Not sure if this is the place to ask this, but my husband and I have been having a lot of grief over our previous landlords (a real-estate management company).
We moved out in August and into our very own home. We scrubbed the house top to bottom, but didn't shampoo the carpets as we had to pay a huge hotel bill for when the Air Conditioner broke down (it was 120 degrees INSIDE the house). The cost of shampooing the carpet and the hotel charge were approximately the same.
They sent us an outrageous bill after we left basically saying we owed our entire security deposit and THEN some. We pointed out several flaws in their logic. Not least of which was their wanting to charge us to establish electric service so they could not only clean the carpet, but do three hours or more of repairs to the house on normal regular maintenance issues (due to it being a house built in the 50's, not due to our neglect). We sent them a dispute, and pointed out that they owed us a refund, once you removed all of the bogus charges.
Their response came in the mail today, and has my husband and myself outraged! One of the things they say in the message was "...it has been brought to our attention that an excessive number of snakes and mice were housed at the property during the term of the lease.... Our legal counsel has recommended a special extermination be done in an effort to control potential future infestation, and this cost will be charged to you." They also say "This compromises our ability to market the property insofar as we are required to disclose this informatin to prospective tenants." They also mention wear and tear on the 30+ year old bath tub that they have to "refinish it" and are trying to charge that to us.
Sorry for being so lengthy, but I thought I would try to explain the entire issue so that anyone with any words of wisdom, advice, or commiseration
will have all the facts.
We feel quite persecuted by these people. We lived in that broken down shack for 2 years, they DID inspect it and DID see the animals and did NOT say anything at that time. We paid the rent on time for 24 months. We repaired many small items in the house that were damaged out of our own pocket (damaged before we got there). We maintained the place and kept it in as good a condition as possible. One day the toilet split into two pieces and we were so fast acting that we had the water shut off before the water could reach the carpet, keeping them from having to recarpet the entire house, if we had been asleep (it was 3 am when the toilet spontaneously disintigrated) or away the house would have been flooded by the continuously running water.
Another point I wanted to bring up is that we noticed, when we were doing our final cleaning of the house, that the house was infested with termites. This leads us to wonder if their "special extermination" is really a termite extermination that they expect to bill to us, even though that would CLEARLY not be our responsibility nor fault.
Okay, I'll stop typing now. Thanks for listening. This is all in Arizona, in case that is an important fact.
~Sasheena
Renters Laws & Herps
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