Livid with former landlord...

[Elmorton]

We got our deposit back from our landlord and he took $350 dollars from our deposit. We left the place in excellent condition - we cleaned for a full day. He charged us for repair work that he did while we lived there. He charged us for a missing lightbulb in a common area ($5). Charged us for not returning the key for 3 days after our lease was up - we turned it in the day our lease was up, and he showed our place to potential tenants the day before (in our state, he must give 24 hours notice before entering - he did not). We did not break our lease and we made it clear when we signed our lease that we planned to buy a house within a year - so he knew that we''d only be there for that long.

The law is on our side (we printed out all the statutes that he violated - 5 to be exact, and we''re going to file in small claims if he does not relinquish the rest of our deposit. In our state, if it is found that he overdeducted any portion of our deposit refund, we receive the entire deposit in full and he pays for our court costs). I''m not looking forward to going to court (we''re likely going to be filing a small claims against someone who has not completed contracted work on our house, so we didn''t need this too) and I hate that it takes away time and energy from other parts of my life.

But what bugs me though is that our landlord was a really nice guy until this. Family man, well-known in the community, always talkative, told us how great we were as tenants...and we were kind in return. When he helped us move our washer/dryer into our place, we offered him $40 for his time and he wouldn''t take it. We added it into our rent because we were grateful. And then this. It''s outright stealing.

I guess I''m just venting...I know the economy is bad, but I just don''t understand when people try to swindle another person - especially one they personally know. I hate confrontations and so does my DH. I know I will be pretty much shaking the entire time we meet with our landlord on Sunday. I am livid, and I don''t think my heart rate has gone down for hours.

Has anyone else been in a situation like this before? What was the outcome?

 

[dragonfly411]

elmorton - I''m sorry you are going through this. I have to be honest, you never know about someone when it comes to money. One day you think you know a person, and the next they do something like that. I do hope you get everything resolved. SO''s ex lived with his family for many years and ended up stealing from his mother.... you just never know. It sounds like everything is on your side though so you should find a quick resolution. Keep us posted, I''ll keep you in my positive thoughts!!

 

[bee*]

I haven''t been in the same situation but just wanted to offer support. That would infuriate me also. I hope that he will just hand you back the remainder of your deposit when you meet him tomorrow.

 

[neatfreak]

El I am so so sorry. I volunteer for an organization that helps people sort through tenant landlord issues and trust me, it happens ALL the time. You wouldn''t believe what some landlords try to get away with, it makes me sick. And many do everyday...

As you said, the law is on your side. Just document document document, keep emotion out of it when you go to court, only bring up things truly relevant to the case, and be organized to make it easier for the judge to completely consider your side of the story.

Often in my experience when you decide to take it to court the landlord often drops the issue. At least in Madison if you win in court as a tenant you are entitled to up to three times the illegal deduction...so landlords that know this will often drop it. It sounds like you guys have a somewhat similar penalty, so hopefully you won''t even need to go to court.

Good luck!!!

 

[Ellen]

Sorry to hear this, I hope everything goes smoothly. aka, he drops it after court mention. What repair work did he do? and why is he charging YOU for it??


We've been landlords for about 10 years, 2 houses at one time. We've only kept a portion of the deposit once. The renters left the house filthy, not just dirty, but worse, had taken spackle and literally blobbed it on all the nail holes in all the rooms. So we had to sand it all down and repaint. While I realize they may have been trying to help, they didn't. If they had really thought about it, they would have realized it wasn't helping. And we still had to pay for the paint.

 

[somethingshiny]

That''s just one big suck!

But, look on the bright side, you own your own home now, and you won''t ever have to deal with that guy again!!

 

[Elmorton]

Yep - that's basically what DH said.

Neatfreak - thanks for the advice. We do have some stuff documented (pictures from when we moved in - not great photos but they do show some stains in the carpet, dust by the baseboards, etc), but unfortunately, a lot of this stuff didn't happen in writing. There's all sorts of problems - we were never given a copy of the lease, for example - that are sortof represented by the lack of paper work we have/he gave us. He charged us for repairs he did in previous months but never told us he'd charge for that (or we would have done it ourselves!). Therefore, no receipt, no paperwork from that time. DH plans to take a pocket recorder to our meeting because we have a one-party consent law for recordings (ahh, the lovely things journalism school teaches you!) and see if we can't get some documented recognition of the events we'd be talking about should we have to proceed to the court. I'm sure the landlord doesn't have anything documented, and there's already a family living there, so it would be hard for him to prove anything with photos taken at this juncture. Basically, the bulk of his charges were in cleaning (he says we "didn't wipe down the banister spindles" - which seems pretty ridiculously detailed to me) and then about another hundred in repairs that he made while we were tenants. Anyway, if I've read the law correctly, it says that the responsibility of documentation/evidence/proof of our negligence is on him, and I really doubt that he can come through, even if a judge thought that his maniacal cleaning standards were legit.

I'm really hoping that once we explain that he's billed us illegally, breached the law on multiple accounts in terms of how he acted as a landlord, and that he basically forfeits every last dime should we go to court and win, that he'll just cut us a check and let it go. But, I can't understand the supreme stupidity he used in billing us like this (seriously, the man knew we're both in research-related fields and I even discussed having to consult our attorney with a previous landlord when I signed the lease...what on earth did he think he's doing?! Clearly, we're going to have a decent understanding of what he can and cannot bill us for), so I suppose I have to expect that he'll use the same stupidity to push this to court.

