True. I didn’t get a dime back from my security deposit the last time I rented. There was a roof leak that I had reported to the rental company for months. Nothing was done. And when I moved out, the security deposit was withheld in full to… pay for fixing the roof leak. Which I obviously hadn’t caused.
I didn’t pursue any legal remedy over it because, as the long-time readers know, I was experiencing a terrible personal situation and couldn’t find it in me to face additional unpleasantness.
In my extensive renting experience, you are much more likely to get your security deposit back when you rent from an individual and not a company. N, for instance, had to break his rental agreement when he lost his job and was almost deported. He was renting from a regular guy who understood completely, was very supportive, and returned the deposit which he didn’t even have to do.
Clarissa's Blog 
As someone who both sides of my family are involved in rentals I’d like to chime in here. A lot of people don’t really differentiate between Landlords, Property Management Groups, and Investment groups like Blackrock. So when bad things happen they chalk it up to landlords are bad and wash their hands of it. So I’d like to make a few points here.
Before we had to turn our rental units over to a property management firm we ran them ourselves. This meant whenever there was an issue the renter would contact well generally me by the end and I would then call a plumber, repair guy, general contractor, etc. as it was needed. We did charge a security deposit, generally $400 and to be fair most of our renters got them back when they left. Those who didn’t generally either owed multiple months of missed rent or absolutely trashed the duplex on their way out the door. Generally costing anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 in repairs. We eventually had to hire a property management company to run things because we were getting run absolutely ragged by a series of bad renters during the busy season for our primary jobs. Money-wise before we turned it over, I think we were actually going into the red by the end of that year. To give you some idea most of the rentals were duplexes. 3 Bedroom, 2 bath, rented out at $600 to $750 at the highest. $400 damage deposit. No renters insurance required, you could cancel at any point, just let us know a couple of days early so we could arrange for the utilities to be swapped back. We even had the lawn care taken care of. Granted the fridge and oven weren’t exactly state of the art, but I mean I always considered it a fair bargain. At the time property taxes were about $800 a side, and insurance was roughly the same, or a bit lower. A good, average, or a decent tenate, those made a bit of money to supplement my grandparents retirement. A bad tenate could wipe out multiple duplexes worth of rent in repairs needed after they missed multiple months and trashed the place on the way out.
So I say all this to provide a baseline. At some point in 2016 to 2018 , we finally had enough, a year with multiple bad tenates put us in the red and we were getting problems at all hours during our busy season for our primary job, tax preparation. We ended up hiring a management company to take over. Now the thing about a management company is they have to do a balancing act between local landlords, and the real-estate investment firms. It wasn’t too bad at the time. They raised the rent from $600-$750 to about $750-$900 across the board over the next few years. Which was reasonable as that was roughly were rental prices were for the area. We had kept them low because previously most of our renters generally stayed for years and in one case 20+ years. Things went bad however in 2020-2022 when the real-estate investment companies started buying up property everywhere and spiking the prices and the rent to match NYC and Cali prices and rent. In 2019 a duplex with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths on each side cost $180,000 to $220,000 in my area and rented out for about $900 to $1,100 a month per side. Today in May 2024 that same duplex costs $350,000 to $450,000 and rents out from $1,200 to $1,500 per side.
For further prospective property taxes more or less doubled in the same time, along with the insurance, and all of the repairs too. Its bad news all around. And the thing is I don’t blame the property management companies if they didn’t do that balancing act, they would go out of business when people who own rental property ask them why they are keeping the rents low when Zillow shows their property should be renting for so much more. (Again Zillow bases the rates off of what the majority is renting for, said majority is owned by groups like Blackrock.)
So if people want rents to come down, they need to direct their anger to 3 groups. Real-Estate investment firms like Blackrock, the Insurance companies who have been spiking the rates for the last few years, and the Governemnt, local, state, and especally Fed. As they keep raising property taxes.
Honestly there is no good solution for this. The insurance companies are of mix of have to raise rates due to prices of repairs going up, and also to keep up with inflation. The Investment firms are doing quite literally their job, which is to buy up houses, duplexes, etc and rent them for as much as they can to make money for their investors. The government however on every level keep raising taxes and creating new taxes because they have a spending problem. As long as they can’t keep to a budget they will keep costing us more and more.
