Asshole of an Old Landlord

The BBQ Pit
41

Ah sorry, but no. Not only no, but the law in your state disagrees with you.

The cost of normal cleaning is a cost of doing business, not chargeable to your renters via a cleaning “deposit” which apparently you have no intention of returning. As I said before the first tenant that comes along and A) leaves your place clean and has the photos to back it up who also can B) use Google (it took me less than 2 minutes to find the cite above) is going to clean your clock with the full backing of the State of Nevada.
I can see the pit thread now… WAAA WAAA my tenant took me to court and got his deposit back, now I have to pay to re-paint the unit myself. WAAA!
File that one under pit threads that will not go the way the OP intended.

42

Read closely. It says the landlord may only keep the money for repairs other than normal wear and tear, and reasonable costs of cleaning.
So if the tenant leaves the unit with no damage other than normal wear and tear, and reasonably clean, the landlord may not keep his deposit.

43

Yes, it does. Thank you. I’ll be playing all week at the the Laugh Factory!

:stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

:rolleyes:

Diomedes is spot-on. All the rest of you can email the lawyers…

but it will cost you! :smiley:

44

…reasonably clean…

Would you let yet your child move into something “reasonably clean” ? Fuck no! Neither would I. I want it “Goddamn Clean”, the way I leave my units when they are up for rent…

45

Nice try but the legal standard is reasonably clean. Just because you have a cleanliest fetish that does not give you the right to withhold the former tenant’s money.
Sooner or later you will get your ass handed to you when you don’t return a deposit. At that time if I hear about it, I intend to do my famous Nelson Muntz imitation, point and scream AH-HA

Seriously dude, consult an attorney. Ask him. Be prepared to change the way you do business.

46

Now, I don’t want to get too specific here by linking to the city code, but I have looked it up, and he’s NOT allowed to keep any of our security deposit for “normal wear & tear.”

Otto- after the paint incident, we asked to do a walk through with him, but he refused.

Thanks to everybody else for the sympathy.

47

Meant to have this in the last post, but I screwed it up somehow:

We seem to be in a pretty good position, the burden is on him to prove we damaged something beyond normal wear & tear.

48

I’ve never been asked for a “cleaning” deposit in any of the eight states in which I’ve lived. I asked a couple of people I know who own rental property and both of them say they consider cleaning to be part and parcel of being a landlord. As one of them put it, why would anyone expect a tenant to bear the expense of preparing a property for the next tenant?

49

I tried to read closely… and here’re the two possibilities I saw: I’ll break it down in a somewhat logical (the mathematical idea of logic) formula. Of course, only one of these is the intended effect of the law.

1: legal landlord claims = default in rent AND repair damages (NOT normal wear) AND reasonable costs of cleaning

2: legal landlord claims = default in rent AND repair damages (NOT normal wear OR reasonable costs of cleaning)

In the first case, normal wear is an exclusion to repair of damages alone. Reasonable costs of cleaning would be a third case of legal landlord claims. In the second case, costs of cleaning would be specifically a second exclusion to damages.
BTW, Gato’s argument about what a future tenant might want or expect is entirely irrelevant to the legalities of what a landlord may withhold from a prior tenant, in my eminent opinion as a finely-tuned jurist.

Oh, yeah. IANAL, IANALS*, IANEAFPL**, INEBCFJD***

*law student
**even a fucking paralegal
***I’ve Never Even Been Called For Jury Duty

50

Isn 't it semantics? If Gatopescado called it an “application approval fee”, due at the beginning of the lease, which he then later uses to clean the appartment (or not, for that matter), he’d be in the clear, no? It’s calling it a deposit that puts him on a collision course with Nevada law (no matter what his perception of customary business practice tell him), not the fact that he charges something.

51

Rick, I think you’re parsing that statement wrong, it seems to me that Diomede’s #1 is the correct way.

The landlord can claim for default, damages and cleaning. In the sentence, since default and damages are separated only by a comma, there needs to be a third item in the list that uses ‘and’, that is cleaning. If cleaning was combined with the damages phrase ‘other than normal wear and cleaning costs’, then there would be only two items in the list, default and damages, which would be separated by ‘and’ instead of a comma.

