Deposit and Apts.com

[Brenton Hutton]

Trying to understand and also potentially give a warning.

Here are the details - I recently had a tenant move out. She was overall a good tenant. She gave 30 day written noticed and communicated through out the process. Within days of moving out, she texted me an asked about her damage deposit. I responded to her that I would take a few weeks but I would get back to her. This is when things started to get a little weird, she was very pushy and started saying that I had 30 days and several other things that were not correct. But, in my mind she had been a good tenant.

I texted her and told her that the place was pretty dirty (i can provide pics). Also, that there were several larger holes in the wall (and were 3m strips had torn areas in the drywall), broken blinds, broken threshold. I was not too worried about most items and could most could be repaired rather quickly. Honestly, the time to do the repairs seemed easier than itemizing the list and getting receipts together. So, I told her I would just charge her a $200 cleaning fee, hire the cleaners and be done. It really seemed like a win to me. She was not happy with this. She told me that cleaning fees were illegal (I’m in WV) and that she demanded a full refund. I simply responded, I would itemize the repairs and send the letter with her refund to the forwarding address. (And to be honest I was planning to give her all of it back minus the 200 for cleaning and add in the additional cost as a cushion).

Then this happened…(I had many of my tenants on cozy.co and as you may know it had been migrated over to apartments.com. I am not thrilled with the interface of apartments.com but it worked.) I got a notice from them that they were refunding her December payment due to the fact she she said. (They have already refunded it now) Keep in mind it is the middle of February. I ended the lease online for January and stopped the payments online.

So, what should I do?

1. It’s 200 dollars difference, so move on?
2. Hire a lawyer and go after her, she stole rent that she is legally obligated to pay.

Lastly what about apartments .com sending any rent back months after a tenant payed. (Beside stop using them - I’ve already texted many of them to let them know that I will not be collecting rent this way in the future.)