District court did not err in awarding plaintiff damages for property damage and
unpaid rent, but erred in failing to credit defendant for the cost of repairs to the
property. — Where the parties entered into a lease option contract pursuant to which
plaintiff agreed to lease and defendant agreed to rent a residential property in
Vanderwagen, New Mexico for sixty months, and where the lease option contract
included an option to purchase the residence at any time during the contract’s terms,
and where defendant paid plaintiff $10,000, which was not mentioned in the lease
option contract but which defendant claimed to be a down payment toward the purchase
price of the property, and where defendant stopped making monthly payments on the
property after two years, and where plaintiff filed a petition for restitution seeking
possession of the property in magistrate court, and where the magistrate court granted
the writ of restitution and awarded damages, past-due rent, and attorney fees, and
where, on de novo appeal, the district court ruled in plaintiff’s favor on all issues and
awarded plaintiff back-rent and damages over $10,000, and where defendant argued
that plaintiff should have been barred from recovering damages and rent at all because
plaintiff retained defendant’s initial $10,000 payment and that the district court failed to
credit defendant for the full value of the repairs he made to the property during his
occupancy, despite evidence that defendant spent $900 repairing faucets and replacing
a fuse box on the property, the district court did not err in determining that plaintiff was
entitled to damages for past-due rent and property damage because the district court
credited defendant with the $10,000 in calculating plaintiff’s damages, in effect ruling
that