Management company won't give me the keys to my rental.

[Lori Kimble]

We own two homes in Pa and one in California. IN 2011, my husband was transferred to CA and we hired a manager to rent out the home we had been living in and also take over the management of our second PA home (this had been our starter house). This home had a tenant in it already and we had been managing it. We paid him 10% of both rents to manage these properties.

Flash forward a year later, and my husband is being sent to Afghanistan. I decided I would rather be back in PA while he was gone, so we had the manager give notice that the tenants needed to leave when their lease was done, which occured on November 1. We returned on November 9, to find the house trashed.

We took pictures of the damages, sent them to the manager and he refunded a small amount of the tenants security deposit. He hasn't sent us the balance of the deposit, owed to us to pay for the repairs we have had to do. Every time we contact him, he says he will drop it by or doesn't take the call. He denies receiving emails and says he will show up one day, but then doesn't. He also hasn't returned the keys to our house.

I know he had 30 days to return the deposit to the tenants, but is there a similar timeline for returning any money he owes us? We also gave him a retainer for any repairs he might need to do in our absence and he hasn't returned that or a list of repairs he has done, either. We have decided to fire him as manager of our other house, so I assume I will have the same trouble getting those keys back.

My husband has since left for Afghanistan and I am left to deal with this guy alone. Is this a lawsuit issue or because he won't give us back our keys, is it a police issue? Any suggestions would be appreciated.