Complaint Review: Scott Properties of the Midlands - Lexington South Carolina

If you are looking to rent a property my advice is simple, DO NOT RENT FROM SCOTT PROPERTIES. I don’t care how great the house is, the neighborhood, the school system, etc. IT IS NOT WORTH IT. Notice that the vast majority of reviews on here which are positive are from owners while the vast majority of negative reviews are from tenants. The reason is that Scott Properties will do everything he can to allow the owner to treat the tenant’s deposit as their personal petty cash fund to do whatever they want to their home after the tenant moves out, which includes completely ignoring the terms of the lease and the law of SC, and even lying in court. Scott Properties tried to take our entire deposit and more, the majority was for normal wear and tear and a complete violation of the SC Landlord and Tennant Act.

We were good tenants and this is not just sour grapes as evidence by the fact that we took them to court and won.  The tactics he used to try to get us to accept Scott Properties law rather than the law of SC included #1 acting like he was doing us a favor and that he could have charged us for other things that the owner wanted.  # 2 When we protested he tried intimidation, by being rude and angry with us when we tried to have a reasonable conversation. That tactic didn’t work too well with us, so they #3 sent notices threatening to report us to a credit agency if we didn’t pay the extra amount they were demanding above our deposit.  We didn’t waiver and held them accountable to the law.

Also, to avoid being taken to court, Scott Properties refused to give their physical address out to anyone, to avoid being served a notice to appear in court.  We were too smart for them and used the SC Secretary of State website (sos.sc.gog) under business filings to find the legal address of the business.  After the sheriff’s office delivered the notice to the address listed on the site (probably his home address), he coincidentally now actually has a public business address. The judge saw through the many lies that Scott Wallace and the owner told in court and awarded us the majority of our deposit back. Unfortunately, we had already signed a lease for another property that they managed before we found out that they were going to attempt to illegally retain our deposit.  Thus we had to go through the entire next year knowing we were living in a house managed by a company who would act illegally to take every cent possible from us.  However, we knew what to expect the second time around.

If you are in the unfortunate position of currently renting a house from this company, YOU HAVE TO TREAT EVERY INTERACTION YOU HAVE WITH SCOTT PROPERTIES KNOWING THAT YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO PROVE IT IN COURT: 1. We got everything in writing. They say that a man is only as good as his word and that is 100% true with Scott Wallace. His word is completely useless. Having something in writing including the actual lease doesn’t mean that he will actually do it, it just means you can prove it in court when he doesn’t abide by it and tries to lie about it. 2. We took pictures of everything. They tried to say that pre-existing issues were our responsibility but we had dated pictures 3. Most importantly we recorded the walkthrough on video.

The lease specifically stated that all issues will be identified during the walkthrough and the tenant will have the opportunity to address them. They actively try to do just the opposite by rushing the walkthrough, making you think everything is fine, and then blindsiding you with huge charges, so that you don’t have the opportunity make your own documentation.  The video we took shows the Scott Property inspector rushing around the house with us trying to keep up with him.  The whole inspection took less than 15 minutes and I asked him on the video “Are there any issues that we need to address?” and he said “No”.  After we walked out I tried to go back in to ask him one more question but within 30 seconds of us leaving he had locked all the doors. He then after rushing us out, meticulously went through everything for over an hour trying to come up with things to charge us for that were not pointed out during the walkthrough, which was a complete violation of our lease. However, everything he photographed was so minor that you couldn’t see anything in the photos on the inspection report. They knew we had our photos showing the pre-existing issues and the video of his inspector trying to violate our lease. Thus, 28 days after we moved out, they relented and agreed to return our full deposit, knowing that we would drag them back into court and win if they once again tried to take money that was legally ours. As long as they think that they can get away with it Scott Properties will abide by Scott Property law and the only way they will be held accountable to the actual law of SC is if they are either taken to court or know they will be when they ignore the law.