In college towns like Moscow, students move in, graduate and move on. Eventually, everybody has to move out and everybody is supposed to clean up before they do.
Abi Stomberg | Argonaut
As students prepare to depart for the summer from school-year rental properties like the Campus Commons Apartment Complex, the largely transient population in Moscow, and the rental companies from which they rent, prepare for the checkout process that is sure to include some lost security deposits.
Charles Gee, the husband of University of Idaho Spanish professor Lori Celaya, is not a student and in the estimation of the owner of more than 200 rentals, he thought the house his family vacated was clean.
That was until he received a two-page, $893 deduction from his $1,500 security deposit for cleaning expenses.
“This is the bill they gave me, you can see what a joke it was,” Gee said.
The bill was a list of 36 line items including $80 for pruning, $10 to clean a ceiling fan and $20 per room for window cleaning. The master bedroom itself cost $90 to clean.
Gee, his wife and two boys arrived in town in July 2011 after Celaya was hired at UI. They moved straight into — sight unseen — a modest Moscow home owned by a Lance Hansen of Moscow and managed by Rental Connections. An experienced landlord, Gee took photos of the rental’s general condition and any damages upon arrival.
The lease was short term, so when Hansen decided to put the house back on the market a year later, Gee went to work preparing the home for sale, taking more photos after cleaning.
Gee said he then asked four times in three weeks for a walk through of the property to ensure it was “ready-for-sale.” Rental Connections did oblige three weeks later, and aside from minor details, okayed Gee’s work.
So when a nearly $900 bill for cleaning done by Hansen came Oct. 18, Gee was outraged, and promptly took Eric Smith, the Rental Connections employee who gave him the walkthrough, Hansen and Rental Connections realtor and part-owner Karyl Davenport to small claims court.
“It was certainly appropriate for them to do that,” she said of Gee’s suit, but said it was not an attempt to cheat Gee and Celaya out of their deposit.
“The condition of the home needed to be ready-for-sale,” she said. “There was a difference of opinion on what that looked like.”
Davenport said there was nothing malicious about the charges — they were the result of differing standards.
Three months later though when Gee refused to settle in the mandatory mediation session for small claims cases, the case went before Judge John Judge. Judge sided with Gee, awarding him $878.30.
Justice delayed is justice denied
End of story? Not for Gee.
“It’s all been settled, he wants to start a fight apparently,” Davenport said.
His case is settled, but Gee worries about the deposits of students in a college town.
“Most kids are not confrontational. They just want to get it over with and get on,” Gee said. “I saw the injustice … I said no, I want all of it back or none of it back.”
Students, Gee said, aren’t able to put up the fight he did.
“Let’s say you put a thousand dollars on a deposit down and you’re getting out of school at the end of May and you’re from California. You going to come back here in November… to go to court to get back your thousand dollars?” Gee asked. “No, you’re going to write it off. And (rental agencies) know that.”
The problem is the legal system just doesn’t work on a student’s time frame.
“Small claims is a pretty speedy process by legal standards,” Patrick Costello, visiting professor of law at UI, said. “You get a hearing date within a couple of months, which is pretty fast by legal standards. I don’t know how you can make it much faster than that.”
With the legal reality, Gee advocates the university and Dean of Students get involved to protect the rights of student tenants.
“If you use the law to your advantage when you know that the student is not going to come back and fight you in court. What do you call that –using loop holes of the law? Predatory,” Gee said.
Davenport said Rental Connections regrets the communication wasn’t as good as it could have been, attributing the walk-through delay to a transition between property managers. However, it was a case of two different standards, not predatory practices.
“It certainly wasn’t the intent, we’re sorry he still feels upset about this,” Davenport said. “We certainly understand. We’ll do things differently next time. We’ve moved on and learned from that — we’re hoping Lori and Charlie do, too.”
The other side
For Michael Osterholz, owner of University City Rentals — the newest of the major Moscow rental agencies — the occasional slumlord rental agency happens. It’s the nature of the business.
Just not here in Moscow. Osterholz said the majority of realtors work really hard to provide the best property possible. The problem is not with practices, but perception.
“We could do everything right and still be hated for the same reason people hate lawyers and banks,” he said. “We force them to be responsible.”
Osterholz worked in real estate even before coming to Moscow in the mid-2000s, and he said it’s just the nature of the business everywhere.
“In our business, people are always going to hate us,” he said.
