Location: Bangalore, India
Hi folks, me and my friends staying in a 4.5 BHK house in Bangalore are in a dispute with our ex-landlord. We just want to share our viewpoint and know whether we are in the wrong here.
We rented the house from July 2024, with the rental agreement of 65k extending till June 2025, with a caution deposit of 300k. By late May 2024, they sold the house to another person and we were informed of this around the last week of May. We were asked to extend the rental agreement for the upcoming term with the current owner itself as the transfer of ownership was anticipated to take couple of months. Our current owner, Mr. X, demanded an increase in rent by over 25% (which was against the current rental agreement which mentioned an increase of only 7% after its period). Because this rent was not acceptable to us, we negotiated it down to 75k. We did not formally sign any agreement, but still paid the updated rent for the month of June.
The new owner Mr Y, had informed us that he wanted us to continue being the tenants. So the new agreement would have to be made with Y from August. The issue began when Mr X informed us that he would be taking an amount of 75k for ‘painting charges’ among other valid charges from our security deposit before returning the amount to us.
“75,000 will be deducted towards the painting and cleaning charges which we got done while giving you the house last year”
This was what X initially conveyed to us, which we thought did not make any sense since this amount would/should have been collected from the previous tenants. When we brought this up, he changed his stance telling this was painting charges that he would collect since it is mentioned in the rental agreement anyways. Now, we tried to bring in logic and pointed out that he was transferring the house to the new owner and since he does not have to spend money for any painting, it was unfair to charge us this amount. There was some back and forth between us over the phone until I pulled out the rental agreement and read this out:
“Painting charges: The tenant shall pay one months existing rent as painting charges while vacating”. I pointed out that we had not vacated to which he responded
“Let me contact my lawyer and get back to you.”
After this, over the last few days, we had a lot of back and forth with X and we finally agreed on a 35k payment. He gave sort of an ultimatum, we agree on 35k or he takes the whole 75k. Since the security deposit was with him, and we were in urgent requirement of it to be transferred to the new owner, we agreed on this. We still feel this amount being charged to us is unfair.
Do you think we are in the wrong here? We aren’t interested in escalating this though. I just want some fresh minds looking at this dispute from different angles and maybe get some insights. AWTA here?