Good advice so far, your college will have a housing board that deals with stuff like this.

Great advice itt. And your plan sounds good for now.

karak 1

slumlords 0

More on this, please.

First I would suggest you read your lease carefully and see if these charges are outlined in the terms of your lease. Most will have a section regarding damages and what will be charged etc right in the lease. If your lease lists nothing about damages (eg. broken doors will be fixed at a cost of $100 paid by the tennant) if those costs are not listed right in the lease you have no obligation to pay for a thing.

How did you pay your security deposit? (did he already take your money)

Remember you could always call his bluff and as the saying goes "so sue me" because more often then not he wont go through the hassle of going to court etc.

my last landlord was a complete scrub and wouldn't fix anything that ****ed up and wanted to charge us for everything etc, so when we moved out we left the place in a complete disaster, knowing that we weren't getting our deposits back.

He called me one day not that long ago in a panic saying that we owed him money because the deposit didn't cover all the repairs to the house (which is probably a lie given that there was no way we did $1500 in damage/cleaning services), and that we should all be expecting a bill in the mail soon.

My answer was somewhere along the lines of "Yeah, you know nobody is going to pay you a cent of that. Enjoy whats left on our security deposit you scoundrel."

He then starts threatening me about how he's going to sue us all and he'll see us in court, at which point I remind him that the legal bills would probably be ~equal (if not more than) the cost of any more damage done to the place that wasn't covered by the deposit, as well as the fact that the father of not one of my roommates is an attorney who specializes in this exact type of thing (which is apparently also a lie, not that it hurt us in this spot).

"Call me back in an hour if you haven't changed your mind you piece of ****" was the last thing I said before hanging up. I immediately got in touch with the rest of the house and told them what was coming, only to find out that I'm the second person that the landlord got in touch with, and subsequently owned by in a similar fashion.

My older brother lived in one of his houses the semester before we moved in. His house was actually right next door to ours, which is one of the reasons we decided to live there despite my brother saying the landlord was an idiot (not many options in the area, and he hadn't gotten the bill yet). The two houses share a garage bay located in the front and middle of the two properties. Since my brother and I live about four hours away from the school, we asked if we could just keep some of my brother's stuff in the garage bay until I move in next door. The landlord (Dale) agreed and said I could move it in when I get back to school after the summer. Both my brother and I thanked him for the "favor" and put his bed and a few other large items in the garage bay so I could use them when I moved in.

About halfway into the summer Dale calls me and demands that I move my stuff from my brother's garage space one spot over into mine. He says he has new people moving in and they need the appropriate space immediately (even though there is an empty spot right next to it). I remind him of the deal and say I would move it but I am located four hours away (which we told him several times and he had in both lease agreements), and that I could not do it in the time he demanded. He wanted me to get there either that same day (lol) or the next day. I had work to go to and no chance of getting all the way to school and told him this. He then asked "how much is your stuff worth to you" and got belligerently angry on the phone. He told me I'd have to pay him $100 so that he'd move the stuff himself.

Instead of telling him to go to hell for completely going back on his word I played nice since we hadn't even moved in yet. I told him neither me nor my friends wanted to start off on the wrong foot and to let me know if I could do anything to help him out. He immediately said that I should go to two websites and write positive reviews about him, his wife, and their business. He said they deserved these reviews and that if I did this we would be back on the right foot. I spoke to my brother and dad and they agreed it was bull****, but just to do it since it would take 10 minutes and maybe get me a break in the future.

I did the reviews and let him know - no thank you from him or anything. It was extremely shady but since everything with him was verbal I knew there was nothing we could do legally. These are the types of things he does - he preys on young kids like me and my friends who are new to renting and dealing with landlords. Obviously I would have handled it differently if I knew then what I know now, but I guess that's the way it goes.

Sounds just like my landlord. What was the result?

he ****ed off

win

You do realize that legally you can get most of, if not all, of your security deposit back as long as you clean and haven't done any damage. There are many laws in each state to protect renters, but very few people know about them.

The general rule is that you are not responsible for normal wear and tear.

Landlords are typically required to return security deposits within 14 to 30 days after you move out (depending on state/city).

The landlord must send, to your last known address, either:

* Your entire deposit (plus interest, in some states and in some cities), or
* A written, itemized statement describing how the deposit was applied to back rent, cleaning, or repairs, plus the remainder of the deposit.

MOST IMPORTANTLY

If your landlord fails to return your deposit when and how required, you can sue the landlord in small claims court. If the landlord has intentionally and flagrantly violated the law, in some states, you can recover two or three times the amount of the deposit, plus attorneys' fees and other damages.

yeah, but we had a bunch of holes in the wall, plus we had a cat running around when it was specifically in the lease agreement that we wouldnt, plus getting a cleaning service is pretty standard around here. we got a receipt in the mail that had the costs covered and it wasn't so far off that it would make me mad, just stuff that's kinda "pfft, yeah right." I don't remember the exact numbers, but basically he said that there was 8 hr's worth of labour done repairing general damage, plus another 10 in maid services or w/e. Like, there obviously wasn't 18 hrs worth of work that needed to be done, but who gives a ****.

Oh, well in your case, I'd be careful that the law doesn't work against you. I'm not really sure, but I bet that he could recover more fees from you if he knew the laws and put a little effort into it.

Yeah, most landlords are going to overcharge you when sending back a security deposit because it would be such a huge hassle to take them to court, that nobody is going to do it.

UPDATE: got a bill for about $18,000 in damages today. Needless to say everyone is pissed but I was expecting this. If anyone wants to see a copy of his bill let me know and I can link you to it via Google Docs or something. An example of one of the items is $764 for two broken wooden cabinet doors.