[FL] Leased new apartment on 7/31, and the property was not clean when lease was signed. Concerns were raised to Landlord who assured me the issues would be taken care of. They weren't & now I'm being asked to "move on and find another place" after cleaning everything myself. Not sure of my rights. legaladvice

Hi /r/legaladvice. Sorry for the incoming wall of text, I'm trying to be as thorough as possible because I'm really at a loss for what to do here.

As the title states, I signed a lease for a new apartment on July 31st. I was given a Move In Condition Report in addition to my rental agreement, which had to be filled out, signed, and returned within one week.

I should mention that on the Move In Condition Report I received from the landlord, there is a note right above the tenant signature line that states "Tenant agrees that if property is not left in same clean condition as stated above, a minimum $250.00 cleaning fee will be deducted from the security deposit. Please make sure you deep clean the unit before you return the keys. Deep clean all appliances, bathrooms, ceiling fans, fixtures, sliding doors, window treatments, etc.".

Upon my inspection of the property in an effort to fill this report out, I noticed that the property was clearly not given to me in the condition they expected me to leave it in. There were dead bugs in nearly every room of the apartment, including in the kitchen cabinets and drawers & bathroom vanities. The refrigerator and microwave both had dead bugs inside of them. Some windows had what looked to be years' worth of dust and dead bugs on the sills/tops of the windows. The showers and tubs still had hair/grime from the previous tenant, etc. I took pictures of some of the worst items and contacted the landlord the following morning.

I spoke with her on the phone and informed her that I was uncomfortable signing the report with this note on it, because the unit was obviously not deep cleaned on my move-in date. She told me to note what I saw on the form, sign it & they would fix and clean everything while I was out of town (I had already planned to leave town from August 3rd through August 9th). I received a text from her on 8/05 saying that everything was taken care of, the place looked great now & I should be satisfied upon my return. She also said she would send me a new Move In Condition Report to fill out, which she never did.

When I returned to the unit on August 9th, most broken items had been fixed, but the unit still did not appear to have been cleaned to the standards they mentioned on their own form. My landlord was leaving town herself from 8/06 to 8/14, and I did not want to call and bother her on her vacation, so my girlfriend and I decided to clean the place ourselves. I would have preferred to hire professional cleaners and deduct the cost from the next month's rent (a reasonable solution, in my mind), but our current lease is ending soon and we did not have the time to waste going back and forth with the landlord over this.

I took more photos before we cleaned. We cleaned for hours and hours and finally got the place to a point that we were happy with. This afternoon I wrote my landlord an e-mail summarizing what had happened since I returned to town. I told her which items were fixed, which were still broken, and then mentioned everything we had to clean & attached the pictures. I did not make any demands in my e-mail to her, I simply informed her of the situation and ended by saying "Despite this, I am very excited about moving into the unit now that it is clean. Hopefully we can come to some sort of agreement on how to handle this issue and move forward from here. I look forward to hearing your thoughts after you have had a chance to read this e-mail & see the attached pictures."

Her response back to me was not at all what I expected. I'll quote most of the e-mail here (only redacting some possibly identifying info):

I am still on vacation but I wanted to take a moment and reply to your email and decide the way forward. I have to say I was quite surprised with your overall dissatisfaction with the apartment. I was personally there until very late the night before my trip to make sure everything was up to standard. Great effort was put in to make it even better than the first time. For you to say that it looks the same is almost insulting, as I know and can vouch for that almost everything on your checklist was done. It's not a new apartment with new appliances and accessories so some movement and wear and tear is expected. I...have managed hundreds (of units) for big companies and never have I had someone be so unhappy with a unit that I have handed in the condition this was left a few days ago. If you needed to take the day off to clean then that was another level of perfection that you need. From this business relationship so far, I can see that you are not happy and will most likely be difficult to be satisfied. For this reason and after speaking with the owner, we think it is best that you find another place that is up to your standards. I apologize if this was a waste of your time and for the owner but I think this is probably not going to work out.
The owner will refund the money you have paid him in full and we will find another renter who will be happy with the place as is.

I have not responded to her e-mail as of yet. I have a rental agreement signed by both parties which mentions nothing about the lessor terminating the agreement, other than them being allowed to evict for illegal activities. I paid over $4,300 to move in (first, last and security deposit), plus a $250 application fee to the association. If I agree to her proposal, I'm assuming the entire $4k will be refunded as she mentions in her e-mail, but I doubt if the application fees will be refundable. I also spent money on cleaning supplies and to copy keys, spent lots of time cleaning, and transferred the electricity into my name on August 1st.

With the way she responded to what I thought was a simple request of wanting to move into a place that did not have dead bugs and someone else's dirt all over the place, I don't think I want to stay here, even if I do have the legal right to. But, if I do agree to her proposal, I'm essentially paying nearly $300 for the privilege of cleaning someone else's apartment, and I'm still stuck with trying to find a place to live in the next week (current lease ends on the 20th). What are my rights here? Is it worth talking to a lawyer? Or should I just agree to her proposal, and move on?

Thanks in advance if anyone actually reads this entire thing and cares to comment!

Submitted August 12, 2017 at 12:07PM by Batmane http://ift.tt/2wCA6Yx legaladvice