Absurd charges of damages from landlord legaladvice

Hello,

I am from Michigan.

Me and my roommates moved out of our 4 bedroom house about a month ago. Today we received a letter from the landlord for over $1300 in damages. The security deposit was for $1025.

I would agree with one or two of the charges on a list of 14 items, however the majority of the items are problems that were already present when we moved in. In fact when we moved in the house was filthy, it had fleas, we spent the entire first day steam cleaning the carpet. Here is a full list of what she has claimed:

3x batteries for smoke detectors $24 Living room carpet cleaning $322 living room holes and stains on walls $100 screen in Dining room $33 stains on a wall in a bedroom $100 light cover for one bedroom $20 Back bedroom stains on walls $100 Stained carpet upstairs $297 refrigerator shelf destroyed $75 upstairs screen $33 2 mini blinds in bedroom $27 "trash" $150 lawn mowing $55 Water bill $26

In addition to most of these issues being present when we moved in, it seems like each of these charges is super inflated. $600 for carpet cleaning???

I will admit that the downstairs carpet was very dirty (we had a new puppy and had issues with house training), however the upstairs carpet was no worse then when we moved in.

The refrigerator shelf was already broken when we moved in and she wants $75 for it, honestly that fridge isn't worth $75 itself. It was very loud and not very cold, when a maintenance guy came to work on the dishwasher at one point he said something to the effect of "i expect I'll be back soon to do something about that fridge"

I am not sure what she means by simply listing "screen" several times. That she cant find the screens that go to those windows? Funny we couldn't find them either....

We have kept up on the water bill throughout the lease, how can she charge us for that?

it seems like she is charging $100 for EACH wall, that seems excessive doesn't it?

$150 for "trash", I will admit that there was quite a few empty boxes in the basement but the day we moved out we threw out about 10x the amount of trash that was left there and it only cost about $60.

$55 for lawn mowing: I assume she is referring to the overgrown patches that were there when we moved in. In fact there was no lawn mower when we moved in and we left the one we bought there (mainly cause no one needed it)

So what do you think? are these charges artificially inflated?

Submitted August 25, 2016 at 11:21PM by FalseGix http://ift.tt/2brv5Z1 legaladvice