OK- so I am moving out of my apt and I wondered if I had any legal grounds to do the following:
Do I have the right to come in and watch them “fix” the walls where pictures, posters, clocks, etc were hung? I don’t trust them to charge me the right amount of hours.
Thanks. I’ll have more questions, but right now I am swamped. Also there is no clause in my contract that says I don’t/do have the right to come in and watch them do this. The reason I ask is because I’ve had problems before where the landlord charged me for fixing something, only later on I came to find out they had never fixed the problem.
Read this. There’s a local office/contact number for Carbondale listed at the bottom. Call the office or drop by. If you’re a student, there is probably also a student tenant union that can offer assistance.
It’s been some time since I lived in Illinois but I think it’s pretty universal that you have the right to a written statement of repairs the landlord will be effecting which lead him/her to deduct from your security deposit. Armed with that list you can certainly speak with a contractor to get an idea of what those repairs would normally cost.
Buy a can of spackle and a putty knife at the local hardware store. Patching up nail-holes and other small flaws is easy as pie and doesn’t take very long at all.
Pure speculation, and obviously varying by jurisdiction: does the landlord only have the right to charge for actual repairs carried out, or can they charge for the cost of repairs which would be needed to return the property to its original state? I’m pretty sure that in England it’s the latter, so you’d never have the right to observe anything. Just a thought.
thanks for the link and phone number. It will really come in handy since the jerk never even showed up for my move out appointment. Like I have nothing better to do during finals week. :mad: