The joys of renting...

Background: December 15th we sent a letter to our rental management company that we were requesting a mold inspection/remediation for our rental house. Then came back that the homeowner is refusing to do the inspection, so they will let us out of our lease penalty free.

Fast forward to January 1. A new rental management company took over our property.

The new company is telling us that we can get out of our lease but they are going to keep our security deposit. She told me that in order to get our security deposit back we would have to get a doctors note stating they think my illnesses are due to mold exposure. WE would have to pay for the mold inspection and prove that is the problem. THEN we would have to take the mngt company to court to get our deposit back. She told me, ‘you know that would be more expensive than your $500 deposit so you really shouldn’t even think about doing that’. I really think she is just trying to intimidate us and that it was just a scare tactic.

• There is NOTHING in our lease about them keeping the deposit if we break the lease early.


• Old management company we could get out of our lease penalty free, keeping the security deposit sure sounds like a penalty to me.


• The security deposit is supposed to be used for damages to the property.

UGH! This is so frustrating. We would like to consult an attorney, but we don’t want to pay through the nose.

We put in our application for another rental house last night. I really hope they accept our application so we can move out of the mold death trap ASAP. By the way, I’m super sick now. Being in the house for three days in a row over New Years really took a toll on me.