The problem is the expectations of tenants don’t always meet that of the landlord, and the rental agency has to act as a communication conduit between the two. So, a maintenance or upkeep concern may not be as easy a fix as tenants think.
“A lot of people think what we manage we own — it may not be our decision,” he said.
Osterholz said financial constraints also limit the amount of renovations a rental agency can undergo. It’s a business, but it doesn’t need to be predatory to remain solvent.
“It’s an investment, we’re not looking to take advantage of people,” he said.
Whether tenants are pleased with University City’s management Osterholz said is dependent on a host of factors, especially the age and condition of some rentals.
“It’s a case by case basis,” he said, but said University City presently has a 40-50 percent renewal rate.
Most of the issues between tenant and landlord for Osterholz are based around communication, so University City asks lease signees to give themselves 30 minutes to read their lease before signing.
“It’s so everything is spelled out,” he said. “Our lease is not set up to be complicated… we set it up to cover everything.”
Many do read the whole thing, Osterholz said, but there will inevitably be problems come check-out time.
“Whether it’s warranted or unwarranted… you can’t fix that problem,” he said.
The law
The Idaho Attorney General’s Landlord and Tenant Guidelines state that Idaho does not regulate the amounts landlords can charge for rent, deposits or fees.
“In general, we start from the presumption that the party’s contract is going to be enforced. People are free to make whatever contractual arrangements they want,” Costello, a board-certified attorney in Idaho, said.
An “unconscionability” exception for completely unfair requests can be granted, but they are rare.
“You shouldn’t count on that,” Costello said. “The best thing is if you think there is something unfair in the lease is not to enter into it.”
Outright improper lease agreement provisions according the Attorney General’s office are any that purport to require the security deposit to pay for damages not caused by the tenant or tenant’s guests, or violate tenants’ right to privacy unless provided with proper notice.
Restrictive provisions like ones that require tenants to pay for cleaning or replacing items subject to “normal wear and tear” are not illegal, but the guidelines recommend steering clear of such provisions.
“Since the landlord prepares the lease, they generally would be inclined to draft it in a way that’s favorable to them,” Costello said.
So what are the base-level expectations for any rental?
“When you take ownership you should expect sanitary, livable conditions,” Davenport said.
There must be functioning heat, hot water and a safe structure — no exposed wires, insects, etc. — no matter if rent is paid or not.
Tenants can force landlords to comply by submitting a written request at the agency’s office or by mail, which once received must be acted on within three days.
When the tenant moves out, the rental company has 21 days to return their deposit or a partial amount with an itemized list of deductions. Otherwise, the tenant can sue for three times the amount owed.
“It depends on what you can convince a judge is ‘normal wear and tear’ versus other damage to the property,” Costello said.
The Attorney General’s office offer some guiding rules for what constitutes “normal wear and tear.” Faded curtains or carpets is normal wear and tear versus curtains and carpet with cigarette burns, water stained linoleum versus broken or torn, blot spots on mirrors versus mirrors covered in makeup and hairspray, and so on.
This does not negate fees articulated in the lease — like carpet cleaning for Rental Connections — that help restore the rental to its condition at the beginning of the tenancy. The problem is it’s a subjective distinction.
“It needs to be in the same condition as when you arrived,” Davenport said. “Every rental company is going to be different, every single person has a different definition of clean.”
Charging people is not the aim, and so Rental Connections and others offer a move-in/move-out checklist to ensure people are checking their rentals and try to fix any problems they find as quickly as possible.
“It’s in the best interest of the landlord, or you’re going to lose tenants,” she said.
The Moscow reality
In a town predicated on renting, Osterholz estimated the vacancy rate in Moscow to be between five and10 percent, making it not really either a tenants’ or a landlords’ market. The two parties are not competing for control, it’s just business he said.
Costello said the transient nature of the student population essentially puts students at a disadvantage.
“They don’t have a lot of bargaining power as students because they come and go and landlords are here,” Costello said. “I don’t think it’s particularly tighter than normal, but in general I think that it’s a landlord’s market.”
For Gee, UI and its students need to come to a “gentleman’s agreement” with rental agencies.
“We need to come to an agreement to not only protect (rental agencies) against some bad kids who do damages and these unjustifiable deductions,” Gee said.
What both Gee and rental agencies agree on is being a competent, engaged tenant. Communicate with your landlord, read your lease thoroughly, take pictures before you move in and after you move out and make sure you get a walkthrough when you leave and you’ll get to keep your cash.
Dylan Brown can be reached at [email protected]