Holiday West Village

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My girlfriend and I signed a one year lease with this company (Holiday West, owned by Sun Homes) and paid cash up front for the full year. When we signed the lease there was a special offer of 1 month free rent, however, the lease dates did not jive with what we paid plus the free month. I brought this to the attention of the Manager, who then brought it to the attention of his Manager. The response we received was that we did not qualify for the free month. This was never brought to our attention, but they were going to go ahead and give us the one month free rent since we already paid for the full year. Great....now we've paid too much and should get a refund of one month right? Well...they tried to keep that one month rent as additional security deposit which would have been illegal since you can only collect a maximum of 1.5x your rent as a security deposit. We finally obtained the additional funds by threatening to terminate the lease immediately.

After being in the trailer for about 8 months we came across an opportunity to rent a home; we let the office know that we would be terminating the lease on or before Dec 31st. Management notified me a few days later stating that we would be required to pay 1 month rent, pay the "free" month back, and forfeit our security deposit. After doing some internet research and arming myself for another fight with this company, I called the office back and told them no...no I am not required to do any of that and that the only thing I was required to do was to pay rent until they found another renter (which I knew could very well be 2 months rent) and to pay for any damages. Several phones calls later the rude "manager", I use the term loosely I'm pretty sure she doesn't have much experience at managing properties, told me I needed to call the corporate office and gave me the number. How's that for customer service? Not "I understand your issue I'll have someone from corporate contact you in regards to this issue" but a "here I'm tired of dealing with you, call corporate." I called corporate and they agreed with me about both things: the rude manager and what I am legally obligated to do. They also explained that they were just offering the previous mentioned terms as an option. Now I don't fault the company for offering an option for an easy out but the option leaned completely in their favor. Had the "manager" explained the option in the appropriate terms I would have been far less upset.

Having settled that, my girlfriend and I finished packing and cleaning. I called and setup an appointment for a final walk through and key turn in. The day before the appointment I get a call from the manager stating that she couldn't remember when the appointment was. I had to remind her. Again, this is customer service... So inspection rolls around and she walks in 10 minutes late, glances around, not really looking at things just seeing if there's any major damage. No inspection checklist like when we accepted the trailer. There should have been something for me to sign, however, when I asked she stated that there was not. She had a sheet she was going by and the only issues were a few stains on the living room carpet and that we had painted a few rooms. We informed her that when we moved in the manager at that time, along with another employee at the office, had said we could make whatever modifications we wanted as long as we didn't punch big holes in the wall. She stated that we would probably have to pay to have the walls repainted.

Now, according to http://www.michiganlegalaid.org/library_client/housing/a_guide_to_security_deposits/html_view - you can't be charged for repainting as long as you didn't damage the walls. Of course that is what they are claiming - that we damaged the walls by painting them. So, this is the latest battle I'm fighting with them and this will probably end up in small claims court.