Estimation of the guarantee deposit size

When the contract of lease is signed your tenant contributes the guarantee deposit intended for your financial protection of any breaches of his(her) commitments. And at the end of the rental period you may keep this sum (fully or partly) if there is unpaid rental fee, additional charges or damage to your property. Nevertheless, you, as lessor, have to give proof of all charges to your leaving tenant.

Put rental fee and charges in order

If there is a backlog of rent due and charges, by the law you don't need to show the documents confirming the sum you have to get back. In fact, a tenant must prove that he(she) paid for the apartment's rent. In order to avoiding disputes, in spite of absence of any commitments, we strongly recommend give your tenant the rental fee receipts regularly. For the both sides they will be a conclusive evidence of the balance in the moment of the keys transfer.

If you haven't chosen one-time reimbursement of expenses in the contract of lease, it's not a problem to regulate them if you can show the bills for water, electricity and gas...

From another side, if the apartment is in a block of flats you will not be able to calculate the right sum before the common meeting of residents approves the rates. In this case, the law allows you to keep the reserve not over 20% of the guarantee deposit. You have to do a final correction of the sum during one month after the common meeting of residents have confirmed a sharing the costs among the tenants.

Advise by Glamour Apartments:

when charge-off of all costs is done, you have to return the guarantee deposit during two months after the keys transfer. This period is getting shorten to one month if the outgoing inventory corresponds to the incoming one, that is there is no any changes for the worse in the residence conditions.

Prove the damage

When a tenant is leaving, and you've detected the presence of damage made during the rent, you have to ground that it's really his(her) responsibility. You can deduct from the guarantee deposit the costs of the apartment's repair if the necessity of it was provoked by the tenant's activity. So, you may get money for:

• absence of rental repair: broken window glass, uncovered mounting holes, valves and switches out of order...;
• absence of cleanness and care for the property: vast dirt, neglected bathroom equipment or out of order, absence of heating boiler inspection...;
• damage or absence of the interior elements: rended wallpapers, splits of ceramic tile, broken doors (for example, nibble by a dog), damaged bathtub, missing furniture...;
• transformations made without agreement with the owner: broken partitions, the utility room transformation into the bathroom and so on...

Responsibility for this damage may be laid on the leaving tenant just with comparing the inventory's entry and exit points. In order that these documents had legal validity they have to be signed by a lessor and a tenant as well. If you need to ground the necessity of repair works before new rental, don't be shy to attach the confirmative photos to the apartment's inventory.

If the outgoing inventory have not been held and there are disagreements between the lessor and the tenant about the property's condition, a bailiff's report allows to fix the true price of the repair. Half of the costs for service of an exterior expert is laid on each of the sides.

Important: you may not demand from your tenant to pay for repair works provoked by obsolescence, bad quality of equipments production, construction defect, your mistake or force majeure.

Grounds of the damage size

The sum of deduction from the deposit that you show as compensation for damage to your property has to be grounded properly. It's better to avoid using a standard deduction for all made repair works. Provision of the offers on capital repairs or broken elements is sufficient according to the case law for estimation of the sum that the leaving tenant will have to compensate.

This way, you don't need to show a paid bill as a proof of actual end of repair. But if you would decide to do this work by yourself, not addressing to the company that made a budget of repair, you have the right to keep only this sum after tax. Finally, if you are doing a small repair personally, technical service or cleaning without previous valuation, only the sum of invoices for buying the necessary materials may be deducted from the guarantee deposit.