March 18, 2004

LANDLORD: The Continuing Saga

I was talking with my mom earlier this week, and found out that by not providing a continuation of our us-versus-the-ex-landlord story (previous episodes here, here, and here, in chronological order), I'd left her with the impression that he was still holding on to our entire $3,798 security deposit. Since I'm sure she's not the only one, I present another installment of: So What Did Happen Between You Guys and Your Former Landlord?

[This is a long entry; I've been chewing on it for a while. The story has also been altered somewhat from its original form; someone pointed out via e-mail that I might not want to be quite so over-the-top on someone I'm still attempting to negotiate with, and they're probably correct.]

In our last installment (on February 13th), I reported that I'd had a conversation with our landlord, "Joe", (on the 6th), in which we established that our deposit was actually $3798 (not $1899), and agreed that any share of carpet-replacement costs paid by us would be pro-rated on the age and expected remaining life of the carpet. He asked me to e-mail him a summary of our discussion, which I did immediately afterwards. Now it was one week later, and I'd heard absolutely nothing from him.

That very night, just as I was putting the finishing touches on a stiff e-mail asking where he'd disappeared to, I received an e-mail from him:

Your figures of 2328 sounds right if the deposit was 2 months. I'm sure
you are right but will check at home the contracts as well. Can I send
you a check? Where?

If the deposit was two months? He's taken a week to respond, and still hasn't bothered to check the contract? I send him a reply, including my address and bank account info (which I'd already left with him once before), as soon as I get his note.

. . . and then I hear nothing from him until the 18th, when I get this e-mail:

Kevin, I don't find your act info. Could you resend?

So I resend, asking him to acknowledge that this time he did indeed receive my account information -- and he did:

I got it. tks

. . . my reasonable expectation is that now he'll turn around and use that account information to make a deposit to our account. However, time passes, no deposit is made, and on the 24th I send him this E-mail:

Hi Joe --

It's now Tuesday morning, California time -- past the time when my bank reconciles its accounts for the coming day -- and I still don't see a $2328 deposit refund from you. Have you made the transfer to my account yet? If not, when were you planning on making it?

At this point, I feel compelled to point out that by California law, you had 21 calendar days after we moved out to refund our deposit, as well as furnishing -- by mail -- a detailed list of any deductions you've made. (See California Civil Code, Section 1950.5 (g)(1).) The 21-day deadline expired last Thursday, so you're now five days overdue.

Yours,

-- Kevin

. . . after I send this e-mail, I quickly discover that I've found a lever that works -- mentioning the law! I get not one, but three, followups to my e-mail that same day, in rapid succession:

Number 1:

I am very sorry kevin. I will do it today. I apologize.

Number 2:

Just faxed wire instructions to charles schwab. Typically they'll
transfer in the day and will show in your account in 2 business days.

Number 3:

Being transferred to the aba you gave me but this is for American
electronic association credit union in Sunnyvale not the name of the
bank you gave me. I assume it's the same. They charge me $25 which I
have deducted from the amount sent. Money should be in 2 biz days I
believe. Let me know if not in

While I'm pleased that he's finally taking action, I'm a little upset by his last mail -- if I had elected to pay my monthly rent out of a Charles Schwab brokerage account, would he have been okay with my deducting $25 in wire-transfer fees each month? But later that day, before I sit down to type out an indignant e-mail, I check my bank account -- not only is his transfer there, but it's for the full amount; he made a mistake and ended up bearing the $25 cost of the wire transfer himself. Ha!

But we're not finished dealing with Joe yet. Under California law, tenants are entitled to a written itemized statement of deductions from their security deposit, along with receipts or other documentation to back up each deduction. Since we have a strong suspicion that Joe didn't replace the carpets (and may have padded his deductions elsewhere), we decided to avail ourselves of our legal rights and request that Joe mail us the itemized statement and all relevant documentation. I made the request on February 26th (noting in my e-mail what we were entitled to, when we were entitled to it, and citing the relevant section of the California Civil Code that gave us those rights), and got the following response:

Thank you. I will get those

And that's the last we've heard from Joe. No final statement or receipts have shown up at Shelby's parents' house (the mailing address that I'd provided). So, on March 15th, I sent him this e-mail:

Dear Joe,

You promised me on February 26th that you would send me an itemized statement of your deductions from our security deposit, along with receipts/invoices documenting those deductions. As of today -- almost three weeks later -- I have not received any of those items.

By law [California Civil Code Section 1950.5(g)], you were supposed to send the itemized statement and receipts to me via first-class mail 21 days after I moved out; that deadline passed on February 19th, 26 days ago. For any repairs not completed by February 19th, you had 14 calendar days after those repairs were completed to send receipts to me. Given that you advertised the house on craigslist.org as being available by the end of February (and that you've removed your listing), I have to assume that the deadline for you to send me those receipts has passed as well.

