Q: Texas landlord will not give back rental deposit/pet deposits after 60 days, but we never received a lease renewal
My landlord will not give us back our rental and pet deposits even though it has been over 60 days since we moved out of our rental house. However, I'm not sure what legal ground we have considering even after asking multiple times, our landlord did not provide us with a renewed lease for the past year, so we just have continued to pay him monthly from July 2023-August 2024, and we aren't sure what to do or how to get our deposit back. We have been in communication with the landlord, and he keeps responding with more things he has had to pay for to fix up the house even though he verbally said everything looked alright in our moveout walkthrough on August 13 and that he would give us our deposits soon. Now he is saying that he has had to pay for work and that he will decide if he is giving us our deposit. I know he was supposed to provide us in writing with these supposed damages within 30 days of vacating though, and he received our forwarding address. What do we do?
A: You can sue the landlord in small claims court under Section 92.109 for retaining your security deposit in bad faith. Potential damages include $100 plus 3X the portion of the deposit wrongfully withheld plus attorney fees (however, you do not need an attorney in small claims court).
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