Prop mngmnt comp. lost move-in walkthrough notes

By JS

My roommates and I just recently moved out of a house we were renting. When we moved in, the house had just been vacated (literally the night before) by 8 fraternity boys, so you can imagine the kind of mess the place looked like. Nothing was ready for us upon move-in and nearly everything in the house had to be cleaned/repaired/replaced, and even after the work was done the place still looked like crap. The property manager who moved us in, Nate, quit about 6mos into our lease and took our move-in walkthrough notes with him so we have no written record of the condition of the house when we moved in. Unfortunately we didn’t know that this was the case until a few months ago, so I don’t think there is anything that can be done about it.

After our final walkthrough today with a different prop.manager, I noticed them marking a bunch of damages that existed prior to us moving in (like a burn mark in the carpet of one of the rooms). Does anyone know if there is anything that my roommates and I can do to keep them from charging us from the pre-existing damages? It is 100% the prop management company’s fault that they no longer have records from when we moved in, so I feel as though my roommates and I shouldn’t be at fault here and should be able to get out of paying.

 Any advice would be great!

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