Given that, at his point I am demanding the following:

1) That you send an itemized statement of deductions and all receipts *immediately* to me at:

Kevin Hogan
(Shelby's parents' address)
Torrance, CA 90505

Again, the *only* receipts that I don't want to see are for the $80 paid to Alberto and the $120 paid to Alma, since these were previously-agreed-upon deductions, and I know their rates. I want to see receipts or documentation for all other work.

2) For any work that cost less than your original good-faith estimate, or for any work which you are unable to provide a receipt or documentation, that you provide me with a refund. If a refund is due, you can mail a check along with the receipts to the address above.

3) The law spells out very specifically the level of detail that your itemized statement and the receipts must contain; please make sure that any documentation that you provide to me meets the requirements of the law. (The original E-mail summary that you sent to me was extremely vague.) I've excerpted the relevant section of California's security deposit law at the end of this mail, along with references, should you want to look up the text of the law yourself.

I remain hopeful that this can be settled amicably and without further delay. I look forward to your fulfilling your legal responsibilities as a landlord by sending me complete documentation, along with any appropriate refund, as soon as possible.

Yours,

-- Kevin Hogan

References for security deposit law:

The California Department of Consumer Affairs has a document summarizing changes to security deposit law for 2004: see http://www.dca.ca.gov/legal/landlordbook/2004_companion.pdf . A summary of the law can be found on page 7; the text of the law itself can be found on page 9.

The State of California makes California code available online -- you can find the security-deposit law here: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate?WAISdocID=79609827685+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve (search down for "1950.5".)

TEXT OF CALIFORNIA CIVIL CODE, SECTION 1950.5 (g)(1-3):
(elided by me for this blog entry; you can look it up yourself using the references I've provided, if you want to ...)

. . . and once again, several days have passed, and there's been no response yet. Which makes me even more suspicious -- if Joe had used our security deposit money to do the work as claimed, wouldn't it be a simple matter to produce the receipts?

Maybe I'm wrong; maybe Shelby's parents will get a packet of complete, legally compliant documentation in their mailbox this week. But should he continue to stonewall us, I'm pretty sure that we'll end up going to small claims court once we return to the US.

(Since people have arrived at previous installments of our saga by searching for things like "landlord" and "security deposit" at Google, I should say: I'm not a lawyer. I have no idea if the last letter I sent to Joe was "good" or not; feel free to use it as a model if you want, but I'm sure that you can get better advice someplace else.

Should this story eventually end in small claims court, we've already made some strategic mistakes. Since we objected strenuously to the idea of the carpet needing to be replaced in the first place -- and since we got evasive answers from Joe on the matter of carpet replacement [he wouldn't tell me where the carpet was irredemably damaged, saying only that "well, you know that you can't just replace carpet in one room (!) -- you have to replace it all at the same time!"] all of the tenant-rights sites I can find say that we should have taken no money from him until the matter was settled in court or through mediation. But given that we wouldn't be able to reach small-claims court for at least six months, that at the time, we really needed the money, and that he'd already given us ample evidence that our $3798 was in the hands of someone who had no qualms about dealing with us in bad faith, I decided to follow a strategy that would get as much of our money out of his hands as possible, as quickly as possible.)

Posted by Kevin at March 18, 2004 08:40 AM
Comments

It is my belief that if he did have the work done (which I agree, I think he didn't) he did it just like he's done everything else on the house (and his new house)--by picking up some of those day laborers who stand on street corners in the morning and paying them 25 cents an hour to do a complete slop job. Therefore, even if he had the work done, I don't believe that there ARE receipts to be had. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Posted by: Shelby at March 18, 2004 01:57 PM

I'm also going to small claims court. We also live in CA and our ex-landlord has taken so many deductions that our final return was going to be $147.00. Well, he currently holding a deposit of just under $700. PLUS, we sold him the chain link fence (we had to buy and put in ourselves) and he's crediting us $100. for the excess water bill due to a broken pipe. Now, we've lived in this house for 10 years! Lived with leaks in the roof (had to buy tarps to cover roof during rainy season). We sent letters about the leaks over the years and when we decided to leave, he decided to fix it! Now, all of the deductions are items that WE took care, he didn't do a walk through as required. I responded to his itemized deductions, (certified mail) he wouldn't sign for it.
Bottom line is I tried to settle this several ways, finally going to the District Attorney's office to try Mediation, he responded with a revised document totally $427. due back to us. Well, I decided to file a claim, the day he was served he decided to coutersue - He's now going to try to countersue me claiming that we owe him a total of $1078.00 and I have NO idea where he's pulling that figure out of. If he's already submitted an itemized list of deductions, can he just decide to change it? HELP

Posted by: Becky at July 1, 2004 06:23 AM
Sadly, Further Comments Have Been Disabled ...

Due to a never-ending flood of comment spam, we've decided to disable comments for all blog entries past a certain age. If you'd like to comment on a closed blog entry, say something in one of the newer entries or E-mail the author.

-- Apologies, The happybeagle.com Management