I gird my loins for battle against my ex-landlord

The BBQ Pit
1

A few months ago, I posted here wondering if I should try to break the lease with my (then) landlord (a used car salesman), since I was buying a house that needed to close right then. I’d intended to move out a month early, and tell him to keep the deposit (the rental was spotless, and I’d only been there four months, so I didn’t anticipate any problems with getting all of the deposit back, hence my willingness to use it for the last month’s rent). I eventually didn’t do this, as the house purchase didn’t happen, but I found another house and moved out at the end of the lease.

I should’ve gone with the first plan. I should’ve not paid the last month’s rent, and just told him to keep the deposit.

The jerk is making it a bitch to get my deposit back (even though, as I predicted, they had no problem with the condition of the house). First, he said that the terms of the lease agreement gave him up to a month to refund the deposit. Then, he said that the lease stated I had to show proof that I’d paid off all the bills.

I’ve paid all the bills (he rented the place the day after I moved out). Hell, due to a clerical error, I paid for a week of the new tenant’s utility bills.

I’ve never had a landlord do this. It’s never taken more than two weeks to get a deposit back. I’m pretty pissed about this- I need that money. It’s a good thing I didn’t move into another rental- I wouldn’t have been able to give them THEIR deposit. As it is, I could really use that money for fixing up the new place.

So tonight, I go to do battle. I’ve got receipts for the bills. I suspect he’s not going to give me the deposit back without a fight. Bastard.

2

I’m confused. How is your possible debt to any other corporation/individual any of the landlord’s concern? Now, if he had been the one paying the bills and you were then paying to him, that’d be a different story.

3

I’ve got ten bucks that says he spent it and doesn’t have a dime of that money to give you. I hope you don’t have to wind up in court to get it. Good luck!

4

Someone please correct me, but I’m pretty sure, in my state at least, that the security deposit is completely seperate and can’t be used in lieu of paying the rent. I believe it is strictly to be used to repair or clean the property. That doesn’t mean that the guy isn’t a jerk, though, and I wish you much luck in resolving the matter.
After having had to put up with landlords for the majority of my life and finally owning my own place, I can say that if I lose this house I will seriously consider living in a box under the interstate before I rent again.

5

Oregon may be different, but in the three states I’ve rented in (Texas, Nebraska, and Illinois) the landlord had 30 days to get your deposit back to you.

And, no, commonly you can’t use your deposit to pay the last month’s rent.

My question, were the utilities in your name? Because if they were transferred to the new leasees name, I don’t see where the landlord can make that part of the deposit return.

The best landlord I ever had did my walk through with me and wrote me a check (for a grand!) for my deposit return then and there. Man, I loved her. ::weeps::

6

From here.

7

While it may not exactly be legal, clearly one is able to not pay the last month of rent and tell the landlord to keep the deposit in lieu. It’s not exactly like saying “you can’t build a perpetual motion machine.”

The only remedy the landlord has is suing you for 1 month of rent, then paying you back the 1 month security deposit. Frankly, if my landlord was some shady asshole, I’d rather protect myself by doing it the “wrong” way than do it the “right” way and have to fight to get my money back.

[sub]YMMV. If you get in trouble by leaving a lease this way, don’t come crying to me.[/sub]

8

This is the case in Washington I think also.

When my roommate took me to court the case right before us had a landlord withholding the tenents security deposit to pay for some other fee they felt the tenent owed. Judge put a stop to that real quick.

(Roommate unilaterally decided that I needed to pay a larger portion of the rent. He was only awarded the portion that I admitted I owed and had VOLUNTEERED to pay him not a month earlier.).

9

Assuming the apartment was 100% spotless… then yeah, the landlord is being an asswipe about the deposit.

The bit in the lease about paying off all the bills confuses me. Does the landllord have any financial interest in your bills? I’m not sure this would stand up in front of a judge. You did keep a copy of the lease, right?

I hope you took pictures of the clean house before the new tenants moved in. If/when you fight for this, you’re going to need all the evidence you can get.

10

I wound up in a pissing match with the complex management at the place I lived in a couple of years ago. There was no love lost when I said we were moving, but they weren’t kicking me to the curb, either.

