Good beginning…disappointing ending
Posted 4 years ago
**This review is for: 6878 Navajo Rd., Unit 56 San Diego CA 92119** My partner and I started out very happily at the apartment we rented from Sean, but the moving out was a rather disappointing affair. When we moved in the apartment wasn't very clean and unfortunately we made the grievous mistake of not photographically documenting all the dusty and dirty parts of the apartment. We figured we had rented from a decent guy (and his brother, who we never met) so the apartment being a bit dirty didn't seem like a huge issue and we didn't want to come across as nitpicky jerks. About 3/4 of the way through our year there, I noticed our central heater didn't work so I sent Sean an email asking if he knew how to fix it or if we could call someone to have it fixed. Never heard back from him until I sent a 2nd email about a month or 2 later. Sean said he didn't see my original email but he promptly made arrangements to have it fixed, so all seemed well. Then when it came time to renew our lease, he raised our rent almost 10%! Did he take into consideration that we paid rent early every month, kept the apartment very clean, were quiet and got on well with all our neighbors, and didn't put a single hole in any wall? It seemed not… so we decided to move and gave our 30days notice. During those 30 days, he showed the apartment a few times for prospective tenants and I made sure that the place was clean and organized for his guests which he thanked me for doing. The showings were a bit of an inconvenience for my partner, Steve, though since he gets off work earlier than I do and had to stay away from the apartment for a couple hours each time it was showed. Despite the inconvenience, we didn't complain. The final straw was today, when we finally received our deposit back (almost 3 weeks after moving out). On the day we moved out, Steve and I did a fairly thorough cleaning for the apartment. Albeit, we failed to clean the inside of the stove (which in truth was a kind of dirty), wipe the trimming on the walls and remove some of the finger print smudges on the stainless steel refrigerator… EVERYTHING ELSE was clean and the whole apartment was much cleaner when we moved OUT than when we moved IN. So when I opened the thick packet Sean mailed me that contained our returned deposit, minus $500, I was shocked and very upset. Supposedly he passed $370 for a "deep cleaning" of the apartment and $129 for bubbling in the stove's paint… How is the stove's paint bubbling our fault? If the pain bubbled because it couldn't withstand the heat of the burner is that the tenant's fault or the stove manufacturer's??) All in all, we loved living there but our experience with Sean was deeply disappointing and has taught is that, no matter now nice your landlord may SEEM, you should ALWAYS photographically document EVERYTHING. We hope our mistake will be a cautionary tale for any of his future tenants.
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