I'm from Louisiana, and my wife and I attempted to move in to our own place together about two months ago. Many apartments around here show you "demo" apartments, or apartments they have set up specifically to give you a look at how the apartment is, while they prep it for you to actually move in.
We had went in to this apartment complex and found a two bedroom, two floor townhouse. It was newly renovated, completely rebuilt in the past couple years. It wasn't in the greatest area, but it was right around the corner from where I work, and my wife loved that I would be able to come home for lunch and stuff.
We went in and discussed the apartment with the Manager, and she showed us a demo apartment because they were "still renovating" the apartment that we would be moving in to. They said they had to lay new carpeting, replace doors, and other things before renting it out. We viewed the demo and it looked great, really spacious, well set up, overall looked absolutely amazing. So we paid our deposit to hold it.
The landlord says we have 7 days to move in, but she will charge us for each day sooner we move in. So the rent was normally $775/month. We were going to move in with 5 days left, it cost us $125, if we moved in sooner it would have been like $25 more a day. We decided to wait out the seven days, since I get paid on Fridays, and we would be able to move in and go shopping and stuff all in one day. She tells us okay, be here for 10 am on Friday, I'll have the paperwork ready. Everything should be done over this weekend.
We try calling her several times throughout the week to ask her a couple questions, and she never answers... So we wake up bright and early Friday morning, load up my dad's truck that I borrowed, and head down to the apartment to meet her for 10 am. We get there, and she tells us that the carpet (That they've been working on for a week) has not been finished, to come at 1 pm and we would be able to move in. This aggravates us, but we let it go. We leave for a few hours, come back at one. She tells us they're finishing up the cleaning, we can fill out the paperwork, and then we should be able to start unloading.
We fill out the paperwork, get to the apartment, and they're still cleaning up a bit. No big deal. The cleaning woman mops up the dining room and lets us unload the truck in there for now while she finishes up. We unload, leave to pick up another load, come back, and she's gone. It's all clean, cool.
We finish moving in, leave to go to Walmart for a bit to pick up groceries. We come home, cook, and start to eat. Well, after we eat I realize I have to take a massive shit, but there is no toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom. I ask my wife to go grab some, and a few minutes later I hear her screaming. I run upstairs to see what happened and see around 40 cock roaches of various sizes covering the walls of the staircase.
My wife is deathly afraid of roaches, as well as the fact that an infestation of roaches makes this apartment uninhabitable. We pack all our shit back up and leave. That night. While we're packing, I call the landlord and inform her of what's going on, and she hangs up on me.
I come back in Monday to talk to her in person about getting my deposit and rent refunded due to the uninhabitablity of the apartment. When I walk in, she hands us a few roach bombs, and makes a comment about how she knew they were there, and sends us to clean up her mess. We walk out and talk for a few minutes... I get pissed and storm back in, placing the cans on her desk, I try to talk to her, and she cuts me off. She makes a snotty comment about how "they'll just do it, give them the key". So I give them the key and I proceed to talk to her one on one about the health violations of this place, as we also notice black mold, and a sink so fucked up, I felt tetanus forming by looking at it. She says "I'll tell you what's habitable" then drives off to the apartment. We walk her through, show her inches upon inches of roach droppings, the black mold, the sink. The droppings covered almost every inch of every drawer/cupboard in the kitchen, and they had dead roaches in our refrigerator... which I had cleaned out prior to putting anything in there.
I took TONS of pictures, and read through every paper they gave us. In our lease, second page, paragraph 14. It states that our lease can be terminated after 30 days, provided we pay them one month rent, and give them written notice. I gave them a letter saying we were terminating our lease as per this rule, and another one stating we were holding future payments as it's pending legal investigation, and left it at that.
Later on, on a Sunday, we went over there to drop off the key in the drop box while she was gone to avoid any confrontation, we decided to stop by our apartment, because we had made friends with our neighbors. I notice the porch light is on, and that's peculiar because I specifically told our energy company not to transfer the bill in to my name because we aren't living there, and I know they wouldn't just leave it on. We go over there and try to unlock the door to turn it off... and we notice the lock is changed.
They had changed the lock, and rerented it, before my lease was legally terminated. They did not issue an eviction notice of any sort. I gave them notice on April 1st, the lease wouldn't be terminated until May 1st. I speak briefly with a lawyer in regards to what to do, and she says file a small claims, and make sure not to show them the pictures, and do not let them know we have them (We never did).
I went through the attorney general and filed a complaint, which they followed up. The apartment complex, immediately upon finding out we were taking legal action, decided to clean up the apartment, replace everything, among other things. They sent these pictures of this newly redone apartment, as well as a letter to the attorney general, calling my wife and I compulsive liars and stating that we should have to pay them for the inconvenience we've caused them.
I filed suit, adding even more details than I already had with the attorney general, since I was given more to work with by her remodeling the apartment once again after our departure. Soon after, I receive another letter from her. Once again, stating that she had re-rented the apartment nearly immediately upon us leaving... and demanding we pay almost $800. They finally got the suit, and replied with a combination of the pictures, calling us liars, and stupidly admitting to re-renting the apartment.
Unfortunately, the court date isn't set yet, and we probably won't have it set until July.
I'm getting annoyed, and she clearly thinks she can win (granted, she doesn't know we took pictures, so that may be why). Does she know something I don't know, or do I have a strong enough case to get my money back? I'm ready to have this be done with. It's frustrating, and it's not going anywhere, but the court date is so far away, and I'm not just going to give up nearly $2000 just because I'm mildly annoyed.
Submitted May 14, 2015 at 09:54PM by _CM http://ift.tt/1bSnSiA legaladvice
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