You seem to think that you know everything and that you were being very reasonable about the situation, but you aren't. You broke your lease. You didn't give her proper notice, and then you argued that you didn't have to (legally you are wrong). And you left things "reasonably clean."
All I can say is that she has the right to keep your whole deposit for breaking the lease. She can also charge you longingly for rent unit lthe end of your lease. If you want to fight it, you will lose.
You are lucky she didn't know her rights. In pretty much all states, you are required BY LAW to give 30 days notice, minimum.
She's charging you P.I.T.A. fees. Better to pay them and be out than to spend time in court or to have her sue you when she realizes that you were legally required to give 30 days notice.
Yes, you could probably get them lowered in court. It will cost you a day's work to go to court (is that more or less than $150?) and if she mentions to the judge that you refused to give 30 days, the judge may encourage her to amend her complaint to countersue you for several additional months of rent.
Edit: You were not berated. Stop playing the victim.
End of lease regulations are dictated by state law. Some states do not require notice, some states do.
Edit II: this is why it's so imperative to include important details like this when you ask questions.
If you didn't have to give notice, you didn't have to give notice. Fine.
As far as the cleaning fees, I think they are excessive, but not by much.
"wanted to rent the house this month we would have had to re-sign. We DID NOT have t o give her notice that we would not resign another lease," NO that's not bogus that is STATE LAW in most states! It doe snot matter that it was not in the lease. Even if you only ever had a verbal month to month agreement with nothing written down at all you are still legally required to give a proper 30 day notice. This is standard industry wide. Hate to break it to you but you are flat out wrong on that point.
That said some of those specific charges do sound excessive. Any time you do not agree with any charges a landlord takes out of your deposit all you can do is dispute the charges in court.
EDIT: That law in unique & DOES NOT exist in most states. You have no right to get mad at us when you fail to provide that information & your state has an abnormal non standard law. With no state all we can give is the general standard it is not our fault LA is one of the very few that is different.
Again - any charges you do not agree with you have to dispute in court.
$280 is not unreasonable to clean a house, even if you left it in decent shape. You admitted there's still dog hair along the baseboards. You said you cleaned it "fairly deeply." That sounds like you did not clean it completely. You didn't mow the lawn until the situation translated into you owing money. You want credit for notifying her you were moving even though you didn't have to, when it was just the right thing to do. Why was it BS when it was your responsibility to mow the lawn and you didn't do it and she was going to charge you for it?
I think you might have one finger pointing at your landlord and three pointing back at yourself.
Actually, you DO owe her 30 days written notice that you are vacating if you are not breaking your lease. Absent a clause in the lease, state law rules. She can deduct the next month's rent from your deposit since you did not give proper written notice. If you are in a long term lease, in addition to forfeiting your deposit, you continue to owe rent until she can re-rent the property or until the end of your lease.
$380 to clean a house is more than fair. You admitted to dog hair, so that tells me you did not "deep clean" as you stated or return the unit to the condition it was in when you took possession? Would YOU want to move into a property that has dog hair in it? "Reasonably clean" is NOT good enough.
Clean everything she said and have her reinspect. Then you'll know if she really just wants the place cleaned, or if she just doesn't want to give you your deposit back. If you can't do the labor yourself, write down the list and hire a cleaning service to do it. Show her the receipt from the cleaning service.
is your deposit for damage or cleaning? it is normal for landlords to have to clean after a tenant moves out, part of the expense of being a landlord, if there is extensive cleaning to be done, that might be considered
and unless the dog hairs were stuck in wet paint on the base board, a simple vacuuming should do the trick
if there was no damage, I would challenge the cleaning
Little back story.. Rented a house last year with 2 roommates our deposit was $1250 + $400 dog deposit. Each month rent was $1250.
Last month we decided we couldn't keep the house and I informed the landlord that we would be moving (out of courtesy because it doesn't even say in our lease that we have to let her know). Her first response is well you can't move out because you have to give me 30 days notice. I then showed her the lease where there is nothing saying us even having to tell her we are moving. She backed off of that.
Move forward to us moving out.. They wanted the house back to the way it was. We cleaned it fairly deeply besides the yard not being mowed. I told her I wanted to be there for the walk through. She kept throwing miscellaneous numbers at me saying this would cost this much and the other. I finally told her to write down everything that would cost. Here is what she claims:
$75- to clean the hood over the stove (how?)
$50- to sweep off the remaining baseboards that weren't to her specs (had dog hair on them, she also threatened to have to repaint them because of the dog hair)
$80- to mop the house
$50- to clean the tile in the bathroom on the wall of the shower (the tub, sink, and toilet were already cleaned perfectly)
$100- to cut the yard (I called BS and cut it myself that day)
$25- to wipe off the blinds in the den
All in all she racked up $380 in charges in a clean house. What can I do? Also what should a dog deposit cover?
