Renter Feels Cheated of Deposit
Question: Here’s a great small claims court case. I rented a small home (1,600 square feet) in Westwood for 13 months. The rent was $3,100 a month, and I gave the owner a $5,000 security deposit.
When I moved out, I left the home in better condition than when I moved in. I was given back a total of only $391.89. There were a bunch of miscellaneous charges for things like grass repair and light bulbs that added up to approximately $1,800, which, for the sake of argument, I won’t dispute now. The part that blew me away was that she charged me $2,800 to repaint her house. She used a company that charged her nearly $6,000 and she charged me a percentage.
How could that small of a house cost that much to repaint? What is my responsibility to pay by law as a renter? I feel like I was taken to the cleaners. What can I do?
Answer: In the beginning, your letter says that you “left the home in better condition than when I moved in.” Later, it says that you won’t dispute miscellaneous charges of $1,800 for things like “grass repair and light bulbs.”
That’s a fair amount of undisputed charges ($1,800), especially considering that you say you left the house in “better condition” than when you moved into it, and that you feel like you have been taken to the cleaners.
When I feel like that, I want back everything I’m entitled to and more. I would also be seeking the $600 penalty that a judge can award a renter for an owner’s “bad faith” retention of their security deposit. Something here doesn’t add up to me.
Nevertheless, you ask how it can cost $6,000 to paint a 1,600-square-foot house. I’m not a painter, but I know that it cost me $5,000 to paint the exterior of a 1,400-square-foot house. If you’re talking about the exterior, that sounds competitive. If you’re talking about the interior, it sounds a little high.
Unless you painted, or had painted or damaged the exterior of the house, you should not be responsible for any costs of repainting it. The interior is a different story. You can be charged a prorated portion of repainting charges if you painted or damaged the paint and the owner has to repair and/or repaint it.
The amount the owner can charge diminishes with time as the useful life of the paint job is reached. Unfortunately, there is no set definition of the average life of interior paint. It varies between two and five years.
If, in fact, you left the house in better condition than when you moved into it, which sounds at least questionable, you probably did get taken to the cleaners. But remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Your concept of better, or more beautiful, may not be the same as the owner’s. If he had to restore the premises to his version of “better,” you may be charged for that. If that’s the case, you may not clean up with a “great” small claims court case.
And that’s the answer to your final question, “What can I do?” You can sue the owner in small claims court for the return of any unjustified security deposit expenditures, and, as I mentioned earlier, for penalties of up to $600.
Smells From Below Making Resident Ill
Q: I live on the second floor of a Brentwood apartment. Our new neighbors downstairs use copious amounts of perfume and other scented products. The smells come into my apartment all of the time, even when the windows are shut.
I have written three notes to them explaining that it is making me sick--dizziness, headache, nausea, sore throat, wheezing and memory loss. I’m becoming very ill, but they don’t care and they keep on using it.
Do I have any legal rights to safe airspace on my balcony and in my windows? I have asked the manager to intervene but I doubt he will get involved. I understand that there is a state ordinance that forbids the release of any odor that causes discomfort to any member of the public. I believe that apartments are covered by the same OSHA regulations as public places. Are they?
A: I am unfamiliar with the OSHA regulations to which you refer; however, I can’t imagine how one could enforce a law that “forbids the release of any odor that causes discomfort to any member of the public.” For instance, I can’t stand the aroma of cooking spinach. In fact, it not only causes me discomfort, it makes me nauseous. In spite of my “condition,” I seriously doubt that I could prohibit my neighbors from cooking spinach even if such a law existed.
And even the most unpopular of all outside atmospheric contaminants, secondhand cigarette smoke, is not prohibited by law in apartments, although individual apartment owners can create no-smoking areas for buildings. As you know, smoking is prohibited in most public buildings and many private businesses, such as bars and restaurants. Perfume is not.
If you can’t persuade the neighbors to stop using copious amounts of perfume, or to limit its use, and if the owner will not insulate, or allow you to insulate, your unit sufficiently to meet your required comfort level, your best bet may be to move out of the apartment.
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Kevin Postema is the editor of Apartment Age magazine, a publication of AAGLA, an apartment owners’ service group. Mail your questions on any aspect of apartment living to AAGLA, 12012 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025.
