Need advice, very odd situation...
First of all, thanks to anyone who can help guide me in the right direction here I really appreciate it.
I am the renter in the transaction and looking to get my security deposit back. Heres the situation VERY summed up, I can provide more details if you need them.
I Sold my home in California and moved to Texas. I Signed a 1 year lease in a home in june 2016. Found a new home to purchase in November 2016 and informed the landlord 35 days in advance and agreed we will help find a new tenant for them and continue paying rent until we did. We vacated the property on Nov 16th, had a physical walkthrough with the landlord noting only a small hole in the living room drywall and ZERO damage or concerns otherwise (we only lived in the home for 5mo).
We finally found a renter that they agreed to rent to (out of 17 showings and running 7 applications) by december 1st. According the the lease we were to pay an additional FULL month that we didnt live in the home since we terminated the lease early so we did and sent them the check. We were told we would get some of that money back after we rented the home for them.,.....we didnt, go figure. The landlord asked me to write them a letter agreeing to the termination of the lease so they could draft a new lease with the new tenants and that letter/email went out to them on nov 25th.
I now know and have read the law, they cannot "just Keep" my deposit for breaking the lease in Texas. We followed through with the entire legal aspect of terminating early according to the lease and acted like very responsible grown ups vs. just leaving like most renters would do. We paid them an entire month extra, rented the home for them and they still have $2000 of mine on top of it.
Its now been 5+ months since any communication and Im 2 weeks away from the original lease expiration. Ive waited patiently since it was my understanding that I could not demand my deposit back until the original lease was up regardless of it being re-leased, and the landlord was not required to pay us or send an itemized deduction until the original lease was up. Does this sound correct?
Is there an entire can of worms Im not aware of here that maybe I should just forget about it? These were not trustworthy people and threatened all sorts of nonsense (legal, not criminal) until I threatened a lawyer at the very end otherwise I wouldnt be concerned with all of this.
Thank you for any advice I appreciate it.