RPA Tenant Rights Blog » Uncategorized » Part of deposit kept for unreasonable cleaning

Part of deposit kept for unreasonable cleaning

By FrozenFlame

The office staff would often be gone during normal office hours, which made it very difficult to schedule a walkthrough when we moved out. We were moving locally and took two weeks to move, but the office staff was never available at a time we could meet for a walkthrough. We asked her to call us if there were problems and turned in the keys after we spent a week of evenings cleaning. We left the apartment in much cleaner condition than when we moved in, so we trusted her to call us if there were to be deductions. There were not calls. Two weeks after our lease ended, we got our deposit back with deductions for a cleaning crew ($80), oven cleaning ($25), and replacement of the stove drip pans ($20). The reasons given for the cleaning crew were fingerprints on the bedroom mirror, soap scum in the bathroom tub, dusty ceiling fan, tiny food particles in the dishwasher, and black marks in the oven. Now we may have genuinely forgotten the dishwasher, but I know for a fact that we cleaned every part of the rest of the apartment including the mirrors, tub, fan, drip pans and oven. That apartment was filthy when we moved in but we left it in much better shape than we found it. According to the laws concerning rentals, a landlord can only deduct charges for "excessive filthiness" not for the light cleaning that the disposition sheet described. These deductions are illegal. We spent the better part of the past two weeks leaving polite messages at the apartment office for clarification of the charges but only today, 2 weeks later, had a reply. The manager had a very uncaring attitude when asked to explain the charges and refuses to return the rest of the deposit. We have rented for years and between myself and my husband we have had 15 leases. We have never ever had any part of our deposit withheld. What should I do?
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Edited on: Thursday, May 31st, 2012 3:29 pm
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