Q: can my landlord keep my deposit and charge me additional money when we technically didn't even have a lease?
Me and fiancé signed a year lease in 2015, and put down $900 deposit. We ended up staying 2 1/2 years but never resigned a lease after year one despite asking him too. Everything was fine until about two months ago when he said he was having his realtor come back next week to put the house up for sale. We told him we thought we were on a verbal agreement of year to year still, he said after the year it automatically went month to month, however this clause is NOT filled out on our lease. We decided to give him 7 days notice (after researching a bit online, the information we found stated in NC on month2month we only needed 7 days) and we moved out. We cleaned house top to bottom before leaving. He sent us an "invoice" saying he is keeping $900 and we owe an additional $1,010. Charging us for things like $125 to repaint vanity (paint chipped on it from shower steam) $35 for light bulbs, $150 to clean windows and ceiling fans. We have pictures of all these things being perfectly clean.
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