Landlord won't return tenant's $2,500 deposit
Robert: Hey, good morning. Thank you. Long story short, I had a lease on a property with my family. The lease expired, it was one year, we went from month to month. Made all our payments on time. The owners went through a divorce. The wife decided that we needed to recognize her as the primary owner although they are both listed in the tax deed.
She sent us a non-registered, unauthorized eviction notice, hassled us to the point that we left and moved out of the property.
Attorney Tom Olsen: All right.
Robert: But she’s holding the deposit. It’s been 45 days and I’m wondering. She’s now claiming that tools and things are missing but we did no initial walkthrough. We have documentation, photographs that we left the property pristine--
Attorney Tom Olsen: Okay. Robert, how much is your security deposit?
Robert: 2500.
Attorney Tom Olsen: Okay. Well, that’s a substantial amount of money. So Robert, if you properly terminated your lease and on a month-to-month basis, that simply requires that you give your landlord a 15 day notice of terminating your lease, then she or he or both of them were obligated to give you notice, by certified mail, of their intention to hold on to some or all of your security deposit.
Failure to have properly giving you that notice means they have waived their right to make a claim on your security deposit. Did you get a certified letter from them?
Robert: I did not.
Attorney Tom Olsen: Okay. So Robert, off the top of my head, it sounds like you’re right and they’re wrong. Robert, the good news is, is that this is the kind of case that if you have to pursue it in court, your lawyer is going to be entitled to attorney’s fees. And that means you’re going to be able to attract an attorney that’s going to be willing to pursue this case for you and in fact, Rob Solomon is the attorney in my office that does landlord-tenant work and Rob is at my office right now, Robert. So I would invite you to hang up with me, call Rob Solomon, the attorney at my office right now and he can give some more detailed information and you can talk to him about maybe assisting you with this case. Robert, you can reach Rob Solomon, the attorney at my office right now at 407-423-5561. Again, that’s the law offices of Olsen Law Partners, LLP in Orlando at 407-423-5561.