What To Do RE: Landlord and Sec. Dep.

[The Captain]

Alright, I moved out of my last place in May. Just got off the phone with my landlord who said he's gonna have the check out in '10 days' when it was due by the end of June. He said he's having money issues and that's why he hasn't sent it out yet.

Background: We moved into the house and it was a pig pen. The place was trashed, finding cigarette butts, condoms, tissues, clothes everywhere. We cleaned it, got it looking really nice, stayed in the house for our year lease, were always on time with our payments and then at the end of our lease, we cleaned the place for 3 days. Then the last day of our lease he came in and checked off on all the rooms telling us that they were good enough.

Now he tells us he needed to have a cleaning crew in and it was $500. Not sure what else he's going to try to take out, but that's the very minimum. He never painted the house, which is the law that he must do before we move in, we went the majority of the winter with a leaking water pipe which led to $900 gas bills to heat the place, even though we complained to him, and 2 weeks into the lease i told him about a broken garbage disposal which was never fixed.


So...what do i do? What would you do? Do I wait until i get whatever money he gives before making an issue? I'm just furious right now and want to go ballistic on him but i know that's not the right thing to do, so i'll vent here first.

[The Captain]

I've found this:

(b) Any landlord who fails to provide a written list within thirty days as required in subsection (a), above, shall forfeit all rights to withhold any portion of sums held in escrow, including any unpaid interest thereon, or to bring suit against the tenant for damages to the leasehold premises.
(c) If the landlord fails to pay the tenant the difference between the sum deposited, including any unpaid interest thereon, and the actual damages to the leasehold premises caused by the tenant within thirty days after termination of the lease or surrender and acceptance of the leasehold premises, the landlord shall be liable in assumpsit to double the amount by which the sum deposited in escrow, including any unpaid interest thereon, exceeds the actual damages to the leasehold premises caused by the tenant as determined by any court of record or court not of record having jurisdiction in civil actions at law. The burden of proof of actual damages caused by the tenant to the leasehold premises shall be on the landlord.

That's from the Pennsylvania Security Deposit Law, Section 250.512

Anyone have any experience with this.

[TGilb2007]

I would try to get the attention of Bane or Sarge for this honestly.

[The Captain]

One of my roommate's dad's is a lawyer. Looks like we're going to have to get him involved.

[poolmike]

He is probably banking on you not contacting an attorney and just going away. I suggest getting your buddies together and collecting your money the old fashioned way..

[Scapegoat]

sounds like he's used to ****ing you and isn't going to stop until you disappear.

nothing wrong with going ballistic on someone when you're getting ass raped... over and over and over...

at this point though, its almost your fault. and why in the hell would you take a place in that condition?

[The Captain]

Originally Posted by Scapegoat

sounds like he's used to ****ing you and isn't going to stop until you disappear.

nothing wrong with going ballistic on someone when you're getting ass raped... over and over and over...

at this point though, its almost your fault. and why in the hell would you take a place in that condition?

We had a pretty good relationship with him up until now. Met him through our college's basketball forum, he was an alum, etc. We were a bunch of dudes living in a house, we didnt really care much. In hindsight, we should have recorded it all, but we didn't expect him to try to take out money.

[R22B]

I'll never live in an apartment again.

First week we moved in, it rained and we found the living room floods every time the sky would open up. We contacted them and they never did anything. In fact, for the six times in rained while we were there, it flooded and we called them and they did nothing.

Second, peoples laundry water would back up in our sink. ****ing nasty. No ****ing lie, people’s dirty laundry water would somehow flow back up into our sink (we were on the first floor, two floors above us). We contacted them and they did nothing. We ended up never using the kitchen sink.

Lastly, the peoples toilet “exploded” upstairs, which left us to catch all the toilet water downstairs. You ever see water come out of electrical outlets? We had to have the power off for 3 days as the walls dried.

We cut our lease short. We had pictures/records of contacting them and they never fixed it. We lived there from May to August and we just told them we were leaving and we left. They took our security deposit and what not. Whatever, I didn’t care. Then they sent us a letter saying we owed them money because we broke the contract. Whatever, we sent the money to the address that was on the thing but we made it so they had to sign for it. Wouldn’t you know, no one ever signed for it and after a week or two after trying to get someone to sign for it, it came back to us. Sounds like the person who signed us up were trying to steal money from us.

Nothing like Google Maps to show you that the address we had to send it to was in a neighborhood and not an office building or anything. ****ing scam artist.

Mention the word lawyer and he’ll back off.