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Deposit Issues

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O

ORtenant

Guest
What is the name of your state? Oregon

We lived in a rental home for 10 years. Signed the lease in '94 with owner's step-son, but have gone through 4 property managers since, one of which stole all owner's rental proceeds. We paid a deposit of $820 upon move in. My husband is a handyman by trade so prop managers always told us to take care of maintenance on the house. Sometimes we were reimbursed, sometimes not, but because we were self employed our rent was late quite often, so we felt it was a fair trade. About 3 years ago we got a new property manager. There was no walk through (actually no walk through since we moved in in '94), no new lease signed, nothing. I spoke to them on the phone and explained our situation, they said we would receive a late notice every month but just to get rent in asap. Prop mgr came in March '04 and asked us to sign a lease. I dated it current but she dated it to '94. She said because of the earlier troubles with the stealing there was nothing left in the account from our deposit and the owners were going to have to come up with it to return to us. Owner decided to sell so we moved. Instead of our deposit, I recently got a listing of what we owed and (go figure) they show us owing $820 in late fees. Can they enforce it when we hadn't signed the lease with them till March of this year?
 


HomeGuru

Senior Member
ORtenant said:
What is the name of your state? Oregon

We lived in a rental home for 10 years. Signed the lease in '94 with owner's step-son, but have gone through 4 property managers since, one of which stole all owner's rental proceeds. We paid a deposit of $820 upon move in. My husband is a handyman by trade so prop managers always told us to take care of maintenance on the house. Sometimes we were reimbursed, sometimes not, but because we were self employed our rent was late quite often, so we felt it was a fair trade. About 3 years ago we got a new property manager. There was no walk through (actually no walk through since we moved in in '94), no new lease signed, nothing. I spoke to them on the phone and explained our situation, they said we would receive a late notice every month but just to get rent in asap. Prop mgr came in March '04 and asked us to sign a lease. I dated it current but she dated it to '94. She said because of the earlier troubles with the stealing there was nothing left in the account from our deposit and the owners were going to have to come up with it to return to us. Owner decided to sell so we moved. Instead of our deposit, I recently got a listing of what we owed and (go figure) they show us owing $820 in late fees. Can they enforce it when we hadn't signed the lease with them till March of this year?
**A: yes, if the late fees were a carry over before they took over the account.
You can go to court and sue for your deposit back.
 
O

ORtenant

Guest
Late fees were not a carryover. These are fees they are claiming we owe them. Because former property managers are no longer in business I can't imagine they would have record of late fees owed. Are any of these charges valid if we didn't sign the lease with them until 2 months before we moved out?
 

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