“Recourse when landlord keeps your deposit?”

Photo by PoPville flickr user Erin

“Dear PoPville,

Is there a recourse when your landlord keeps your deposit?

Background: We’re a professional couple in our mid forties who’ve rented a Mt Pleasant row house for three years. We’ve treated it like our own, have made small upgrades (with the permission of the landlord) and have had no incidents during our time here.

Now that we’ve finished our lease to move back overseas, the landlord has kept half of our deposit (and this is Mt Pleasant, so that’s a lot). She’s given no explaination other than this is for repainting and cleaning.

We had the house deep cleaned before we left. There is no structural or cosmetic damage to the house other than what would constitute normal wear and tear (we have no kids, no pets and frankly the house is in better shape than when we rented it). But as all this is subjective. Do we have any avenues to challenge her to get our deposit back?”