Landlord Problems (Rent & Security Deposit)

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wrightha

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Hello There, My name is Hannah and my problem currently exist in Allendale, Michigan. Here is my situation (sorry if it's lengthy): My roommates and I signed a lease at an apartment complex that started April 2007-April 2008. When our lease ended in April myself and one of my other roommates asked our landlord since the new residents won't move in until August 1, 2008, if we could stay in the unit until we found a new apartment. Which he agreed, and said we could pay a discount rate of 240/month(per person) compared to the regular rate of 360/month (per person). He got the impression even though we never told him that we were going to stay the whole summer (May-July) However, we found an apartment at the end of May (which we already paid May's rent) which we could move into in the middle of June. We informed our landlord that we were moving out at the middle of June. Well when it came time to pay the rent he said we had to pay the full amount of 240/month even though we only lived there half of the month. Which our new apartment was only charging us for half of the month. Well, here is were it gets interesting. Since, our old lease was up on the end of April he never made us sign a lease for the couple months we were staying there and he knew he couldn't hold us accountable for any of the money because we never signed a legal document (lease). So he left it up to us to decide how much money we wanted to pay because of the fact that we didn't sign a lease. So my roommate and I decided to pay half of the rent ($120/each) because we moved out on June 15, 2008 (1/2 the month) so thats what we thought was fair. So we left our keys and our checks before we left and we also left our apartment pretty much spotless so our landloard wouldn't have any troubles. Well a month or so went by and we still haven't recieved our security deposit back of $200. We contacted him several times and he still never responded. Finally we called him again and he answered and we asked him about our security deposit and he said he needed to talk to his "business partners" regarding our security deposit which he said he would let us know on Monday (July 21). Well Monday came around, Tuesday, Wednesday and finally today (Thursday July 25) we still haven't heard from him so we called him again and he told us that we was mailing us a security deposit of $30 because he thought it was fair to take out the other half of the June's rent and each had $10 in damages because he was under the impression that we were staying until July and that he was losing money due to our situation. Well you do the math 200-120(june's rent)-10 (damages) comes to $70 not $30. We were such good tenants and were so nice when we had to deal with an ant and parking problems. So, it's not like we moving to make him lose money, but there was an opening somewhere else so we took it so we wouldn't have to be put on a waiting list. But my legal question is...Does he have the right to take the rent money out of our security deposit from our previous lease even though we never signed a new lease for the month of May and June? Because it seems like he is punishing us for his mistake of not making us sign a lease so legally are we accountable for paying the other half of June's rent? or Did he technically steal the money from us? Not to mention he is acting very unprofessional and rude to us through this whole situation even though we have been nothing but nice to him. Please let me know what you think and I would really appreciate it! Also, would we have a case against him if we took him to court? Thanks!
 
Without a lease,you are assumed to be a month to month tenant. As such, you need to give 30 days notice that you are moving. You found your new apartment at the end of May but only gave half a months notice.

Thus you owe for the entire month of June, even if you move out in the middle of the month. Your landlord kept part of your security deposit for the half month that you owe.

Gail
 
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