Hi, I need some info if anyone had experience or so.
I’ve been living in the same apartment with my dog since almost 4 years (4 yrs at end of Nov 2022).
Of course, the apt sustained some damages, wear and tears, especially on the “fake” wooden floor.
Now, I am moving out to a new flat.
Does someone know if after that long period of time, still the owner can ask money/take deposit from me to fix inside the apt.
Or, after a certain period of time using the flat and paying the rent, all the damages are considered “normal wear” and therefore the fix is in charge to the apartment owner?
Thank you all!
6 comments
Completely depends on the owner on what they will claim. I’ve always had fair landlords, but I’ve read many horror stories on this subreddit of people getting nothing back. It also depends on the location for if it is legal for them to claim it, and what is stated in your contract. For example, your contract likely lists a cleaning fee of 20k-40k that will be taken out of your deposit – that is fairly standard.
> Or, after a certain period of time using the flat and paying the rent, all the damages are considered “normal wear” and therefore the fix is in charge to the apartment owner
Depends on what the damage is.
Check your house contract, mine had all the details listed about damages: things like damage on the wall – covered by owner / tenant; it also had a formula about calculating the fee paid by the tenant with the variable being the number of years lived.
I paid no deposit fee when I was moving in, and had some scratches on the floor and damaged wallpapers. When I was moving out after 3 years, the person who came to inspect the apartment completely ignored everything and just checked if the stove, shower, bath, sinks, balcony doors were all functioning. I even showed him the wall damage, but he said its fine and didn’t charge me anything.
If you live in Tokyo there are official guidelines to help you determine what is wear and tear and what is damage caused by your deliberate actions or by neglect.
If you have a pet I suspect you paid an extra pet deposit and that one is unlikely to be returned.
tldr while we wait for a real answer: yes, they can probably, but it shouldn’t be an exorbitant amount depending on the “damage”.
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Did you pay a cleaning fee upon moving in? Also, once everything is moved out and you can do a proper cleaning of everything (at least I recommend you do this — may take a couple hours, but read on), you might be surprised how much the place can actually be spruced up. I just moved to a new place after living in the same cheap apartment for 5 years. The wallpaper was peeling, all of the plastic hangers in the kitchen had broken, the fake wood floor was just damaged from having sun exposure, the paper doors had some sort of damage.. they’re accidents waiting to happen. Anyway, the “renovation” that took place before we moved in used all very temporary material, built to last up to 3 or so years.
We cleaned the place up a bit after moving everything out and it didn’t look half bad. I was fearing a huge cleaning fee (the last place before this had some mark on the carpet, which was an automatically 40,000 to pay). Turns out the total fee was 3000 yen this time. Seeing as we didn’t pay an initial cleaning fee, and the place was just falling apart from age, I think there must be some sort of expiration on it — they’re rarely just being “nice”.
I’ve damaged the flooring in my previous apartment with some accidental hair dye drippings, hot iron, chair and desk indents. I wasn’t charged for it.
The only thing I’ve always been charged for is dirty aircon (idk how to clean it lol), and pretty bad tear on shoebox coating!
You shouldn’t be charged for normal wear and tear though. Hope everything goes well!
If you paid extra deposit for the pet, realistically you can expect to lose that due to the damages. It would be hard to prove it wasn’t due to your dog. Expect the original deposit minus the cleaning fee back if you are lucky.