Chuck Romano Chuck Romano, CENTURY 21 Country North, Inc. 7210 E STATE ST Phone: 815-543-8280. Fax: 815-544-1122 Realtor/Landlord not returning deposit after renting property and leaving in cleaner condition upon moving out than when moved in. Rockford, Illinois

Well, our problem is one many people experience. We moved and our landlord did not return our deposit. We moved to North Carolina, left the house in a cleaner condition than what it was when we first moved in. We rented for one year,gave proper notice and everything.  I was recovering from surgery, had a 13 inch incision, and still took the time to make sure that everything was perfect.  This included scrubbing the refrigerator which was dirty when we moved in. I also used a steam cleaner to clean all of the bare floor surfaces. My  sister-in-law even swept up the basement even though it was just a cement floor basement. The point is that we left the house cleaner than when we moved in.

The only thing that the landlord had to do it to mow that back yard and even that would not have been justified to keep our deposit because when we moved it the back yard was full of debri and very overgrown. We cleaned up the backyard, burned for a month of weekends, fallen limbs and removed debri. It took us a month to get it cleaned up and nothing was taken off the rent and no compensation made. Him having to mow would not have been justification for withholding the deposit.

We should have known that we were not dealing with someone who would be honest since he required us to pay in cash as well as the others in the area he rented to and made no secret about why he did that.

I have been a Realtor in the past and expected some level of integrity from this man. If I was still in town I would just do a small claims court case as I know we would win. We had many people there that saw the great condition that we left the place. Since we have moved out of state this would not be cost effective to go back for that. I hope to be able to prevent anyone else from getting ripped off by this person.

We are out $850.00. I hope this keeps others from going through the same thing. I still have a tiny bit of hope that this person/realtor would be honest and return our money as he rightly should. Although, I do suspect that he doesn't have enough money to return our money.