Back in May we notified the property management group for our…

Welcome! My goal is to do my very best to understand your situation and to provide a full and complete answer for you.

Good evening. The landlord is taking advantage of you. First, with regard to your termination. Once the tenant has notified the landlord the tenant is terminating, the landlord has a duty to
mitigate the damages...meaning he must use reasonable efforts to re-let the
property. Once the property is re-let, or if the landlord does not
use reasonable efforts to re-let, the tenant is off the hook for further
obligation. Given the positive lease
market, it is unlikely a judge is going to rule a landlord has
satisfied the burden of using reasonable efforts to mitigate if the property is
not re-let within at least 2 months....so it's unlikely that a tenant is going
to have liability in excess of two months.

Second, only damages you have caused can be deducted from the deposit and then only if they notify you timely. They have not done the latter, so thus cannot take anything from your deposit. But, even if they have, you are liable for the normal wear and tear of things. And, even if you did damage something, the "useful life" concept further
limits a tenant's liability. This applies to everything, but I'll use carpet as an example because you have a carpet issue. Even if a
tenant would have caused damage to the carpet other than normal wear and tear
such that the damage caused would require the carpet to be replaced, the tenant
would still only obligated to pay for replacement cost of similar grade carpet
times the remaining useful life of the carpet. Typically, apartment grade
carpet has a useful life of 5 years. So, if the carpet is 5 years old when a
tenant leaves, there is no remaining useful life and the tenant has no
obligation for the replacement carpet because any damage caused did nothing to
shorten the useful life of the carpet.

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not legal advice. Rather it is simply general information. All states have intricacies in their laws
and any information given is simply information only and specifically is not
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