Had found a rental on Zillow. After meeting to look at home I let Nola know I wanted to apply/rent home. Then she said the rent was $50/month more than advertised and that she did not know how the web sites work or price was advertised even though she has been a realtor for many years. Despite this, the location/amenities were what Myself & family needed while in Visalia and there was not a large selection of decent rentals at the time. She did fix some problems that arose during the rental.
However, after giving a 45-day notice via email/phone to vacate, I requested a preinspection move out as allowed per Ca tenant rights. Despite this request I was told the inspection would be done the day I was moving out- giving me no time to correct anything she didn't agree with. Since we did not want the headache of worrying if we would be up to standards we asked if we could pay a flat cleaning fee upon move out. We agreed to pay $300 cleaning and she said the home was fine and we would get the rest of the approximate $1200 deposit in the mail since we were moving out of state. Since I never had a trust problem in my 20 years of owning, renting, having roommates I trusted her to have integrity. After almost 3-weeks when we moved out I finally got remaining deposit, BUT it was less another $400 for carpet cleaning which was not the agreement. I tried to contact the carpet company listed on the invoice, but they hung up every time I asked the business name. So, she is completely untrustworthy for raising the rent from advertised price, not doing a preinspection move out, and keeping additional deposit money for a carpet I received with some red stains; ALSO, she reduced the rent $50 for the next white family (we are multi race) that move in (Zillow keeps rental history).
This was not like us to not fight back for the deposit, but my husband & I were overwhelmed with both of us completing our military service, having to move out of state for further education, taking care of 2 toddlers, find safe housing, and a job. read more