Apologies for the rant, this is simply one of those things that get overlooked that has the potential of go badly for everyone if “fixed” the wrong way. – W
LikeLike
In our very first rental, we had a landlord. Not a management, not Blackrock. He had a lot of rentals though. Entire freaking house was painted in flat paint, which cannot be cleaned and is only appropriate for ceilings. He tried to keep our security deposit after I spent a week touching up the paint because every time somebody *touched* the walls, it left a permanent mark, so there was a ring all the way around the house at the level of my kids’ hands. I had abided by the exact terms of the lease, contacted them for the correct type and shade of paint, used it, and… they complained “the paint was uneven”. Fortunately, the state renter protection laws were on my side (a technicality he failed to give me a receipt within the appointed timeframe) and I was able to get the deposit back, after threatening to take him to court.
They’re not virtuous just because they’re not big corporations.
Our current rental is also 100% flat paint, so I’m sure we’ll have to do it all over again when we move out of this one. Bloody scam, that is.
LikeLike
ORS 90.300, which covers 4 pages of the Oregon statute books, and has been amended 12 times to further protect tenants, since its original enactment in 1973, penalizes landlords with double the amount of the deposit as damages if they don’t return the deposit in full within a month of tenancy termination and account in writing for each item withheld from the tenant’s deposit. Oregon, like most “blue” states had adopted the “Model” landlord tenant act, drafted by Legal Aid’s National Housing Law center to “fix” such “exploitation”, and the adoption of which has driven up rents tremendously in states where landlords must pass through the increased costs of compliance with its over 100 pages of landlord “duties”.
After more than 50 years of practicing landlord/tenant law, including my initial stint as a Legal Aid lawyer, the cost of requiring landlords to comply with its Soviet-like specificity (only one section out of hundreds imposes any duties on tenants) is the great unaddressed cause of our “rental housing crisis”. There are very few “mom & pop” landlords left in Oregon. A landlord, who isn’t a professional property manager, can almost never remain in compliance with all of the mandates “protecting” tenants from “exploitation”. I made a living spending most of my practice representing property managers and landlords, who had to seek counsel as to what the law requires. The Act’s “habitability” mandates, which can never be waived by mutual agreement in any circumstance, force people out of “slum” housing, and onto the sidewalks and parks. Even though folks have chosen to live in “slums” forever (i.e., NYC’s lower east side in my grandparent’s day there), the law presumes tenants will inevitably be “exploited” by capitalist pig landlords, and are not smart enough to choose “bad” housing over none at all. Since a disportionate number of the homeless are POC, one might even think it is racist to not let these folks choose “bad” housing over none at all.
LikeLike
Our last rental had an almost identical tenant protection code– landlord must follow xyz procedure, or tenant can take him to court and collect double the security deposit. I successfully cited this code in a politely worded but threatening registered letter, to retrieve my deposit. After something like eight weeks of negotiations, and after I’d spent a week busting my arse to get the place squeaky clean. Literally was cleaning up stuff left in crevices by previous tenants, I was that thorough. Those “exploitative” tenant laws were a lifesaver.
This was not me exploiting the law, and it was clear that the landlord’s usual MO is to rent to low-income people who do not understand their legal rights, and arbitrarily confiscate their security deposits, for house issues caused by the landlord’s cheapskate choices, which tenants don’t have any control over. Flat paint in kitchens, no backsplashes, that sort of thing.
“Whoops, you messed up the paint and we had to repaint the whole house! No deposit return for you!”
A lot probably depends on your income, and how much you’re paying for a rental. Down here at the bottom of the range, skeezy landlords are a fact of life, they have enough tenants do damage and skip out on rent that they are perfectly willing to try to make up the difference by keeping deposits from rule-following renters. It is so bad that I’ve had people advise me to just “look at the deposit as a tip”– meaning, you’re not getting it back, so just don’t worry about deep-cleaning the house when you move out or anything. It’s a waste of time, money, and effort.
LikeLiked by 1 person
… I think this represents an actual cultural decline in the last 20 years. When I was college aged, it was still a very tight social compact: we would not have *dreamt* of vacating a rental without cleaning every inch of it, rental carpet steamer, industrial grout bleach, careful patching of any nail-holes from hanging pictures, the works. And we were doing that because *of course* we would get our deposit back. That was a very safe assumption. When landlords start defaulting to just keep the deposit unless/until the tenant threatens legal action (you win on average here, because most tenants won’t), then the math changes, and all that work isn’t worth it. And the thing is, if you’re the one decent landlord in ten who doesn’t try to game the system that way, you’re still affected, because there’s no way for a tenant to know that until they move out. You lose because tenants don’t clean up anymore.
LikeLiked by 1 person