After 2 1/2 years me and a dog left an apartment/condo, had it professionally steam cleaned (especially to eliminate any dog smell), now landlord says the carpet still smells; i had the steam cleaners come in again to clean the carpets, and the walls painted.
THey still say it smells, so the landlord called in a carpet company. The company said the pad was fine, the odors were in the carpet itself, and it needed total replacing. $1700 for the same exact model of carpet (for 600 SQ ft apartment),
Do you live in America? Carpet wear and tear cannot be deducted at 100% after 2.5 years due to depreciation (and that’s if the carpet was brand-new when you moved in). He will have to produce receipts proving the age of the carpet if he wants to legally withhold the full amount of deposit. If it is more than 7(I think) years old as of your move-out date (in my jurisdiction, anyway), he cannot withhold a single cent of your deposit, because the carpet would have depreciated to be worth $0, and he would have been obligated to replace it anyway. This means, for tenants, that LLs are expected to replace their carpet every 7 years as a result of normal wear and tear, and they can’t hold their tenants responsible for that fee, as long as the damages are not egregious.
Even if the smell your dog left behind was egregious though, he can’t charge you full price for the damage. Only the depreciated amount of use you deprived him of. So let’s say the carpet was brand new when you moved in, and you’ve deprived him of 4.5 future years of its use. That is the MOST he can charge you for, 4.5 years of a 7 year carpet life. Get it? (this is all theoretical of course, since I don’t know what the laws are where you are)
I suggest consulting with a tenant attorney in your jurisdiction (you should be able to find one for free), and making your landlord aware that you know your rights. Send a certified letter. Date it and stay professional. The day after I moved out, my last LL said she would be withholding my entire security deposit because of some minor carpet damage due to a rolling chair. I informed her by certified letter that she was not entitled to withhold any portion of the deposit without receipts documenting that the “damage” had been repaired, and depreciation due to the age of the carpet had been accounted for. I got the full deposit back 30 days after move-out. I suspect she was just posturing because she was a bitch, and was hoping I didn’t know my rights (or wouldn’t stand up for them). Well, I knew them and stood up, and it netted me 450 well-earned bucks.
My mom also got back her entire security deposit from her LL with just a certified letter after she legitimately caused some damages, because they didn’t feel like fighting her. If you send one, it might just scare your LL into paying it back to get rid of you.
Almost the exact same thing happened to me a few years back, when I was living in Seattle. My landlord, who had been absolutely horrible about getting anything fixed (which was the main reason we were moving out- well, that and the fact that he was trying to sell the house), tried to claim that the house smelled of dog. I knew he was lying when he said, specifically, that the upstairs bedroom smelled like wet canines.
My dogs had never been upstairs. I figured he was just trying to get me to buy him new carpet so he could sell the house.
After two weeks he hadn’t itemized the reasons for not giving me my full deposit, and in that area, that was all I needed. I served papers to him letting him know that I was going to be suing him for twice the amount.
A few days before the small claims court trial, he mailed me a check for the deposit and a nasty letter. I was really tempted to continue the suit to get double the amount back, but decided against it. I still kind of wish I’d done it- he was a complete jerk.
Once pet smells get bonded to polyester carpet fiber they are almost impossible to get out, just like when a polyester shirt gets truly body odor stinkfied it’s that way forever, and no amount of washing will remove that odor.
The other part of the equation is that (for whatever reason) pet people often cannot smell their pet’s odors all that well. A subtle whiff of dog is almost imperceptible to many pet owners, but non pet people can smell it with ease.
In addition to this, I find $1700 to be quite high for an estimate, and find it particularly suspicious that it seems to be for the exact amount of the deposit. (Is that the case? Your title implies it.)
I’d fight it, if I were you. A lot of landlord horseshit is just posturing intended to bilk people who don’t know their rights, and $1700 is enough to be well worth your time to dispute it. I’ve had landlords try to pull all kinds of scams on me and I’ve never had to take it to court, simply standing firm and demonstrating basic knowledge of tenant law was always enough.
You need to check your states laws concerning security deposits.
I recently had a conversation with my brother involving security deposits in MA as a lawyer he’d recommend not taking them because it opens up the landlord to liability they wouldn’t otherwise assume. Simply put the chance a security deposit costs them money is substantially higher then any money they could obtain through it for damages. In MA violation of any consumer protection laws involving security deposits means the landlord forfeits any claim of the security deposit and grants the victim up to 3 times damages.
Hey Mr landlord I hear you are concerned with a pet smell in my former apartment. Do you have an expert on smells verifying there is a smell there? If so the smell may have been there before I moved in. Can you provide proof it wasn’t? Was it caused by my negligence? Since you’ve been holding my money for the past 2 1/2 what are the chances you’ve violated the consumer protection laws. Did you put that security deposit in an account with both our names on it? Did I receive documentation you did so. Was the interest on that account paid to me or deducted from my monthly rent? Did I receive the full amount of my deposit back within 30 days? Was any amount deducted from the account documented with receipts within 30 days?
In MA if he couldn’t answer any one of those questions correctly you would have immediate right to the security deposit. You’d be able to claim another 5100 dollars. You could then let him off easy by just agreeing to take only the amount of the security deposit back.
Many states have programs to provide free legal assistance to needy tenants. My Brother spent a year working in such an office. The end result is anytime a landlord tried to bilk money out of tenants smart enough to contact that office, they were better off just handing back the deposit because the legal cost of defending against my brothers office was higher then the amount they were holding for the deposit.
Very informative thread. I recall going through an apartment WITH the landlord after we moved out, and he still with-held the deposit claiming something we couldn’t prove we didn’t do. (Can’t remember what it was, don’t think we had a walk-through when we moved in; something like a hole in the wall from a doorknob) I was young and stupid and we didn’t have the money we though we’d need to lawyer up, so he got 400 bucks out of our stupidity. I really hate the deposit scams.
Dates are important. In my state, assuming you provided a good forwarding address, the landlord has 30 days after you vacate to send you an itemized list of deductions from your security deposit and to refund the rest of your deposit, if any. If they miss the deadline by one day, they are entitled to keep nothing and are liable for damages of up to three times the amount of the security deposit, plus a $100 penalty. I’m 2-for-2 sending nasty lawyer-letters demanding three times the security deposit when the landlord missed the deadline; they simply sent checks without argument.
By the way: 600 square foot apartment, and how much was actually carpeted? Is that including the kitchen and bathroom?
Also, in many juriidctions, landlords cannot just estimate how much repairs will cost. If the carpets need to be replaced out of the deposit, they have to produce receipts to show the work was actually done, and that the actual cost was what they claimed.