Roommate legally screwed me out of rent, looking for advice on deposit

r/

Location: Washington

Hi. Here is some context, I have been living in my apartment for almost 3 years. About a year ago my last roommate left and was replaced by someone new. She paid out my other roommate half of the deposit. My roommate and I both talked and decided we would move out together in August, both paying rent. We called the landlord to tell him. This was mid June. Then I received a text from her saying she found a new place already and is moving out end of July, not August and that she already told the landlord. So while she legally is fine, she really screwed me. Since I am the last on the lease when I move out, the entire deposit gets released to me.

I am now trying to do what I can to keep just a bit of her security deposit to help offset the rent I have to pay. It was not possible for me to move out in July also because I am moving states away. She already moved out and paid rent for July but is refusing to pay me for utilities (which are in my name and not a part of the lease) stating that they are “based on usage” even though we always just split them equally. She also has offered to help me clean in August since she has not cleaned her room or bathroom. (she also rarely cleaned common spaces when we lived together even though we agreed to split it evenly.) Am i allowed to charge her a cleaning fee and not let her back in in August to clean? My thought is that since she did not leave her room or bathroom in “move-out condition” I can charge an hourly cleaning fee and disposal of abandoned items (food). She also never cleaned my air fryer after asking her multiple times and never used parchment paper which i asked her and it is unusable now. Can I charge for that when I give her back her portion of the deposit?

What are my legal grounds on this? I am out an extra $2000 because of this whole thing and was hoping to just offset that a little bit. Thank you.

Comments

  1. Forsaken_Land_3700 Avatar

    Just keep the deposit and call it a day. If she gets mad just say you had to pay for a cleaning service otherwise you’d owe money of whatever tf excuse you can make up.