Need help with landlord and illegal behavior

[Mikaela C.]

Apologies for the length of this post, summary will be at the bottom. 

My fiance and I recently moved out of a place that we only lived in for a year. Our landlord did not employ a property manager and so we paid her the rent (we were her first tenants). We live in a part of Boise, ID that has inflated rental and home prices, so we shelled out a decent amount for the place every month ($2,400 plus all of the utilities). The year there was awful. She stopped by numerous times (we don't actually know how many) when we were not home under the guise of picking things up from the basement that she left behind. Most of these times her 'notice' was a vague text about how she might be by during various days of the week but she didn't know which ones.  She was there for a repair once and snooped around the place, we got a critical email afterwards. She performed 3 'official' inspections separate from all those other visits when the lease indicated she would only be doing 1. My fiance is very non-confrontational so he wanted to let it go unless something worse happened.

One thing I'll note here is that my fiance and I are very good tenants and kept the place in very good condition. We lived in this house plus one other in the last 5 years here in Boise and treated both with a lot of care since neither were homes that we owned. I'm a rental homeowner myself and I know what it's like to have horrible tenants who don't give a crap that it's someone else's house. There are a lot of other things that happened but they don't necessarily pertain to anything illegal. A good summary of the other things is that she has shown clearly that she never understood her own lease or the law, we have had to correct her way too many times.

Now, for our move out inspection, which was on Fri, based on previous inspections, we knew that she would be very picky and treat us like we left the place a pig sty. We paid almost $300 to have the place (1685 sq ft) professionally cleaned. I audio recorded the inspection (ID is a one-party consent state) because she can be very passive aggressive at times so we wanted a record of anything she said. We were not prepared for what happened. She constantly said 'Well I can charge you for that' and accused us of purposefully not cleaning things. We brought up what 'normal wear and tear' means and that made her go nuts. Also, when she moved out of the place she left a TON of stuff behind throughout the house, of course we were accused of owning all of those things and not moving out completely. We had print outs of Idaho Tenant Law and our lease that we left behind for her to peruse. We stupidly left our keys behind at this time because we assumed things would be ok from there on out. Past experience told us that she would calm down once she realized we knew the lease and the law.

Cut to the weekend where she asks me if we had planned to do carpet cleaning (required in lease). I let her know that we had scheduled it for Tues morning (which was actually the last day our lease was in effect; utilities still in our name until the next day). I asked if we needed to be there to let the carpet cleaning company in and she said no, it was fine, she would do it. On Mon morning, I sent her an email letting her know what our summary of the move out inspection was, some of the things that were said and agreed upon, and reminded her of the carpet cleaning. I asked that we have access to the property Tues afternoon to survey the work for ourselves. Within a very short time, I get an email back saying that we are not allowed access to the property and that per our legally binding lease, because we didn't take care of things before the move out inspection, it is our fault and we will lose a portion of our security deposit. There is NOTHING in our lease that states this and nothing in Idaho Tenant Law that would help her in this situation. We let her know this and she got very angry, and actually attempted to call me very soon after we sent the email but must have cut it short because I didn't answer. Eventually she caved and we paid almost $200 for carpet cleaning to assure a good job was done. If a tenant of mine spent close to $500 to clean my property, I would be so grateful. With this woman and based on her attitude, you would think that we had left dirt all over the house and told her to f*** off.

After heated emails and the carpet cleaning, we finally came to an agreement about what would be taken out of the security deposit. The problem is, we haven't received the leftover deposit yet (toilet seat + air filter for fridge costs should have been taken out), and she has a very short time from today in which to get it to us. She never gave us her address. If we have to demand the deposit, as the law says we should do, it says to do it by certified mail. Does email work for that though, since it's at least documentation? If we have to take her to small claims court, do we have a solid case? Any help would be appreciated if anyone has insight. This woman is a nightmare and we are glad to be rid of her, and living in a cheaper (and nicer!) house now. We are hoping to not have this disaster go on any longer.

Summary TL;DR: Our landlord has done seemingly illegal things throughout the lease term, leading to eventually refusing us access to the property while our lease was still in effect and we were paying the utilities. Security deposit still not returned and we have no way of contacting her other than by phone or email.

[Dale Walker]

@Mikaela Cekalski

Hey Mikaela, I am sorry you have to go through this. I am very familiar with Idaho landlord/tenant law (I am not a lawyer and not giving legal advice). It is common in Idaho leases to have the tenant pay for carpet cleaning as part of the lease. If the tenants don't pay for it and leave a receipt, the lease often states that it will be taken out of the deposit. As to the toilet seat and air filter, that really is normal wear and tear unless you have severely damaged the seat. Cleaning the apartment may be taken out of the deposit as well. I don't appreciate having to clean my tenants frig or stove. My leases state exactly what I will charge them if they don't clean up. When you turn in the keys, the apartment is surrendered to the Landlord and you don't have the right to enter without permission. I recommend you video the apartment after you are done cleaning and have all your stuff moved out. 

If you feel that you are not getting the correct amount of deposit back, you can take her to court. The landlord has 21 days to send you a itemized damage list and the remaining deposit. Some leases can extend the 21 days to 30 days but Idaho will not permit beyond 30 days.  Idaho is fairly Landlord friendly. If you want to take her to court, you will need to show how the place looked when you moved in. Show pictures of the extra stuff in the basement and how the place was cleaned when you moved in. Then you can show the judge how it looked when you moved out. Compare the stuff left and the cleanliness of the apartment. Unless stated in the lease, landlords cannot charge for their time to clean and repair the apartment. They can if they hire someone to do it though. If your landlord has not sent you an explanation within the 30 days, you will have some leverage to take her to court and the judge may be more sympathetic. 

You can find the owners/landlords name by checking with the county assessors office or county clerk. It is public information to see who owns the property and their address. You may need to go down to the county clerks office to look it up. Alot of Idaho's systems are not online.  Hope this helps.