Does anyone have legal advice for an apt I refuse to take and the landlord refuses to return my security depos?

Last week Wednesday the 11th I saw an apartment that I liked and I ended up giving the landlord a check for the security deposit


Which was $ 1,875.00. I told her not to cash the check until I notified her the next day. Thursday around 12鈥檌sh she called me to


Ask if I had already deposited the money and that she still was showing the apartment until she had my authority to cash the check. I guess she didn鈥檛 trust if that check was good or not and she was kind of rushing me to deposit the money so that she may cash it. I told her that I didn鈥檛 and that as soon as I did I will call to notify her. So, around 4:45 pm I called her on Thursday evening to tell her that she may cash/deposit my check (sec. deposit). She cashed the check on Friday 3/13th. Over the weekend I did a lot of thinking and for some reason or another I decided I didn鈥檛 want to take the apartment so I called her yesterday and informed her that I wasn鈥檛 going to take the apartment for w/e reasons. She said that she wasn鈥檛 going to return the money back to me because she missed out over the last few days of possibly renting it out to other people and that she also has to pay for advertising fees. She had the apartment posted on craigslist.org. Does anyone know if you have to pay to post something on craigslist? Well I guess my question here is that what do I do in this case because I really don鈥檛 want to take the apartment now and she is giving me a hard time to return my money back to me. I didn鈥檛 sign the lease or anything yet. All I signed was a hand written paper with questions asking me for personal information like my name and where do I work and so forth. Please someone 鈥 need advise!Does anyone have legal advice for an apt I refuse to take and the landlord refuses to return my security depos?
1st Craigslist is free.





You may have to take her to small claims court to recover your money -





If you contacted her by cell phone you will have a record of when you called her (just go to your carriers site day/time); you can let her know register/certified mail that your intent is to take her small claims court. You have to prove that you do not have any binding contract (your check was signed) you have to prove that she has been showing the unit to others while she held onto your check. She does not get a win-fall if she continued to show the unit. She will have to prove her lost for taking the unit off the market. If you do not have a copy of the Personal info you should; if her business runs on ';Lease'; she would have to prove that you are the exception to her rule.





She may tie up your money for a while during this process, if you did not write security deposit on the check she may call it rent.





Check you state to see if you have a pdf manual for Tenant Law, some small town have free meditation for these issues.Does anyone have legal advice for an apt I refuse to take and the landlord refuses to return my security depos?
You can get a lawyer who will take the case on contingency. In situations like that the landlord might owe triple damages (that is how it is around here). You don't pay the lawyer anything until the case is won and then you and your lawyer split a bigger pot of money and the landlord is not tempted to shaft someone else.