What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California
We moved-into our rental home on 8/24/11. Our whole experience with the property management/owner has been a nightmare. When we viewed the place, we asked the agent if it would be given a good cleaning before we moved in, and she assured us it would be. Unfortunately due to the landlord not being able to get his act together, our move in was delayed, and we didn't see the house again before move-in day.
When we got here, nothing had been done. I know that when you move in to a place, you always have to do some cleaning. This was different. The carpet was filthy (they swore it had been professionally cleaned and said they had a receipt to prove that, but never produced it), there were cigarette butts all over the front and back yards, dead birds in the backyard, disgusting food in the microwave, food in the carpet, etc. I emailed and called the property management company that same day. They offered us two options: (1) they could send out a cleaning company within a few days; or (2) we could do it ourselves and deduct $200 from the rent. We chose to do it ourselves, we didn't want to wait any longer. We withheld the $200 from the following month's rent, but were called by the management and told that we couldn't do that. They said we had to wait until November to be reimbursed, and that we would have to pay the full rent that month, and then they'd send us a check separately.
We've been here nearly two months now. The owner was supposed to have taken care of several things and still hasn't - broken doorbell, no garage door opener, missing keys, no carbon monoxide detector (even though they wanted us to sign something saying we had one), etc. On top of that, we were told the yard would be maintained by a relative of theirs, and he still hasn't shown up. We don't own a mower so we're going to have to hire someone.
We were so fed up that none of our calls/emails were being answered by them and nothing was getting done that we held back the $200 from this month's rent to cover the cleaning reimbursement. They are so mad that they're threatening to evict us over it. Even though our rent is current. November is less than two weeks away, but they are willing to go to court over this $200, saying we're withholding rent. What's the likelihood they'd win? We are tempted to go out of principal.What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
We moved-into our rental home on 8/24/11. Our whole experience with the property management/owner has been a nightmare. When we viewed the place, we asked the agent if it would be given a good cleaning before we moved in, and she assured us it would be. Unfortunately due to the landlord not being able to get his act together, our move in was delayed, and we didn't see the house again before move-in day.
When we got here, nothing had been done. I know that when you move in to a place, you always have to do some cleaning. This was different. The carpet was filthy (they swore it had been professionally cleaned and said they had a receipt to prove that, but never produced it), there were cigarette butts all over the front and back yards, dead birds in the backyard, disgusting food in the microwave, food in the carpet, etc. I emailed and called the property management company that same day. They offered us two options: (1) they could send out a cleaning company within a few days; or (2) we could do it ourselves and deduct $200 from the rent. We chose to do it ourselves, we didn't want to wait any longer. We withheld the $200 from the following month's rent, but were called by the management and told that we couldn't do that. They said we had to wait until November to be reimbursed, and that we would have to pay the full rent that month, and then they'd send us a check separately.
We've been here nearly two months now. The owner was supposed to have taken care of several things and still hasn't - broken doorbell, no garage door opener, missing keys, no carbon monoxide detector (even though they wanted us to sign something saying we had one), etc. On top of that, we were told the yard would be maintained by a relative of theirs, and he still hasn't shown up. We don't own a mower so we're going to have to hire someone.
We were so fed up that none of our calls/emails were being answered by them and nothing was getting done that we held back the $200 from this month's rent to cover the cleaning reimbursement. They are so mad that they're threatening to evict us over it. Even though our rent is current. November is less than two weeks away, but they are willing to go to court over this $200, saying we're withholding rent. What's the likelihood they'd win? We are tempted to go out of principal.What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
