Property mgmt charging for painting and damages outside of security deposit
Looking for some advice because I have never experienced this before. We have been renting a townhouse in Virginia for the past 4 years. When we moved in it wasn’t in the best condition, a little dusty, dirty shoe prints on the floor, dead bugs in the corner, and the walls were definitely not recently painted as there were scratches, chips, and unfilled nail holes. Our lease is set to end at the end of June but we moved out of state at the beginning of May and left our keys in a lock box they gave us to put on the door. A couple days ago we got a charge request in our payment portal asking for $352 for painting, replacement of 2 blinds, and cleaning services. We asked for an itemized list of these charges and why this is not just coming out of our security deposit and they responded saying that unfortunately they cannot use the security deposit to pay this and they will determine the deposit disposition after they review the move out inspection when it is completed. This is not making sense to me. How can they charge us for this when they haven’t even completed a move out inspection and shouldn’t this just come out of our security deposit? Also is it normal to be paying for their painting? We did have some holes in the wall from some tv mounts that ended up being more than we expected but we filled them and sanded so I get that it needs painting but it probably should be painted anyway since we were there for 4 years. We’re trying to be very careful with how we handle this because we’re buying a house and can’t have a hit to our credit if they report this as an unpaid invoice but we don’t want to pay it until we know they aren’t being fishy. Has anyone else experienced this?