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Invoice deposit for Security

now to our series renters rights this morning we are talking security deposits but we have been helping to educate you for the last several days last Friday an attorney explained what to do if your landlord serves you with an eviction notice and then on Thursday we walk to step by step through the legal process that you must follow before you decide to just stop paying your rent in order to protect to be protected under the law if you're having an ongoing dispute of course with your landlord who's failing to fix things in your home this morning we want to help you ensure that you get all of your security deposit returned to you Annie Rodriguez is an attorney with Jacksonville area legal aid and joins us live via Zoom good morning thanks for being with us good morning Jennifer how are you so first there are certain things in the lease that a tenant should look for that could lead to problems later getting all their money back would you explain what those are yes so when you get your lease you're going to want to hunt through there and see if there's any provisions that say there's an automatic deduction like say for carpet cleaning there may be a flat fee for cleaning um you know you don't have to agree to those and you can ask that those be removed is it ever a good idea to agree to accept the unit as is no so always do a walk through um sometimes whenever you're trying to get moved in and get the lease signed um people will sign the lease before they've actually done a good walkthrough of the unit so it's important that you go through you take a lot of pictures and then and that's important not only to take pictures and video but you actually reminded me of something that I hadn't thought about making sure that you don't lose those pictures maybe a good idea of course to then email it to yourself so so Andy I'd like to talk about four things a tenant should do though when they're ready to move out yes so always ask for a move out inspection do a walk through with your landlord to make sure everybody um is on agreement of what the condition of the unit is um you want to take pictures like we said you know everybody walks around with a little evidence Gathering device in their pocket so take pictures do a video walk through document anything that you think may be an issue later and then you always have to provide a forwarding address even if you don't have an address yet maybe send uh have it sent to somebody that you know and you trust and then always get a key receipt whether that just be something in writing from the landlord that says I got the keys that's an important piece of paper to have and Can a tenant just decide you know I'm not going to pay the last month's rent I'm just going to tell the landlord to apply the security deposit to that you know if the landlord agrees to that great but uh that's a great way to not get your deposit back if you want to do that right so by when does a landlord have to return the security deposit and can he or she just withhold what they want so they have they're supposed to send you within 30 days a notice of claim on the security deposit if they don't do that then they forfeited their right to the deposit and would you explain what a notice of claim is so that would be something that outlines what the charges are what the landlord thinks that you owe and what they're trying to take out of the deposit before they return it to you and what if you disagree with that what can you do so you should first respond with a written dispute um and try to work it out with the landlord if you're unable to work it out with the landlord then your next step would be to file a small claim suit and and Annie would you explain to our viewers who may not be aware of what Jacksonville area legal aid provides would you explain what services you provide sure so we provide um a a lot of different services for um tenants um we can defend evictions we can provide advice on security deposits we can provide assistance in disputing uh claims on a security deposit and just making sure that on the tenants rights are protected under the law and I want to point out that this is free this is a free legal service available and you have multiple locations where you service not just Duval County yes that's correct we have Duval NASA uh actually there's several counties but um our main offices are in uh Clay County St John's County and Duval County Annie Rodriguez with a Jacksonville area legal aid joining us this morning thank you so much for your time we appreciate it thank you Jennifer