RPA Tenant Rights Blog » Landlord Problems, Legal Questions » Landlord will not give back any security deposit, & No lease was signed past 1st year

Landlord will not give back any security deposit, & No lease was signed past 1st year

By Ryan

Hello,

So my inquiry has two parts. I rented the same house for three years. We finally moved out this spring and moved on. The problem is that I just received an invoice from my landlord stating that none of our collective ($1000) deposit will be refunded. There are a few problems that I have with this:
– We spent days cleaning the house and it was close to perfect before we left. We took time to putty and paint over spots that were left around the house (from normal wear and tear) and in my mind went above and beyond as renters. We rented a steam cleaner and cleaned all of the carpets in the house. The landlord never gave any notice that he wanted our house professionally cleaned before doing so after we left. Our lease does not call for a professional clean before leaving, yet the landlord deducted that from our security deposit. 
Here are some of the charges:
– $375 for cleaning the house (~1800 sq. ft.)
– $100 for removing a small 4 in. x 4 in. stain that wasn’t even that visible
– $330 for labor (none of which was contracted). He charged us $25-30/hr. for labor he performed himself. 
– $40 for lightbulbs. About $30 of which replaced brand-new lightbulbs that I put in before I left. Possibly because they weren’t the "exact" bulbs he wanted?
Anyways, these are the main charges that were quite erroneous and unwarranted in my mind. 
Some questions I have are:
– Can he charge us for labor that was not contracted and performed just by him?
– Can he charge us for the professional carpet cleaning that was not in our contract? 
– Also, we never signed a lease past our first year in the house, yet continued to live there and pay rent until we moved out. Are we entitled to get the ENTIRE security deposit back because another lease was never signed?
Thank you for any help you might have.
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Edited on: Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 3:37 pm
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