When renting property, you need to make sure to take good care of it and return it in the condition it was in when you started.

What happens if you do just that, but the landlord claims that you caused all sorts of damage?

That’s the situation in this story.

Read on to see how it goes.

Landlord wanted us to pay for renovation when moving out, he paid dearly instead

This happened a couple of years ago when my wife and I were moving out of our previous apartment.

Great, everything is going well.

So moving day comes, landlord shows up and we walk through the whole apartment with him to hand it over.

Even though he has some minor complaints in the end he agrees to refund the deposit in full and we part on good terms.

What could have changed?

A couple of days pass and we get an long angry voicemail claiming he was renovating and noticed that the room that was my former office smells extremely bad.

He was claiming our cats would have urinated in there repeatedly.

He then said we would need to come back and renovate the room ourselves or otherwise he’d get a health inspector, contractors etc. all on our dime to fix it.

And he means tearing down the wallpapers, replacing the wood flooring, painting the walls etc. etc.

My wife and I are dumbfounded, we do have cats, so we do not dismiss it outright.

But we realize that this is basically impossible, as I used the room every day and we had the apartment professionally cleaned before handing it back and there’s just no way that what he’s describing was there when we left.

Maybe it was a raccoon that got in during the days the apartment was empty or whatever but it wasn’t our fault either way.

What a jerk!

So we call him to let him know we won’t cover it and he gets really nasty making all kinds of claims about the state of the apartment, about how we would twist everything and how he would make sure we would pay for this.

After 10 minutes of back and forth, I just hang up on him.

Expecting a massive bill to arrive at any point after this left us anxious and really started to mess with our heads during this time.

And of course we don’t get our deposit back either.

Because of this whole ordeal and seeing my wife being worried about this all the time, I start to become really angry and dive a little deeper into our options.

I discover that where we live, if a landlord does not formally claim a reason for holding back a deposit within 6 months of the end of the lease, they are by law required to refund it.

Patience is a virtue.

So, I figure that revenge is a dish best served cold and we just need to wait it out for another 3 months or so and after that it’s our turn.

I calculate the exact date when the 6 months have passed and one day later just message him to please refund the deposit within two weeks.

He just replies “yeah, sure buddy”.

So, we wait, no money comes, then we sent a formal letter setting a second deadline.

Again, nothing happens (I was actually hoping for that at this point).

So, we hire an attorney and let her collect the money on our behalf.

The landlord starts claiming all kinds of ridiculous damages etc. which would let him keep the deposit which the attorney simply dismisses as the time for claims has passed.

Then for some reason he pays only 80% or so of the amount due, so the attorney has to get at it again to get the full amount.

Apparently, he is not realizing that all this is incurring hourly costs for the attorney which he also has to pay, as he is legally liable to refund.

Well played!

So, in the end he pays the full deposit, interest, and a massive bill for our lawyer far higher than the deposit.

Needless to say, we are very happy with the outcome.

Once everything is settled, my wife and I just sat in our new home’s garden, had a glass of wine and burned the old rental agreement while planning how to spend the deposit.

Great story. I love it when patience pays off.

Let’s take a look at what the comments had to say.

Wow, nice!

You’ve to go call them on it.

Patience is a virtue.

That is a crazy long time.

Always document everything.

You’ve got to hold those landlords accountable!

Otherwise they’ll behave even worse.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.