This was the straw that broke the camel's back - this last tenancy has been a total nightmare. I had enough of this shit and finally bought a house, but I still gotta put this one to rest.
tl;dr - our landlord was always a bitch. Now she wants to keep our entire security deposit BUT she has missed the 10 day window for estimates, 30 day window for returning money AND there is no condition reports
We already have an official complaint filed (found acceptable and put on her file) for her putting the place up for sale while we were living in it, so we had to stage the house, always had a fuckin realtor and prospective buyers coming through for the last FOUR MONTHs of a fixed term lease, so we couldn't even leave after she sprung that bullshit on us.
But now she has held our security deposit for way past the 30 days she is supposed to keep it, and she completely missed the 10 day window for getting estimates together so we'd know how much she wanted to deduct.
She is talking about keeping basically the entire thing and keeps finding more things wrong. But she's been living in the place herself since we moved out, so some of this she might have done herself. We never did a proper walkthrough at the end of the lease, and I definitely never signed anything. I never even had a copy of the walkthrough we did at the start of the lease and she mentioned she couldn't find hers either. Even if we did find a copy of the pre-lease walkthrough, we missed all kinds of stuff on it - we identified a stain on the stairs that wasn't documented, there was damage to the projector screen done by the previous tenant, and we didn't notice the fuckin gas had been disconnected so we had no heat or hot water.
So since she has committed three offenses I can see here:
- missed 10 days for estimates
- missed 30 days for returning money
- no condition reports
We are entitled to our entire deposit back. BUT it seems very likely she will lawyer up and take us to court if we fight back here, to try and get $3,000+ back from us to "repair" the house to better condition than it was in when we moved in.
If it goes to court, is it easy? Is it feasible to represent yourself, or do you have to lawyer up? How expensive is a tenant lawyer (both myself & my friend who were signed on the lease make too much money to qualify for the cheap U of C lawyers)? Is it a total pain in the ass? Should we just roll over and continue taking it in the ass like we have been for the past year?