So the apartment that we lived in for two years has been through 5 management companies since we signed our first lease. The first management company the owners sold the apartments while we were still living there and the new owners made us all sign new leases. It was the middle of winter so it would have been almost impossible to find an available rental on such short notice as they conveniently did this a week before the end of the month.(they said we could have 1 week to vacate if we chose to) We were unsure but signed again because we had nowhere else to go. Our security deposit transferred over but the old company stole my $250 pet deposit, they ran off with the paperwork and the new owners said they weren't responsible for it since the check was made out to the old management. We counted down the months until move-out, especially after we kept getting notices taped to our door about "greetings from your new management team" almost every other month.
The final day we prepared to move out and spent a total of over 16 hours scrubbing, cleaning, disinfecting, bleaching. It was normal wear-and-tear but I know from experience how picky landlords can be and we didn't want to take any chances with the $400 deposit. The final management team that took over informed us when we turned in our notice to vacate that the final month of utilities would be deducted from the deposit. That isn't what I've been used to, but since I am familiar with our utility costs I just shook my head and took it with a grain of salt so to speak. We took pictures after cleaning as a precaution, turned in our keys, and left. Before you ask, no, the management does not do a final walk-through with the tenant not even upon request.
Just this week I got what was left of my security deposit back and a list of charges. They charged us a $200 cleaning fee. They claimed: we left garbage behind, all appliances had to be cleaned, we had "hooks" in the walls, and they had to redo the cleaning of the floors. I told her we had pictures of everything before we turned our keys in and it was spotless, she asked us to send them via email. Two days later she said she got the pictures but after discussing the state of our apartment with her staff the charges still stand. I have been renting for YEARS and have NEVER had any issue with cleanliness after vacating a rental other than the standard carpet cleaning charge. We really needed that money back. I don't know what I'm going to do now I just want to SCREAM. We left NOTHING behind, I have no idea what "garbage" they are talking about and they have nothing but their word to prove it. Even in the pictures of every room they are COMPLETELY EMPTY. We never used "hooks" to hang anything we barely had any pictures up and used trim nails. I wish we would have just packed our things and left and not cleaned a gdamn thing. I can't believe she looked at the DATED pictures of our cleaning and tried to tell us we "trashed the place". I could have shown her truly what a "trashed" apartment looks like, if she thinks that was trashed I'd hate to think what happens to the people that don't give a ____.