Renting Sucks!!!!!

M

Ms Runnah

New member
So Chris and I got our security deposit back today and it appears that our landlord kept $375!!!

The apartment was spotless when we moved out..or so we thought because this is what he charged us...

$180 for new vertical blinds (When we moved in, Chris and I both remember him saying that he does not provide blinds for the apartment and the ones hanging up were left by the last tenant. The blinds on the sliding glass door were crappy, so we threw them out and put up curtains)

$120 for carpet cleaning. Carpets were clean when we left. They were brand new when we moved in only 6 months prior. I would not think this would be our responsibility...never has been in any other apt we have lived in...

$25 Excessive trash removal (it was bagged and by the road...I'll give him this one...we threw out a lot of crap!)

$50 to clean under the appliances :icon_scratch: (I have lived in many apartments and NEVER would think that I was expected to MOVE the fridge and stove to clean underneath them! We stuck the vacume nozzle and mop under of course and they looked fine.)

Atleast this gives us even more motivation to get going on buying a house. Soooo sick of renting!!! :angry4:

 
Nickle and dimed to death. Epitomy of certain American Institutions...

Sorry to hear, Andrea. Better luck with your new place? Oh, and make sure everything is spelled out, in writing, if you rent somewhere else.

 
Pull out your lease and find where it says that you are to clean the carpets. Otherwise, I'd argue that dirty carpets are part of "normal wear and tear," and as such the LANDLORD'S responsibility to remedy, not yours. I also think the $50 for cleaning under the appliances is a bit much. If he told you ahead of time that it was expected, then you're on the hook. These charges need to be able to pass the "straight-face" test, and that one doesn't in my book.

Vertical blinds - the only way you'd be able to get out of this one is if you can recall him saying "I don't provide blinds...so go ahead and throw them away." Without that statement, the blinds are considered "fixtures", and in Maine, that means that they're part of the building.

 
Renting does suck. Same thing happened to me in Cali and in PA. They nickel and dime ya to death.

I would question the blinds. Hopefully you can get some of that money back..

I am lucky now, my landlord is cool raisin, she also lives with me. But I am out at the end of the week, clean and free..

 
Yeah I think with the blinds it's his word against ours. Whatever...

I guess I should find the old lease and go through it to see what it says about under the appliances and the carpet.
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If everything works out we will have one more apartment before we buy a house in a year or two. And then never again (hopefully!). What a pain!

 
I'm afraid i'm gonna have to deal with BS charges as well, after we move next week.. (anybody wanna help?
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There's a shitload of stuff to be done by the land lord before he can even rent it out, and he's already talking about withholding part of the deposit to make up for the 2 weeks notice we gave him.

Mold, ants, rotten balcony and he's already got it listed in the classifieds
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Gonna have to put my mean face on when talking to him...

 
Call Joe Bornstein. He'll get money back for ya.

Landlords can really suck sometimes. Thankfully i've never had to deal with a crappy one. Contract w/ Lawdawg to write up a nasty-gram to send to the landlord.
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just keep in mind that the place is only exected to be 'swept clean', so no rug shampooing by you, and 'normal wear and tear' is fine, so if your new carpets look 6 mo old and they dont have any big stains, so be it. i dont believe appliances would be considered movable fixtures that you would need to under either.

generally: if you write a letter asking for the rest of it back and dont get a response within 10 days, you can write another letter saying that you're bringing them to court and 7 days after that you can get double the wrongfully kept money he owes you plus court fees back. generally.

 
my girlfriend and I are looking at moving out of our apartment but I really have the feeling that our leasing agency is going to try to stick it to us. The landlord was supposed to redo all of the carpets and fix a mess of broken raisin along with replace all the windows. Guess what... none of it got done. So that iron burn mark in the middle of the floor is still the same one that was there before we moved in.

The biggest problem is that the leasing agency that we have now is NOT the same one as when we moved in a year and a half ago, and they are ass munchers too. So everything that was verbal when we moved in, they will probably "have no idea what we mean" when we bring it up.

 
maybe you can get in contact with the old company get someone to put all that in an email?

 
there are some downsides to owning too... when crap breaks, YOU have to fix it(and come up with the $$ to fix it) of course the upsides generally outweigh the downsides.

my weekend was supposed to just be replacing the front steps (old ones were near collapse) But the door on the garage decided to fall off so I had to fix that too
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Of course the ole dead boiler mid winter is even more fun! :thumbsup:

 
I am now rent free. YEAAAAAHHHHH but the down side is I live with girls mother.. Not too bad, as of yet.... Just means less beer drinking, which means more $$ saved, which means sooner we will be in a house...

 
my girlfriend broke her lease up in Orono because one of her roomates (not preselected by her) was a huge pothead and threw raging parties every other weekend. The GF is teacher (was a little worried about being around the weed/ underage drinking when it could very negatively impact her future employment) now i can understand why she would get stuck with the bill except she 1. showed the apartment to 3 potentials renters and 2. found someone to take her place. Still the renter kept 400.00 for providing a crappy place to live.

Wooohooooo shitty landlords.

 
Wifey and I want to rent out this house when we get a new one, simply because we've both had shitty landlords...and we want to be good ones.

 
If i had every dollar i lost to a land lord for security deposit it would be...well... all of it.

Seriously though they all do this kind of crap. I never found it worth my time or effort for a few hundred dollars to fight these sort of things, even when i was in college.

 
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