Contract Law & When is it Time to Lawyer Up? (Indiana)

[Jack Barkow]

I fired my property manager last Friday.. September 6th. The management company has been lacking in several areas, but the biggest is not doing maintenance in a timely manner and not filling vacancies (I'm talking 4 months vacant and the advertisements have no pictures).

The owner of the company emailed me on Saturday that they would not return any security deposits until all final bills had been settled (~$9k) and that they would no longer honor their prior promise to "chip in" or cut the cost of a roof repair job they were going to do by 1k from 3200 to 2200 because it was a courtesy to me as a client and I am no longer a client and thus they no longer are obligated to offer me that price.  I would not have agreed to have had the work done for 3200 and this was a shock to me (that work was completed in mid August and I wasn't billed for it yet).  On Monday they had already taken all utilities out of their name (water, trash, electric, any vacant unit's gas meters etc.). luckily the new manager was on top of things, but I had never seen this manager work so diligently until it came time to making the transition difficult.

I wrote the owner about the roof and she told me in email "If you want to turn this into a legal battle I'm fine with that too" in part of their response on this.  She agreed to send the deposits but said it takes time and will be done by Friday.  Also said I should get what I need out of Buildium by then because my account will be closed.

Today she added in all the bills she was alluding to, which came in at $7,900 in September.  one was a double bill at $3,200 for a past job, one was the $3,200 roof, one was $1,500 (not approved to have that work done in writing and per management agreement all work over $400 must be agreed to by the owner prior to execution).  The other fees are all miscellaneous 40, 50, 60 dollar even number amounts for miscellaneous things like changing a lightbulb and crap like that.  Theres also a duplicate trash bill at like $60 that I was hoping to have removed, but I don't think it is happening even though the attachments to both bills of the exact same amount are the exact same invoice date and price.

I'm just looking for advice since she is clearly playing hardball and seeing what she can get away with during the transition with regard to betting that I'm either a pushover or won't bother with legal action over only a couple grand.  I am not sure if it matters, but she is sitting on around 8k in rents from September and I am sure she will use those rents collected to cover these new "bills" and pay me out whatever is leftover.

Thanks,

Jack