52

I’m just glad this didn’t turn out to be the title of a painting, like “Face of an Old Fisherman” or something.

53

Not in my state:

54

The way I read it, you are pretty much right. Read the last part of my cite again

So if you call it a deposit and tell the renter you are keeping it as non-refundable, that provision is void, and against public policy.
If however you tell them up front there is a $___ (reasonable) cleaning fee which is non-refundable, you should be in the clear based on how I am reading the statue.
IANAL, YMMV, objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they appear, do operate heavy machinery after reading this post.

55

Ah, so only Landlords know the facts? :rolleyes: The Dudes who oversee the Rent Codes don’t know anything? :rolleyes:

My Bro sez that the biggest issue is Landlords who don’t know the law. Such as- for example- you.

56

Under Ontario law, it is an offence to charge or attempt to charge a tenant, sub-tenant or prospective tenant any type of fee on top of the rent, such as a damage deposit. The only deposit allowable is the last month’s rent in advance as a security deposit.

57

Isn’t that really bad for the “good” tenants though? I mean given there are some people who will trash a place when the leave, for example, if there is no way of getting those people to pay, then the cost will be spread across everyone in the form of higher rent.

58

Yeah, tell me about it!

It seems to me that many landlords–here, I’m thinking of the mom-and-pop variety–really don’t understand that they’re running a business, and that there are laws that need to be followed with regard thereto. And then they end up doing all kinds of stupid shit that’s in contravention of the law.

OR, they DO know the law, but they expect the tenants to be as ignorant as newborn baby seals. Hence, more stupid, illegal shit. And then they get offended when they discover that, oops, tenant knows the law.

Mind you, there are a great, great many tenants who (a) actually don’t know basic landlord-tenant law; (b) are too lazy/just don’t give a damn/whatever to find out what their rights and responsibilities (yes, responsibilities, too) are, and (c) don’t have the resources to hire the necessary advocates, or don’t know/get worn down enough to find out how to get advocates for those who don’t have the resources to hire their own. I think that many landlords are aware of this, and seeing an opportunity to make a quick, relatively fuss-free buck, take advantage wherever they can, even when they **do ** have good tenants. As you can imagine, this leads to many a landlord-tenant horror story, e.g., the OP.

It also occurs to me that “X” quantity of landlords hold low opinions of renters and are therefore less inclined to treat them as they, themselves, would like to be treated. Just my guess, though.

And yes, I’ve experienced my share of landlord-tenant mishegoss as a renter (yep, I’m one of the really good ones). Why do you ask?

This is me, grateful that (a) I work for a big, NYC law firm (full of attorneys who can refer me to other attorneys), and (b) have been, for many years, personally acquainted with attorneys who can either help me themsevles or refer me to others who can help me if I ever need it.

59

To paraphrase Penn Jillette, I think you mean “respectfully”. As in, I respectfully request that you buy a fucking dictionary.

Look, dude, be honest. It’s called a “deposit”. Not a “fee”. It’s the “deposit” part that’s in question.

If I go into a bowling alley and I rent shoes, and they say “It’s $5 plus a $10 deposit”, I expect to get the $10 back when I give back the shoes. If they say “Oh, we clean the shoes in between each person so you can’t have the $10 back,” it’s bullshit. That is a fee. Not a deposit.

Security deposits are intended (legally) to be against damages beyond normal wear and tear. You get them back unless something is wrong - like you didn’t clean, something is stained, holes in the walls, not that sort of thing. If I leave the place as clean as I found it, and you choose to reclean it, that is up to you. But charge me for it, take it out of my deposit, and I’ll see your ass in court.

60

Which is probably why the old-lady landlord of my friends back in Texas folded when she received the letter from the one friend’s lawyer father, who agreed she was acting illegally.

But I, too, have never heard the term “cleaning deposit,” so I admit that could enter into a whole other legal area. Is that standard in some states? I’ve rented apartments and houses in Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii but never heard that specific term. I almost always got my full deposit back – as far as I can recall, it was simply called a “deposit,” without “security” or “cleaning” or anything else appended onto the beginning – and when I didn’t, it was a fair call. Always had good luck with landlords myself; I think I detect a couple in this thread I would not want to rent from, though.