Deposit & 1st month refund?

[gjrj]

My daughter & neice just gave a landlord a deposit end of dec.--no papers were signed. The LL was to clean & paint before they were to move in. This took two weeks. Prior to walking through the apt. they signed a month to month and gave the LL the first months rent. After walking through they decided not to take the apt. the guy hadn't cleaned anything. He now says he won't refund any of their money until he rents out the apt. My question, is there a time limit he has to refund the deposit? Since he didn't clean the Apt. is he entilted to keep any portion of their rent?Should this be handled in small claims? Upon winning in small claims how do you collect? Thanks in advance. Thank god my daughter is young and will hopefully learn something from this.

 

[TimC]

If they gave a deposit, they paid that money to hold the apartment and to keep the landlord from renting it to someone else.

Therefore they deprived him of the opportunity to rent the apartment to someone else. The entire purpose of the deposit is to hold the apartment. By now deciding that they do not want the apartment, they are breaking the agreement, whether it was written or verbal.

The landlord in this situation is typically entitled to whatever amount of rent he loses from the time they agreed to rent the property until he secures another qualified renter. This amounts to his damages. The landlord does, however, have to exercise reasonable effort to minimize his damages. Typically this means he has to advertise the apartment again, and show it to prospective tenants.

The error that was made here is signing a lease before doing a walkthrough of the apartment. If the landlord wanted to be a real stickler about this he could attempt to hold them to the terms of the lease. By merely being liable until he acquires another tenant he is doing the women a favor.

Now, perhaps a case could be made for breach of agreement regarding the cleaning of the apartment, but the landlord would typically only need to now clean the apartment, and allow the women to move in according to the original terms of the lease. Unless of course the cleaning of the apartment was a part of the lease, that is.

 

[gjrj]

Thank you!!!!!