All Forum Posts by: Eddie Johns

Get over, get the keys back, and get it squared up. As long as your in possession of the keys your a tenant, even with vacate notice you gave, and the fact you say you moved.. you gotta give the keys back and get out of the situation., sooner is better than later.

Give him your forwarding address and amount of deposit you seem to feel your entitled to.. your post has most info but some still in limbo so hard to give facts unless all are properly disclosed. Go in and take photos showing your apartment is clean and good order. before you give keys.

Thank You for the reply.

Yes, he did the treatment but after a lot of delay (approx 10 days) and in those 10 days the apartment was inhabitable. Hence we had to move out of the house. Is this acceptable ?

As far as the keys issue, we did not know that we had to hand over the keys. We thought since we gave him one months notice and were still paying rent for that month we are supposed to keep the keys with us, until the notice period is over.

We already handed over the keys to him, but now he is saying that he will deduct another 15 days of rent from the day we returned the keys.

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Originally posted by @Deanna McCormick:

Get it taken care of today.

Meet with landlord, get the keys back and put in writing the security deposit amount you want back.

Take photo's of the apartment before you meet with him.

Call the housing inspector / health department inspector, and make a complaint of bed bug issues, they will in turn go to landlord for inspection requirements. keep the inspectors name and date you called.

If you don't get the deposit back within the time period for your state file a small claims action against landlord.

But the bed-bug treatment has already been done. BY some pest-control company a month ago. The owner also agreed there were bedbugs in the house and he did the treatment but after a delay of 10 days.

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Originally posted by @Sam LLoyd:

Ok, these are general answers since I don't know the statutes in your area. It sounds like there is a major communication issue going (not uncommon, sorry to say.) So, here are my comments.

1st.. without a signed lease agreement everything is up in the air. You should never have given a deposit without something in writing explaining where and how it would be returned or not returned. The other side of that coin is that the land lord should not have either.. and it will probably end up with your word against theirs in a small claims court if you can't come to an agreement.

2nd, you can't expect a deposit back if you haven't given the keys back... that's silly... just like it's silly for a landlord not to address bedbugs... if it's a problem that was there before you moved in.

Here is the best recourse I can think of based on what you've said. Meet with the landlord and sign an agreement saying what deposit will be returned upon meeting what conditions (in this case the keys).

It sounds like there's more to this, and that if you haven't been paying him for over a month... and keeping the keys, that there won't be much left of the deposit.

It sounds like a very frustrating situation, but unfortunately, that's all I can think of without knowing more.

But we were paying the rent for the whole month in the notice period. Hence how can we hand him the keys. ? We will hand him the keys once the notice period is over.

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But is our case strong ? we dont know anything about NJ LAW.

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Hi Guys please help us out here.

We rented an apartment on 15sept and paid 2 months deposit to the owner. After 3-4 days we found there were bed bugs in the house and we contacted the owner to do pest control in our house. He kept delaying it saying that we have requested a pest control company but they are busy and will be soon coming to the house.

In the meantime the menace of bedbugs was increasing day by day and we had to throw our beds and some other things too due to that. Finally on 3oct we decided to vacate the house as no pest control was done on the house and we had skin infections due to bed bugs.

We told the owner that due to bed bugs we have health issue and are leaving the house, please pay our deposit back. He said we needed to give him a months notice in advance. There was no lease agreement between us. We reminded him and he kept delaying it saying its under process.

We agreed and gave him a formal notice of 1 month (i.e. till 3 Nov). When we emailed him back asking for our deposit on 4 Nov he is saying that we had to return him the keys which we did not. He says that after we return the keys he will give the deposit back deducting another 15 days of rent.

What can be done in this case ? Can someone please help ?

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All Forum Posts by: Eddie Johns

Eddie Johns has started 1 posts and replied 6 times.

Post: Landlord not returning the deposit

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Post: Landlord not returning the deposit