Moving Out of Apartments

As we are moving out of an apartment soon, I am reminded of the aggravation I went through years ago when a shady landlord tried to get us to pay $5000 to replace a carpet. To avoid being forced to pay such a bill or defend ourselves in court against it, my ex and I took the initiative and sued them for our deposit. The dimwits got caught in their own b.s. when the judge asked, "How often would you normally replace a carpet?"

"Oh, every 5-10 years or so," came the reply.

"And how old was this carpet?"

"Eight years."

While we did not get our deposit back (as was expected), we also did not have to fork over the obscene amount of money they were trying to charge us. After that incident, I came up with some suggestions for what to do when moving out of an apartment so you can avoid landlords pulling stunts like that.

1. Plan ahead and start fixing stuff a month before you move out. If you've dinged the walls or put holes in them, spackle and repaint. If your dog chewed up a door, try to repair it.

2. Plan WAY ahead and, any little thing that's not working right, have them fix it right away. Don't wait until you move out to tell them that an appliance was never working; they will blame you for breaking it. DOCUMENT your telling them these things, too, so that they can't claim you didn't.

3. Moving is way stressful, and you get worn out doing it. If you've got the money, and your deposit is pretty big, it might be worth hiring a maid service to come and scrub the place down professionally right after you're done. Retain the receipt for this so that the landlord doesn't later claim that you left a mess behind. The aforementioned sleazeball said we left the sinks and toilets filthy, when I scrubbed those suckers down MYSELF.