For many students, it’s the same every year. Summer’s coming, but you hate leaving behind your house for some other tenants to pick up soon. It was perfect: it had a huge living room, your homie’s dad’s old couches and a table at least six feet long. You’re going to miss the kitchen that held, like, 15 people (or 45 if the music was right.) And all the memories in your big backyard and other soggy couch.
Take stock of the damage, though. Whether you’re picking up to move out or just moving in, there’s always nagging phrase still plying into your head like the finals you just finished: Security deposits, which you pay in the first month and hope to get back by the time you move out.
“A lot of the students don’t pay their own rent, so they don’t pay their own deposit,” says Bo Bolstead, leasing manager at Capri Apartments, who don’t even put carpets in many of their properties because they’re so costly to clean. “So when they do move out they don’t think about cleaning sometimes.”
Think of it like a lawsuit for the assault you just committed on the house over the past year. A hole in the wall near the stairs that some guy just teetered into one night, the shower gunk, even the bent blinds on the window. All of these things will factor into how much money your landlords return after you move out. On the other end of it, as you’re moving into a new place, you’ll want to make sure you document the state of your house or apartment within the first week — rental companies take it into account when deciding how much of your deposit they return.
“You know, every property management company understands normal wear and tear,” says Bolstead. “[Students] don’t even attempt to clean the showers or sink. They don’t sweep. A lot of students just pick their stuff up and leave and don’t worry about anything.”
So, what do the lords of the land suggest students attend to when moving out? After all, the price of cleaning a rug won’t be the same as fixing blinds.
“People don’t think about really cleaning their refrigerators or their ovens or their stovetops,” says Amanda Whitney, operations manager at Stewardship Properties, who say that one bedrooms average about 70 percent deposit return, while houses will always fluctuate from 0 percent to 70. “Almost every single stove top flaps up and underneath is pretty grimy and gross.”
As for preventative maintenance, the landlords suggest being wary of other people in the house and simply giving an honest effort to clean on the weekends to minimize the wear and tear. That sort of maintenance will lessen the gut punch when the security deposit check comes back.
“My best advice and the thing that I started doing was definitely not putting things off,” says Makenzie Sargent, general manager of Titan Court. “That’s the hardest thing. Your mind is always ‘I need to clean. I’ll do it later.’ But you should really try to stay on top of it.”