I moved from my previous apartment in September of last year. My landlady knows where I moved since some of my mail keeps getting sent to my last address and she sends it to my new address.
When I moved out I was supposed to have a meeting with her to go over my apartment with her at 5pm that day…she never showed up(I waited until 11:30pm that night) then left. I thought that eventually I would get my deposit back however 9 months later I haven’t heard anything from her…one of my old neighbors told me she moved to California(I do not have her new address).
What do I do? I just checked up on the legalities of how to get my deposit back here
Is this true? If so is my only option to go to small claims court? How much time does she have to contact me with an itemized list of whatever she claims is wrong with how I left the place? Since she didn’t show for our meeting while I was in there can she now claim I left it in a horrible mess and she owes me nothing?
My landlady is the owner of the building where I rented and the neighbor I have kept in contact with is the one who pretty much runs things when the owner is out of town.
How do I find out how long she has to give me the list of whatever is wrong or give me my deposit back? It’s been nine months…I would think that is long enough
If this is important my former address was in La Crosse, Wisconsin
Interestingly, Wisconson has no statutory guidelines for return of deposit. Most states however range between 15 and 45 days.
If you haven’t heard in nine months, you aren’t likely to hear anything. TIme for small claims court. I hope you were a responsible tenant and completed a walk through report when you moved in and again when you moved out, even if you had to do it yourself. Of course that is only used to back up the photos you took, right?
If you don’t have that information, you are not likely to succeed in small claims court, although you may find a sympathetic judge who will punish the landlord for not sending you an itemized report of any deductions from the deposit.
It’s a lesson to be learned…document yourself, lost deposits hurt!
In VA, the landlord has to return the deposit within 30 days of you vacating, or provide an itemized list of why you will not receive part or all of your money back.
In other words, the deposit is rightfully yours unless he provides legitimate reason to keep it.
In CA, it’s 21 days. A few years ago I had a similar problem, I called the landlord several times over about 3 months and never got anything back (though it kept saying he’d “take care of it today”. So I sent him a certified letter stating, firmly, that he had exceeded the limit allowed by law, quoted all the pertinent Civil Code sections, said I had called him a sufficient number of times to remind him, and that he had one or two weeks (can’t remember) to return me my deposit or a list of itemized charges or I’d take him to small claims court. I also threw in that I had already consulted with a lawyer (happened to be a friend of mine).
Within the week I had a check. Just the threat worked, as I do actually think he was just very forgetful and this prompted him to send it.
Of course, you need the landlord’s address to do this.