Pennsylvania Resident here. A bit of a lengthy post, but I sincerely appreciate any advice.
My previous landlord, John, has always been a hassle to deal with. I just moved out at the end of October (October 31st was my last official day in the apartment). I wrote an email (that the landlord responded to) and sent a certified mail about 45 days in advance notifying him of the exact move out date. At this point, the lease was on month-to-month, and only 30 days of notice was required.
My security deposit was $1700. Just TODAY I received the check from the landlord. The total? A whopping $410 returned.
He is listing the following "deductions" - - Exterminator including fogging for bed bugs | $100 - Cleaning of the apartment, trash removal | $100 - Repair of hole in the wall in living room | $40 - Water damage to downstairs apartment | $700 - Water damage to downstairs apartment (second time) | $700 - "Partial forgiveness of first water damage" | $+400
Total returned = $410
Some notes on the above - 1) We never had issues with bugs, ESPECIALLY bed bugs. It was a 3 bedroom apartment with young professionals who were all clean (I still live with one of them). Even still, if this is a standard procedure, how could he possibly charge ME for that?
2) The apartment had absolutely NO trash left in it. One of the clauses in the lease did state that the apartment had to be clean when we vacated it, but also plainly stated within reasonable wear and tear. We DID NOT scrub all the walls down, mop every inch of every floor, etc. We DID remove all trash, do a thorough sweep job, clean the microwave, refrigerator, kitchen and bathroom sink, and toilet. There were some dirty/dusty spots on the wall, but I'm fairly sure that falls under reasonable wear and tear. The apartment was located on a main road and was very dusty.
3) There were a number of holes in several walls, none of which were major. I took pictures of all of them when I first moved in.
4) This is the big one. The "water damage" to the downstairs apartment, which was two separate fiascos.
Fiasco one was the first time this happened. Essentially, we never used our dishwasher because it didn't work well (the dishes would come out with spots/food stains still). This wasn't a huge deal, we just hand washed the dishes. The issue with this was the configuration of the plumbing. Here's my amazing MS paint rendition - http://ift.tt/1vyHeMc . What happened, apparently, was that our sink became clogged one day, somehow leading a pipe in between our apartment and the apartment below ours to burst or rupture. The issue is, we had no way of knowing that there was a clog in the first place, since the dishwasher was directly connected to the sink drain, and the water that NORMALLY would have backed up into the sink went right into the dish washer, which we rarely opened. John demanded that we pay for half the damages, since it was "our fault". I politely refused and explained that I believed that the dishwasher was the issue. I suggested that the drain be disconnected, seeing as we don't use the dishwasher anyway, and it seemed to be the root cause of the problem. John refused, and was fairly upset that I wouldn't pay some of the damages.
Fiasco 2: About 6 months later, the same issue happens. At this point, we were checking the dishwasher every week or two to make sure that nothing is backing up, but it still happened. John flips out, angrily yells at me to pay for the damages, again I refuse. At this point I insist he removes the drain to the dishwasher, which he again adamantly refuses. I offer to pay the $50 fee to simply disconnect a pipe and cap the sink drain, and he accepts that offer. I pay his "plumber" (who was just some random handyman his wife knows), and he disconnects the pipe. We live at the apartment for another ~1.5 years with no further incidents such as these.
At the end of the day, I can live without the cleaning fee, or the exterminator fee. I would have been satisfied receiving $1400 or more, but what he is offering is simply unacceptable. I am thinking of taking him to small claims court, but I just wanted to get some opinions on where it looks like I stand. For the record, I have plenty of email/text communications logged with him regarding many of these incidents.
If you took the time to read all this, I sincerely thank you. Please let me know if there are any questions regarding the incidents I described, or if needed I can provide excerpts from the lease. Thanks!
Submitted December 09, 2014 at 11:35AM by tensam http://ift.tt/1vHgrSW legaladvice
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