PA - Leasing office states old property manager mishandled security deposit
Hello. I am going to give you as much information on this situation to see if I have any recourse here. My husband and I have lived in this complex since September 1, 2023. We paid our lease and security deposit via cashiers check as per the policies of our leasing office. Our original lease was set to end on October 31, 2024. When we moved in I noticed our central air was not working and less than a month later, I noticed the ceiling in our spare room was discolored and moldy. They painted over it with mold resistant paint. This issue persisted for months. I became pregnant in December 2023 and our heat worked in our HVAC system so at least we had this. In January 2024 the bottom of our shower cracked, and they fixed it by throwing some caulk or something on it. The mold issue persisted, and they just came and painted it again. April of 2024 after a long period of warm days and no AC, I threatened legal action and they finally got us a new HVAC system that functioned. In June, after I complained about mold again, they cut a hole in our ceiling and put some tarp in place to “monitor the situation.” I wrote an email documenting the ongoing issues and demanded that this either be remedied or we would be moving out effective when the lease ended. With this, we were able to swap into a different apartment that was slightly bigger and had a slightly higher security deposit. It was documented in the email that our security deposit would be transferred to the new unit and we would have to pay a small difference. We then got another cashier’s check and gave it to the office. Our lease was effective now from Sept 2024 - Aug 2025. We opted to renew at the end of the least and extended it an additional month to end in Oct 2026. In Sept of 2024 we received our first initial security deposit back, which confused us. The reason it was returned stated “Property disaster.” No one gave us any direction on this so we deposited it and used it toward our next rent payment. We figured this was some sort of mistake on their end and for a very long time we didn’t even have a property manager while this was happening, the check was sent by corporate. In retrospect, we should not have deposited it. Absolutely no issues until yesterday, May 14th when I get a call from the leasing office stating that our deposit was mishandled by our previous property manager and was applied toward rent. I received a ledger balance today and it states $0 and shows the history of payments on the apartment. The leasing agent in the office told us we were supposed to bring the check back so it could be applied to our deposit. Our lease is set to end on Halloween.
My main issues here are that I have in writing that the initial deposit was transferred and that the discrepancy in our deposit are now being addressed nearly 2 years later. I realize we will have to more than likely pay the difference back, but I also feel like this error was not our fault and I am still confused with our ledger showing $0. I have attached images of the ledger as well. Name and confirmation numbers redacted.
TL;DR - Initial security deposit for rental was supposed to be applied to new unit and returned due to property disaster confusing tenants and nearly 2 years later the discrepancy has been discovered with 5 months left in lease.