Can I keep their deposit?

[Karen F.]

We are the kind of LL that bends over backwards to return deposits, if at all possible.  But if ever there were a time that I would want to keep the deposit, this is it!  I have posted previously about them, and their friends downstairs.  Now, both units have turned over, hurray!  These tenants were that terrible, and they .  I am so glad to be rid of them.

I notified them by certified letter (which they refused to collect) three months ahead of time that I would not renew their lease.  I also slipped a copy under their door.  They did acknowledge, in a text, that they knew that I would not renew the lease.  But, despite my many text requests to be informed that they had found a place and were actually moving out, they didn't let me know that they would actually move out until six days before the end of the lease.  I have the texts to demonstrate this.

The lease requires thirty days notice of moving out.  But of course, I had told them that they had to move out at the end of the lease.  And they have, (although they left a lot of crap, they did move out on the last day of the month, and they left keys on the counter, and when I texted them to ask if they indeed were out, they said that they were.

They gave me a great deal of trouble about letting me show the apartment, but when I pressed them, and informed them that it was a violation of the lease to deny me reasonable access with 24 hrs notice, they would, at the last minute, say, "Fine".  But because they still hadn't found a place, right up until six days before the end of the lease, I really couldn't rent it, since who is going to rent a place that they can see may not be available?

Question is, aside from any damage they may have done, can I keep the one month security deposit because they gave me far less than the 30 days notice required that they were moving out?  I did tell them that I would not renew.  As they got closer and closer to the end of the lease, without having found something, I even warned them that I would evict them for holding over, beginning the day after the lease ended.  But they only gave me six days' notice that they had found a place and would actually leave.  Of course, despite my having advertised the place, it's very difficult to find a tenant with only six days' notice.