Mold found in rental after moving in

[Dustin Mercer]

Hi All -

I’m a new member but my wife and I have been following this board for some time and really appreciate all the great conversations! I finally have a question worth signing up and posting :)

We recently sold our home and became renters (large profit on the home, but the major driver was my daily commute). We have run into an issue with our rental and landlord and would like some advice.

The unit has had a slight smell in the master bedroom since we moved in, but we attributed it to the old carpet. Well about 4 months into renting we saw a corner of the room was mushy about 2 feet up and visible mold started growing. We immediately notified the landlord and they acted quickly. They hired a plumbing company to remediate the mold and a pest control guy to patch the roof. There was a leak above the shower and in another room in the house. The shower shares a wall with the soaked wall. They also had to silicone a bunch of cracks in the tile shower, shoddy workmanship on the shower. This is where’s it gets complicated...

They hired a non-certified company to remediate the mold (I’m assuming it was cheap). I mentioned multiple times through the process the smell was still extremely strong. The landlord stopped by and said, “I don’t smell anything”. Well, they closed it all up and we all went about our lives. We gave it about a week and the smell was still there. In fact, it had gotten stronger. We decided to have a professional mold test performed. They found very high levels of moisture (even in the walls that were recently remediated). More concerning they found high levels of stachybotrys. We immediately notified the landlord and worded our email a lot more strongly (we also mentioned my daughter, who is 6, has been sick for a couple of months as well - issues with her ears). We noted it was very important to us because of the health of my daughter and we needed a safe environment. We provided the report.

The landlord responded back frustrated but wanting to get it resolved. She acted quickly again and properly remediated the issue (mold was found on other walls in the bathroom as well, behind the toilet which is on the opposite wall). All of the baseboards had mold, even the ones the initial company put back on... Everything is good now with the home, the smell is gone, and I feel like the mold is taken care of. The challenge is they did not identify the source of the leak and the landlord is blaming us for condensation on the shower door leaking onto the tile floor and seeping into the wall. I was adamant this wasn't the case, we've always had a mat down and honestly, we're careful and clean people. Not to mention the amount of water required to run off a shower door from condensation to soak a whole wall... I understand this to be her trying to protect herself from a lawsuit (which we're not asking for, we just needed it to be done correctly as to eliminate that as a possible cause of sickness for my daughter)

Some side notes. It rained HEAVY this year in CA. It was solid, heavy rain. Not normal for CA. Coincidentally it started about a month after we moved in (it was October time). I spoke with the remediation company (over text so it's documented) and they admitted they told her it was most likely due to the rain, not the shower door. They also noted they recommended HVAC cleaning, as well as replacing the carpet, she opted out of both. She didn't even want to pay for new baseboards and the cheap tac strips for the carpet (which were all completely saturated with mold)! He told her couldn't do the job if she didn't replace those.

Onto my question - I can't tell if the landlord is just trying to protect herself or trying to build a case to withhold our deposit to pay for this. I don't believe she had an inspection before she purchased this home (which was purchased for renting, and only a few weeks prior to us taking possession). How can we protect our deposit at this point? It’s not “end of the world” type of money for us, but it’s the principal. There was also a slab leak we found about a few weeks after moving in (the tile floor was hot). The plumber that came to repair that said that leak had been going on for a while… The funny part… They had the hot water heater turned way down (I turned it up which is probably what helped us find the issue). This is what makes me suspect there were no inspections performed (that and they really don’t like spending money on anything). Sorry for the long post, there’s a lot to this! TIA