I live in Washington, DC.
I lived in a house with 2 roommates from June 2013 to February 2015. We were all in college at the time and needed a cheap place close to school. Our landlord lives out of state and we never met him, he had left the property in the control of a local property management office.
The office didn't inspect the place prior to our move-in and it was in terrible shape. The floors were caked with dirt, there was mold in the showers, carpets were filthy, and a lot of stuff was damaged and broken. After numerous calls and emails the property managers sent a cleaning crew 3 weeks later who got it to a livable, sanitary condition. However, over the course of our time there we had problem after problem, almost all things caused by the house itself falling apart and only one minor thing due to damage on our part (accidentally wrecked the garbage disposal when a glass fell in). The property managers wouldn't respond to emails or calls for weeks sometimes even though we were dealing with issues such as a broken HVAC system, a major leak in the roof that was growing mold, and other similar issues.
This past winter things got really bad. The fridge broke completely. After weeks of trying to contact them they sent a tech out to evaluate it who confirmed that it was broken and told them to replace it. 2 months later, they still hadn't replaced it. In addition, we started having a large number of mice in the house. Normally, according to our lease, pests are the tenant's responsibility, but we had a consult with an exterminator who found several major structural holes in the house through which the mice could enter.
Fortunately, they hadn't taken the initiative to re-sign us to another 12 month lease when our first one expired, so we were living month-to-month. We gave notice of termination in January and moved to other places. Due to their inaction on the refrigerator and the mouse issue (which meant that we couldn't store perishables and didn't feel safe eating in the house due to mouse droppings), we didn't pay rent for December, January, or February.
I looked up DC housing code and it seems that we would have a basis to sue for the percentage of time we were unable to have full use of the property. We used our email history with the property mgrs to backtrack and put together a timeline of when various things were broken. The HVAC, for example, wasn't working for over 50% of our tenancy. I don't know a good way to calculate this but I would think that it would be a sum much greater than the 3 months of unpaid rent.
We spoke with the new head property manager (who just started last fall and was trying to clean up the messes left behind by the previous guy and other employees) because he was wondering where our rent was. We took pictures, compiled the emails, and met with him to explain the situation. We said that we would pursue it in court if we needed to, but we didn't want to do that. He agreed and said he'd rather not go to court too.
Per our lease, they had 45 days to return the security deposit or to provide written notice that they would be using funds from it. They didn't provide us any notice, and finally after weeks of attempts they explained that they were obligated to return it to the owner due to the unpaid rent.
My understanding is that they would be obligated to return the deposit to us per the lease, and the landlord would have to then pursue us legally for the unpaid rent. However, it looks like we are going to have to go on the offensive now.
My questions
The DC small claims limit is $5000, more than the amount of the deposit. I'm trying to figure out what our best course of action is. Specifically, whether we should file in small claims or try to get a lawyer, and whether we should sue the property manager, the landlord, or both?
I'm also wondering if we should try to contact the owner directly. To our knowledge, the property managers didn't inspect the house at all between June 2012 (when the previous tenants moved in) and February/March 2015. I'd venture to guess that would be a breach of their contract with the owner.
Thanks for the help!
TL;DR
Lived in a very run down and unsanitary house for 20 months. We moved out when it became unlivable (not due to our own actions) and didn't pay the last 3 months of rent. Property manager isn't returning our security deposit as a result but didn't give us any notice that they were using funds from it within the 45 day period required by DC housing code and our lease. Trying to figure out whether to pursue legal action, and if so who we should go after and whether we should file in small claims.
Submitted May 28, 2015 at 09:00PM by gj667cc http://ift.tt/1FFiytN legaladvice
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