A question for you -If there were points on the bill where a tenant might say "yupp, I really did forget to clean x", though the landlord still overcharged on those points and chose arbitrary numbers to represent the costs of cleaning or repair, should the tenant try to come to agreement on those numbers with the landlord? Or should the tenant basically just say "it's the whole deposit returned or we go to court?" - since legally the tenants are due the full amount since the landlord has acted in bad faith on the rest of the charges/and broken the law on other counts of what he's responsible for?

Also - in Madison, what are the cleaning standards? Legal documents say "normal wear and tear" and to me, that should include minor dust, etc, but I have had other landlords try to charge exorbitant amounts for things like dirty blinds or carpet edges. I can't really find anything in the legal docs about cleaning, just things like destruction of property. What type of cleaning are tenants legally bound to do?

ETA: Ellen, why couldn't we have been renting from you?! Both repairs were normal house stuff, not due to our negligence. One regarded the health and safety and the other was most likely due to weather as it was on the exterior of the house.

 

[neatfreak]

El At least in Wisconsin the burden would be ALL on him to prove that the conditions didn''t exist before you got there. And if he couldn''t prove that basically he wouldn''t have a leg to stand on. Since it seems that your IA laws are similar to those here, I can tell you that almost always the tenant wins in small claims court here in your situation...

 

[Elmorton]

Just another post to say thanks for the help! and to let y''all know how it went...At first, he tried to get out of meeting us until I got on the phone and said "either you answer us now, or you''ll have 20 days to answer when we file a claim" - that got him moving.

Apparently, he thought my DH had been rude to him right before we moved out (! - anyone who has ever met my DH would be shocked by that...when the landlord said that I seriously started laughing and then I was like "wait...you''re serious...") and then found a dirty oven and the outlandish charges were because he was ticked and thought we''d intentionally left things to spite him - uh no, we were moving out and trying to close on our house and keep up with our jobs.

Once we pointed out that uh...you can''t charge someone because you''re angry and showed him all the legal statutes, we got a compromise. He agreed that he''d charged us $121 erroneously and then we split the cleaning costs, because even though I think the man is insanely meticulous when it comes to cleaning standards, I don''t doubt that some cleaning had to be done - so in the end, he got about $120 for cleaning costs and we recovered nearly all of our deposit. While it was pretty heated and I didn''t like that aspect of it, I think the outcome was fair.

Muchas gracias for all your advice!

 

[Steel]

I was so angry for you when I read your 1st post and am pleased you have reached an agreement now. I do not think that you should be charged for general cleaning but I suppose you have to pick your battles in life - you certainly cannot win them all. It seems that you clawed back as much as you could without sacrafising more effort to this guy. Good job.


I say this from experience, when we sold we went into rental for a year and we have lived in 4 rental properties during that year. Each was worse than the last. It has been some of the most pathetic stress of our lives, dealing with irrational and may I say CRAZY people. If I had my time again I would rather glue a shell onto my back and call it done.

Elmorton - cheers to owning you own home (you said you were closing - I hope that means you are now a rock solid homeowner!), may you never rent again...

 

[Ellen]

El, great news!! The guy sounds like a whack job, you can''t go charging people for rediculous reasons. Nor for doing work the landlord himself deemed necessary.

Glad it''s over, good job!

 

[Elmorton]

Thanks Steel and Ellen. Yupp, we did close on the house (about a week after we moved out...it was pretty stressful) and if we could just get the seller to come back and do the repairs he promised, maybe we can avoid going to court for that, too! I''m not exactly holding my breath.

In the end, I don''t think my landlord was a whackjob. He did interpret my husband''s shortness on the phone as anger instead of a journalist who was working on deadline, and honestly, remembering the night and the time, I can see how that could happen. We''d never been so stressed in our life. Our moving out didn''t go well, we had a couch in a garage because we''d spent the night previous trying to get it into the house with no avail, we''d had no sleep, we were seeing housing crisis stuff on the news every night, and we hadn''t closed on the house we''d just moved into - not to mention that Sept/Oct is the most stressful time of the year at work for both him and me. My husband apologized very sincerely for the miscommunication and I think that had a lot to do with keeping this matter out of court. But at the same time, it was obvious that the landlord just didn''t know the laws that apply to what he was doing, and he truly thought that he was entitled to charge us the way he did. He said things like "What on earth would make you move out and forget to clean the oven?" - he really did think we had intentionally tried to stick it to him. The truth is that I hadn''t used that oven since April; we grill everything in the summer and I''d honestly forgotten the thing existed (I know...I did feel bad about that). It was like a Shakespearean comedy of errors the way that actions/statements had been misunderstood/misinterpreted. But bottom line, it really came down to the legal stuff. I have a feeling he''ll be a little better versed now. It still irks me though that this stuff happens all the time and people (who often can''t afford it) get stuck with charges that aren''t justified. I''m thinking about writing a letter to the editor in the spring (when college students in the area are moving out) to praise the websites we used and remind tenants of their rights.