does two things. It signals that you're thorough and conscientious, which sets a tone for the walkthrough. And it creates evidence that, if you end up in small claims court, is basically decisive. Herman: The numbers back this up. The Israeli Consumer Protection Association published data last year showing tenants win about seventy percent of deposit disputes when they have photo documentation. Without it, that number drops sharply. Corn: Small claims court — beit mishpat letviot ktanot — is accessible. The filing fee is about one percent of the claim amount, capped at roughly four hundred shekels. You don't need a lawyer. You show up with your photos, your timeline, your correspondence with the landlord, and you explain what you did. Herman: Under Israeli law, the landlord has thirty days from lease termination to provide an itemized list of deductions. If they miss that window, or if the deductions aren't backed by receipts — an actual painter's invoice, not a number they invented — you have strong grounds to dispute. Corn: Here's the bad faith signal to watch for. If the landlord claims the entire apartment needs repainting because of a few scuff marks, that's not strict — that's unreasonable. Courts have ruled repeatedly that normal scuffing from furniture, shoes, and daily life is wear and tear, not damage. Herman: That Haifa case from twenty twenty-two is the one to remember. Four-year tenancy. Landlord demanded eight thousand shekels for repainting. The court reduced it to zero. Four years of normal living produces normal aging. The landlord's desire for a freshly painted apartment is a business cost, not a tenant liability. Corn: Compare that to a landlord who deducts two hundred shekels for a two-centimeter hole you forgot to fill. That might be strict, but it's arguably reasonable — you left an unfilled hole. The five-thousand-shekel deduction for "general wall wear" after five years? That's almost certainly bad faith and worth disputing. Herman: Now, the inspection walkthrough itself. Do it during daylight hours. Harsh shadows from direct sun actually help you — they make small imperfections harder to see, not easier. Bring your documentation on your phone. Have your repair kit in the car. Corn: Spackle, sandpaper, paint, putty knife. If the landlord points out something you missed, offer to fix it on the spot. That offer demonstrates good faith, and it often defuses the entire situation. The landlord sees you're reasonable, they relax, and the walkthrough becomes collaborative instead of adversarial. Herman: One thing you absolutely do not do: sign anything releasing your deposit without a written inspection report in hand. If the landlord says "we'll figure it out later," insist on a written list of issues right then. Verbal agreements about money are nearly impossible to enforce, and "later" almost always means you'll get back less than you expected. Herman: That's really the core of it. If it's not in writing, it didn't happen. So let's pull this into a checklist you can run through right now. Corn: Step one: fill every hole with spackle, sand it flush, and touch up with your matched paint. Step two: for anchors that refuse to budge, cut them flush and push them into the wall cavity — do not dig, do not yank, do not create a bigger problem. Herman: Step three: timestamped photos. Before you start, during the repair, after you finish. Ruler or coin in every shot for scale. Step four: compile those into a document and send it to the landlord at least forty-eight hours before the inspection. Email or WhatsApp — anything with a written record. Corn: Step five: keep your repair kit in the car during the walkthrough. Spackle, sandpaper, paint, putty knife. If the landlord spots something, fix it on the spot. Step six: if the deductions are unreasonable, file in small claims court. You have strong odds with documentation. Herman: The mantra to keep in your head: good enough is good enough. Your repair doesn't need to be invisible. It needs to be a fair effort. Israeli courts have shown consistently that they side with tenants who made a genuine attempt, even when the result isn't flawless. Corn: The one thing you absolutely do not do: never sign a waiver or release of your deposit without a written inspection report in your hand. If the landlord says they'll sort it out later, you say great, let's write down the issues now and we'll sort out the numbers later. Verbal promises about money are worth exactly the paper they're written on. Herman: Which is none. Herman: If you walk out of that apartment without a written list, you've handed the landlord a blank check. Don't do it. Corn: One last thing before we wrap — and it's a question worth sitting with. The reasonable wear and tear standard in Israel is broken. It's undefined, it's inconsistently applied, and it puts tenants in the position of guessing what a judge might think. Should tenants push for legislative reform — a clear depreciation schedule for common damage types, defined thresholds for what's wear and what's damage? Or is the ambiguity actually useful because it gives courts flexibility to rule based on circumstances? Herman: I go back and forth on this. A depreciation schedule would be cleaner — after two years, scuff marks are zero percent tenant responsibility, after four years, faded paint is zero percent, that kind of thing. It'd remove the guessing game entirely. But the counterargument is real: no two apartments age the same way. A family with three kids and a dog versus a single person who travels half the month — same four years, completely different wear. The flexibility lets judges look at the actual facts instead of a mechanical formula. Corn: The mechanical formula has its own failure mode. Landlords would just build the expected depreciation into the rent. You'd get clarity on your deposit, sure, but you'd pay for it monthly. The ambiguity might actually be cheaper for tenants who document well and know their rights. Herman: That's the tradeoff. But either way, the drilling issue is only going to intensify. Smart locks, smart sensors, security cameras, video doorbells — every one of those means more holes in more walls. Tenants need to know their rights before they sign a lease, not when they're standing in an empty apartment with a putty knife and a prayer. Corn: Next episode, we're flipping the lens — what happens when you're the landlord and a tenant leaves damage behind? Same legal fog, completely different set of frustrations. Herman: If this was useful, share it with someone who's moving. Moving season doesn't end on July first. And now: Hilbert's daily fun fact. Hilbert: In fifteen twelve, a navigator in the Comoros reported seeing a bright flash on the moon's dark limb that lasted several seconds — possibly the earliest recorded observation of a lunar impact event, though astronomers at the time dismissed it as weather or madness. Corn:...right. Corn: This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop. Find us at my weird prompts dot com, or email the show at show at my weird prompts dot com. We're back next week.