[North Carolina] Landlord withholding security deposit. Never sent Itemized Deduction list even 45 days later. legaladvice

TL;DR Landlord never sent us security deposit or itemized deduction list after 45 days, claiming we broke things we didn't. How do we get our $1350 back?

My roommates and I are having some difficulty with our previous landlord. Our lease ended on July 27th, when we handed our keys in, 45 days ago, and we have yet to receive our security deposit and/or an itemized list of deductions. For the past couple of weeks we've been trying to get in touch with him but hadn't heard anything at all until yesterday when he finally returned one of our calls and basically said that we weren't getting the security deposit back due to damages. Now we've lived here for 3 years and there was obvious normal wear and tear and a few other things that were broken, like a couple of window blinds and bathroom towel racks that just came off because they were only screwed into drywall, so we weren't expecting to get the entire thing back, but at least a healthy chunk of it.

One of my roommates' mother is a real estate agent and has rented out properties in the past and she helped us out in the moving out process to have everything as good as possible to maximize the amount we got back, and told us that we should get most of it back. She was actually the one that was able to get in touch with the landlord, who told her about the damages. Landlord is claiming we caused a crack in the plastic on the microwave, damaged the refrigerator door and broke the dryer. Now I don't have any proof of this because the phone I had when we first moved in died on me a long while ago, but the microwave and refrigerator issues were there when we moved in and texted him about that right after we noticed them. The dryer was definitely not broken when we left, I did laundry the day before we left and it was functioning properly. Now my roommates mom is thinking about taking him to court, to get our deposit back and I'd like to know if we actually have a case since I don't really have any proof that we didn't break the things he's claiming we did. What do you guys think? I really don't want to just let $1350 disappear into this guys wallet, but I know basically nothing about small claims court and how much it's going to cost to actually get our money back.

Submitted September 10, 2015 at 10:23AM by pspbrad http://ift.tt/1EX3AT9 legaladvice