My Landlord Kept My Deposit, Then the Inspector Knocked

When I moved out of the apartment I had kept for three years, I left it cleaner than I found it. I spent a whole weekend on it. My landlord did a five-minute walkthrough, then sent me a letter claiming a long list of damage: stains, a cracked counter, a broken blind, and kept my entire deposit, which was not small.

None of it was true. I had done what everyone tells you to do and forget: I had taken date-stamped photos of every room the day I moved in and the day I moved out. The counter he called cracked was, in my photos, already chipped in exactly that spot on the day I arrived, three years earlier. The blind he called broken was, in his own move-in checklist that he had signed, already noted as broken.

I emailed him the photos and the checklist politely and asked for the deposit back. He replied that I could "take him to court and see how that goes," and that he had been doing this a long time.