All Forum Posts by: J Paige

Ha ha YES @Polly Gage that was our thought too, all this angst and it might just be a computer mistake.  But she is a chatty lady and I haven't had an email from her since the 27th.   It is the holiday weekend, so maybe she is taking a break from work.  But maybe not.  She did tell us about a former employee she had telling her (in regards to a tenants lease) "you can't do that!" and her answer to the employee was "yes I can, I am the owner of this company I can do whatever I want!"  Yikes! 

@Account Closed thanks for all the good information!  At this point we are just hoping a check for our full deposit will be waiting in the mailbox for us tomorrow, but we have found a good real estate attorney if we have to go that route.

@Account Closed if it sets your mind at ease John I will say that we are planning on requesting a copy of our report from the service she used so we can get the utility collection mistake removed.  It seems to be some sort of property management software service that did the screening.  But she did run our reports right after showing us the house.  She was very eager for us to sign before we left town and had us make a special trip in to sign, despite us saying we were happy to do it all long distance.  If there is anything on the report, it dates from 4 years ago (I have a vague memory of having to get a similar sounding thing cleared from our credit reports as a mistake) and it did not bother her when she wanted us to sign.  Really I think either the owners / extended family decided to do something else with the house, or they realized they were under-pricing it.  They were surprised we are currently paying more rent for our house with no water view than what they are asking for a bigger house right on the beach.  It was too good to be true.

@Wayne Brooks yes, our copy of the lease has the owner of the pm companies signature on it.  The receipt for our check (which has been cashed) specifies security & pet deposit.

Thanks for the replies.  What do we need to protect ourselves at this point and get our deposit back?  The letter is computer generated from a company out of state, there is no signature on it. We haven't tried contacting the pm company as we opened the letter on Sunday and today is a holiday.  Wanted to have our strategy in place before calling.  They are 4 hours south of here so going in person is not an option.

@Robi Hawley yes, I agree we don't want to rent from these people.  Its a small pm company and I think the owner is more than a bit random in her policies.  We did find the Rights as Tenant page and will call on Tuesday for their advice.  Good luck on your new venture!

@Account Closed thank you, that was our take on it too.

The letter said "utilities - collection" but we have all our recent credit reports (trying to buy a house) and that is not on any of them.  We think she just picked a random thing because either the owners changed their mind about renting the house or they decided to get more money for it.  They have used it as their vacation house for the past 10 years, its full of stuff so they were going to rent furnished / partially furnished.  They were still decided what to take and what to leave.  Extended family coming for the holiday claiming items, etc.  We think they just had a change of heart and this is how they are getting out of it.

I know this is looking at the issue from the wrong side for most of you, but would love some input.  We signed a lease on house just under 3 weeks ago ~paid the security deposit at that time, which has been cashed.  We are due to move in in less than 2 weeks, but today rec'd a letter stating our application is denied because of credit issues.  Is this really legal for a landlord to do?  What are our options?  They have not returned our $1750  security deposit.  Our current lease is up a the end of this month.  We suspect they realized they could get more for the house than what they offered it to us for.