So, I show up the last day of the lease to do the checkout and sign off, to find a paint crew already working on the place. When I pointed out that I still had possession of the place, there was a chorus of “Oh, shit!” from the painters and the manager. There wasn’t a thing they could do to dock my deposit, and I got it all back, when I was expecting to get maybe $50. They were used to dealing with military, and had a reputation for nickle and diming any way they could.

11

The reason for insisting that all utility bills are paid, at least around here, is because the utility companies won’t turn things back on until all previous balances at that address are cleared up.

So if the previous tenant skips out owing $500 on utilities, the landlord is pretty much stuck for that amount if s/he wants to rent the place again. Unless the next tenant wants to pick up the slack, but I’m thinkin’ that’s not gonna happen.

12

That’s probably the reasoning.

As I said, though- the next tenant moved into the house on the first of the month- the day after I moved out and had the carpets steamcleaned. The new tenant didn’t transfer the bills to his name until a week later (and we had to remind him to do it)- so we ended up paying for a week of his bills. I’ve got copies of the final bills and copies of the cashed checks, so I’ve got that completely covered.

According to the lease (which I did keep):

He could, according to the lease, keep fifty bucks of my deposit for “carpet cleaning”- however, I paid $125 to have the carpet steamcleaned and I know that he didn’t clean the carpet before the new owner moved in. I can’t imagine any judge awarding him that fifty bucks.

His wife (whom I actually like, darnit- she’s a very nice woman, it’s a shame her husband’s a dick) did an inspection of the house when we moved and described it as “spotless”.

I dropped by his dealership last night, all prepared to have him write me a check right then and there… but he wasn’t there. He was out of town, and should be back this morning. But you know, I don’t think I’m going to go over to convince him to give me my deposit back- at this point, I think he needs to come to MY work, and give ME a check. If he doesn’t give me a check by tomorrow (thirty-one days after I moved out), I’m going to start looking for some sort of claims against him.

I can’t imagine he’ll want that- while I lived there, he also used it as his mailing address… because he didn’t want the government to know that he’d moved into a new house already, to avoid being hit by a huge tax bill. Yes, it was very annoying having to sort through the mail every day and leave his mail in the box.

I also seriously doubt he’s reporting the extra income from the rental. I can’t see him wanting to go to court over this.

13

How can that possibly be legal?

14

‘Legallo, no legallo… Es grey area.’

We lived in a house that was split into two apartments. We had the downstairs. The upstairs couple never paid their bills. When they were evicted, they owed about $1000 on their utilities. A nice Spanish lady moved in, and they attempted to make HER pay the back utilities. Because her English was Soooo bad, she was unable to communicate effectively with them. I stepped in to help, got on the line with them, and demanded that they put someone on who could speak Spanish (they were in Newark, NJ, and had plenty on the staff).

They figured they’d just browbeat her until she paid it. When she finally managed to communicate to them that she would NOT be paying someone else’s bill, they backed off. I don’t know what they did, but she said they’d restarted her billing from $0. I spoke enough Spanish to help her out many times when she had issues like this.

When I think of how many people “just pay it” when it comes to bills like this because they just don’t know what to do or how to get out of it, it makes me sick.

15

Oh… I should note that it was the utility company that was after her about this payment, not the landlord. He was busy screwing other people at the time.

16

At least in Massachuesetts, the security deposit can not be used to pay back utilities, that’s between you and the utility company. I’ve learned that a great number of landlords are ignorant and arrogant, a dangerous combination.

17

We had a landlord once who was very nice, but his wife turned into an absolute frothing-at-the-mouth maniac when we moved out. The cat had barfed under a chair in the living room, which I hadn’t noticed till we moved our furniture out, but since we still had more than a week on our lease and were busy cleaning the house top to bottom anyway, I was working on the spot every day, and probably with 2-3 more days to go could have gotten it clean. If not, we were going to make a financial offer to them to settle it.

Then, four days before our lease was up, we went back to clean and the living room carpet was rolled up and gone. (It wasn’t wall-to-wall, was just an area carpet over wood floor.) And Mrs. Landlord was over there screaming about the awful stain on the carpet. After pointing out that our lease still wasn’t up and we were still in the process of cleaning it, we offered to settle for the cost of the security deposit. But no, that wasn’t good enough for her. Next thing you know, they kept our deposit AND we got slapped with a small claims suit over alleged damage to floors, illegal pets, etc.

