Re: Mold, Security Deposit, and Last Months Rent

Re: Mold, Security Deposit, and Last Months Rent by Karen (MA) on July 10, 2012 @18:25

I used to own, and rent out property in Florida. Then I sold it a few years back. I once had a tenant who claimed there was mold in the rental property. He provided pictures of this mold. He had been staying there for 9 months, and was paying the rent. Then he had this mold claim, and stopped paying rent.

He wanted me to waive the rent for the last three months on the lease, allow him to stay in the property rent-free for these 3 remaining months, and give him his security deposit back. Otherwise, he said he was going to sue me. I filed an evictions with the local court for his failure to pay rent. After the first hearing for the evictions the judge made him pay the due rents into the court registry, and ordered me the landlord to clean mold that was present in the property. Once I provided to the court that I cleaned/removed the mold the judge agreed to the release whatever rent monies were paid into the court registry to me, and allowed me to deduct these cleanup costs from the security deposit. Even though I had to dish out the money to file the eviction, and spend the time to attend the hearing I got the rents due in the end, and the tenant didn't get away without paying the rent.

The tenant kept on with his threats to sue despite all of this. This stuff happens all of the time with people looking for ways to not pay rent, or looking to get out of a lease.

[ Reply ] [ Return to forum ]

Re: Mold, Security Deposit, and Last Months Rent - Landlord Forum thread 260412