My fiance and I went and got an apartment together. It's our first place and we were really hesitant about a lot of places and didn't want to put down any application fees or deposits until we found the right ones. We both have good credit and after searching for almost a month we found this really nice place. To keep a long story short, the rental management place told us that we could have this nice 1 bedroom place for XYZ amount of dollars a month, etc and that we would just need to pay a fee to run a credit check and 100 dollars to hold it for a month as that is when we needed to move out.
We came back about 3 times or so to look at the apartment, show friends, etc. Each time it was fine and the applications were approved. A week later we get a call saying that the person living in our promised apartment backed out and decided to renew the lease instead, and there were no more available apartments. No big deal, so we just found another place and asked for our money back or for them to destroy the checks. The woman we dealt with said she would have to speak with her manager about getting the checks back, or destroyed, and the lady said we could have our 100.00 check back, but the 60 dollar fee for the credit check would not be. We wouldn't of even applied if we didn't think we were going to get the apartment in the first place. Therefore, I contacted the property management company after doing research, as the manager refused to give me the information, and left a message. In the mean time, my fiance' put stop payments on the checks. We know that the managers have not cashed the checks yet, they have yet to show up on the bank statements at all but we both feel we should not have to pay them anything as they are the ones who backed out of the deal. They couldn't honor their part, we shouldn't be penalized. Am I wrong in this? Was putting stop pays a bad idea? We talked to our banks and they said it sounded shady and illegal but I'm wondering of the legal ramifications if they try and get the money from us, or is it a civil matter and is it ok? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.|||Placing a stop on the $100 hold deposit is no problem.
The $60 check for the credit check is possibly a problem depending upon the contract you signed. If the contract said the $60 credit check fee was non-refundable, you owe the fee regardless whether you took the apartment or not. If there was no contract signed, or it was silent on 'non-refundable' and was to be applied to the first month's rent or the security deposit then you should have no issue.|||The $100 fee should definitely be refunded, and it's okay to stop payment on that, because that money didn't actually buy anything. You were paying them to hold the apartment for you, and they didn't.
But, the $60 went to the credit check agency, and the credit check agency performed their job as promised. It might be illegal to stop payment on that, because the apartment complex would be out that amount of money. But, for $60, the management company might just pay it and be done with it.
If you've already contacted the management and they haven't returned your call or given you the info you wanted, I would probably wait and see what happens.|||Yes, putting a stop on the checks was probably a bad idea.
Since THEY backed out of the deal, you should have taken them to small claims and sued for your application fee back if they didn't return it to you in a reasonable amount of time.
It costs what? $30 per check to stop a check nowadays?
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