We were able to prove very clearly to the judge, by photographic evidence, that the floor damage (to a polyurethane coating, not to the actual wood) was caused by the sun, since there was a clear line of demarcation where we folded the carpet in that room back to take the photo. I was also able to point out that I’d told Mr. Landlord about the pets, and invited him to bring his grandson over to see them – which he did – so if he didn’t talk to his wife, I’m sorry, but that wasn’t OUR problem. We also told the judge how we’d been telling Mr. Landlord for several months that there was a serious problem with squirrels in the attic chewing through the electric wiring – we’d actually stopped using several outlets because the power to them was so unreliable – and he completely ignored us. Hey, we were out of it; it was THEIR house that would burn down.

In the end, the judge kept asking them, “Don’t you want to settle this? They’ve made a good offer,” and she kept screaming (literally), “NO! NO! NO!” So he finally awarded them the win in the case – but all they got was the security deposit. Which we’d already offered them. :smiley:

Some landlords just want to be assholes just to be assholes. I actually was embarrased for him, though; you could tell the case was entirely her idea, and the look of pure poison on her face when she found out he’d brought the grandson over to see the pets was hilarious.

18

I still don’t get how it can even be a gray area. Either you’re the person who is responsible for the bill or you’re not. The new person moving in after the deadbeat moved on is certainly not responsible for the deadbeat’s debts.

I can see it now, the banks all decide that’s the right way to do business and when it comes time for you to ask a loan, they add $40,000 to the amount you’ll be owing. You understandably question that amount. The bank tells you, “Well, these other people to whom we granted loans didn’t pay us so we have you and you’re now responsible for someone you didn’t even know existed.”

And good on your neighbor for standing up to the utilities company!

19

Oh, I’ve got a better one than that.

(“That”, in this case, being utilities trying to charge new residents for the bills of former residents).

Montgomery, Aladamnbama. Water board. The situation was as follows:

Ex-wife #2 and I had been separated a year or two, then divorced for a year or so. In these 3 or so years, she had moved many many times and lived many places. At one of them, she moved out owing money to the Water Board. I was still living in our old house with the kids. The water at that house was in my name only. Our only connection, then, was that we had once been married, and had, at one time, lived in the same house. I got a letter from the Water Board, telling me that if I didn’t pay my ex-wife’s unpaid water bill within 30 days, generated at a house I never lived in, on an account I was never associated with, and at a time when we weren’t even married (or on particularly good terms, even), they were going to cut my water off.

Being a foolish person who believes in man’s humanity to man and in common sense, I called those wonderful water chaps up to explain that I wasn’t responsible for bills of folks I used to be married to that were incurred well after the legal axe cut us apart for all time.

What I got was threats. Their logic was simple. Ex #2 and I used to live in the same house, and have the same last name, therefore I was responsible for her bills. I was a con artist trying to cheat the Water Board, I could pay up, or have my water cut off.

Oh, I know what the SDMB folks are thinking now. “Fight the man!”, “Sue!”, “Call the papers!”, “Call the TV Stations!”. Yeah. Right. A clue about the deep south—the newspaper and the tv stations aren’t going to touch this one with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole. A court case, assuming I could afford it (no), could get standing (no idea, but an issue), and find a lawyer willing to take on the Water Board (doubtful, without cash up front), would take longer than 30 days—maybe months or years longer, and I am a single parent raising toddler twins. Doing this without water was not an option.

Resolution? I called up Ex #2 and told her to pay her damn bills or her children were out of water. Despite the fact we weren’t getting along at the time, she loved her children and did og-knows-what to raise the money and paid the bill.

(We now get along pretty well, and live within 2 miles of each other, and see each other daily and raise our children together as parents, but apart as individuals).

Jerks.

–jack

20

Lightnin’, I worked in an (Oregon) property management co last year for nearly a year. After day #31 has passed just go after him in small claims court. You may not get 2x the security deposit, but this jerk definitely needs a beating with a clue-stick. Also, make sure that every communication you have with him from now on is by certified mail. Don’t accept any verbal assurances from him either - snail mail all the way.

And for those that don’t know, landlords and property managers usually have agreements with local utilites such that when a tenant calls to turn off service the utility automatically switches it back into the landlord’s name. That’s why when you go to see vacant apartments the water and electricity still work.