Security Deposit Disputing charges

[puhihale89]

We moved out of our house at the end of March. We gave our landlord a 30 day notice and every things seemed fine when we spoke with him. We scheduled our walk through on the first day that we were all available. We spent the day before the walk through cleaning the entire house, it took us about 6 hours. The next day the person who showed up to do our walk through was not our landlord, and he didn't discuss anything with me as we were walking through the house. He remained at the house after I left as well, which I understand is not supposed to happen. Anyway, we didn't hear from our landlord for almost a month, and he only returned about 30% of our security deposit. He charged us for things like mowing the lawn, cleaning the windows, and mopping the floors. He also charged us for cleaning the carpets and painting the walls, but my sister saw the house posted up for rent and it looked like the walls hadn't been painted and the carpet was changed completely. I am just wondering if he is allowed to charge us for these things, and if we should dispute the charges. It has been a little over a month since we received the list of charges (we have been spending this time researching laws and seeking advice). What should we do?

 

[Gail_in_Georgia]

All states give a landlord a certain amount of time to return the security deposit to the vacating tenants. Even in those states that require a walk through, damages above normal wear and tear can sometimes be found after this walk through. Dirt, carpet cleaning and painting (depending on the condition of the walls) can all be considered damage if (for example), the walls had a number of holes that required patching and thus repainting.

If you dispute these charges you certainly can, including suing the landlord if they do not return what you feel you are owed from your security deposit. It would be useful if you took pictures of the retnal property at move out as these would be used as evidence to disprove the damages the landlord is claiming they used your security deposit for.

Gail