Complaint Review: M Scott Properties

I lived in a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house managed by M Scott Properties for 5 years.  The deposit we put down for the rental was $1,750 ($1,150 for the normal deposit + $500 for 2 dogs).

When we moved out, there was 5 people moving furniture and cleaning the house spic & span for almost 3 weeks.  We had given ourselves plenty of time between houses to make sure a proper move out was done.  Everything in the house was scrubbed down and cleaned including baseboards, window sills, lighting fixtures and down to the knobs on the drawers in the kitchen.  On top of this, we paid $200+ for a professional steam cleaner and provided the receipt.

When we received our deposit back with a list of charges, our jaw had dropped.  Over $1,000 was taken from our deposit.

Like another person reported on here before, a gardening company supposedly came in and redid all the cleaning we did inside, including vacuuming.  Why would someone be paid to vacuum carpet that was steam cleaned 3 days prior?  We were charged for the sils and the light fixtures and other miscellaneous cleaning.  When we moved in, we had to deweed 2-3 foot sagebrish and weeds from the side of the house in the garden bed and put in a garden.  They charged us for removal of the garden in the garden bed.  How does that make sense?  We were charged $100 for painting even though we were told that after 5 years, the painting fee was on them.  On top of the $200+ we paid for a professional steam clean, they charged us another $350 for a steam cleaner to come in and remove 19 mystery "green" and "red" spots.

There were charges for keys and locks, which I'm pretty sure that is supposed to fall on their shoulders.

I emailed them politely asking what is going on with this and listed the charges that I found eroneous and of course, never received a response back.  I thought about taking them to small claims court to recover some of the charges but after weighing my time away from work and stress of doing so, I decided to just sit on it and instead write these reviews so that any potential new clients will know what they are dealing with.

I would never recommend renting a home under them again.  The practices were shady at best.  If you decide on one of their rentals, I urge you to take a picture of every square inch upon move-in and move-out to cover yourself.  It's places like this that gives landlords a bad name.