The Nice Owner

Once upon a time, a condo unit's lease was just about to end. In preparation for the move-out, the (nice) owner conducted a pre-inspection of the unit.

This was the first time the owner had seen the unit after the tenant had moved in three years prior. Here's what she found:

1. The tenant was different from the one who signed the contract. Apparently, this was the reason why the mobile number of the tenant kept changing.

2. The (new) tenant had a large dog living in the unit. The lease contract explicitly prohibited pets.

3. The tenant had three persons living in the unit. The contract limited the number of tenants to two.

4. The unit was a mess, with the belongings of three people all over the place. One of the occupants was even still sleeping on the couch (with liquor on the table) during the pre-inspection at 10:30 am. There was a pail of water in the middle of the room catching water from a leaking A/C. These prohibited the owner from conducting the inspection.

Despite all these, the owner still treated the tenant nicely and said that she would just inspect the unit once they had moved out.

When the tenant finally moved out, damages to the unit were more evident. The furniture was gnawed on. The floor had leak marks from the A/C. The kitchen cupboards were broken.

The nice owner informed the tenant that she would be conducting repairs of all the damages and would be deducting the expenses from the (original) tenant's security deposit. This act went against the lease contract, which states that a breach would result in forfeiture of the total amount of the security deposit.

The repairs took two months to complete. When everything was finally completed, the tenant berated the owner for returning merely 20% of the security deposit.

Lessons from this story will be posted tomorrow.