Tree House Apartments

In response to the complaint filed against me regarding security deposit refund debits, I should begin by describing the two -person apartment which the tenants leased for the 2015-16 university year.  The duplex house is located approximately 100’ from the IUP campus.  It is a townhouse...

apartment containing approximately 900 square feet with two bedrooms and bathroom on the second floor, each bedroom slightly containing over 120 square feet.  The first floor has a large living room (15’x15’) separated by a large pocket door from the kitchen. The living room, steps and bedrooms are fully carpeted, the kitchen and bathroom floors are vinyl covered. The walls are basecoat/hard coat plaster with a swirl textured finish, except the bathroom which has moisture resistant drywall. Most walls have moulded wood tack hanging strips approximately 6’ from the floor for picture and poster hanging.  All doors in the apartment are raised panel pine and all finish trim is tulip poplar.  The stair bannister railing and newel post are walnut stained red oak as well as the exposed beam living room ceiling.  The apartment is architecturally well designed and painted in light colors.  The apartment has all new wiring and plumbing.  The exterior of the house is horizontal wood siding that should have a fresh coat of paint soon.  The house has a large covered front porch entry way into the living room and a medium size covered porch to the kitchen.  The parking area is located within 20’ of the kitchen entrance.  Conveniently located off the kitchen is a doorway to the basement that has a nicely lite non-coined operated full size washer and dryer.As to the condition of the apartment and how I run my rental business:When tenants move out the following cleaning and inspection is done every time and this is the resulting condition found when new tenants move in:All walls, doors, trim windows, dressers, bed frames, cabinets, appliances, table and chairs are cleaned and/or vacuumed.Light fixture bulb coverings are removed and cleaned.Ceilings are cleaned.All carpets are cleaned and vinyl floors are hand-scrubbed, not just wet mopped.Prior to cleaning, I personally go through each apartment and list damages such as nail holes, broken wall areas, broken chair legs, stained mattresses, carpet stains and burn holes, candle wax debris on floors, broken window glass, broken doors, broken refrigerator bars and shelves, dirty stove and oven, and other poor conditions.During the cleaning process, the cleaning staff keep a running list of issues, whether damages or maintenance items.  All damages are addressed and all cleaning and damage work is done during May and early June of each year.  In late August, before tenants arrive, I again go through the apartment to recheck conditions and make sure nothing is left to chance.When tenants arrive in late August, they are given a one- page sheet titled Important Reminders, listing the locations of emergency shut-offs, security measures, and a short review of lease policies.  Disregarding the fact that I would like to respond to each of Mr. [redacted]’s unprofessional remarks, including ramblings and cliché’s, I will confine my responses to justifications for the itemized damage and fee debits listed on the security deposit refund.Fill and paint 16 nail holes - this charge was specifically listed for the [redacted]. front bedroom only.  Cost to repair holes and repaint was $76.00 per tenant.  To begin, on hard coat plastered walls, nail holes spald, usually when removing the nails.  The nail holes had to be filled twice because of joint compound shrinkage, then contour sanded to match the existing swirl textured plaster finish, then spot primed, and finally the walls painted.  Since the holes spanned all bedroom walls, the entire room had to be repainted.  This involved moving the bed, desk, dresser, and chair out of the room, covering the floor with a canvas drop cloth, doing the hole repairs, vacuuming the joint compound dust, primer and top coat, removing the drop cloth, and finally replacing the furniture.  This process took place over a span of 4 days and required 7 man hours and nearly one $40.00 gallon of paint.  $152.00 total minus $40.00 paint equals $112.00 divided by 7 hours equals $16.00/hour. Fill 17 push pin type holes in bedroom door and repaint – this charge was specifically listed for the [redacted]. front bedroom only.  This involved removing the door, relocating it to the porch area, bringing saw horses to the house, removing the door hardware, filling the holes twice, lightly sanding the door, masking and priming the affected panel areas, repainting one side of the door, reinstalling the door hardware, and finally moving the door upstairs to the room and rehanging it.  This process took place over a span of 4 days.  Total cost $67.00 minus $19.00 for paint equals $48.00 labor divided by 3 hours equals $16.00/hour.Fill and paint two 1” square drywall paper tears on bathroom wall near mirror and sink.  This repair involved putting down a drop cloth, removing loose paper from on top of the drywall gypsum substrate, sanding the areas, applying joint compound, re-applying joint compound after shrinkage, sanding the area to level and blending the joint compound, lightly sanding the entire wall area, spot priming the joint compound areas and finally top coat painting the wall.  This process took place over a 3 -day period.  Cost of $37.00 minus $9.00 supplies equals $28.00 labor divided by 1.75 hours equals $16.00/hour labor.Repair two 1” square burn marks in [redacted]. front bedroom carpet.  This repair involves moving all furniture to one side of the room, rolling the wall to wall carpet halfway across the room, cutting out the burn area, cementing a 6” square fiber backer on the carpet back, rolling the carpet back down and stretching, cementing a new piece of carpet against the backer.  Cost of $42.00 minus $2.00 supplies equals $40.00 labor divided by 2.5 hours equals $16.00/hour labor.Replace two stained mattresses.  During the general cleaning process, all beds are taken down, bedrails wiped, mattresses and box springs vacuumed, stained mattresses replaced.  Both mattresses were stained.  Cost to tenants, $200.00.  Actual replacement cost of mattress, $506.68. Fill and paint two push pin type holes on kitchen wall adjacent to the parking lot. As stated under repair number one, the problem of spalding holes in hard cut plaster, similar repair techniques were used.  However, this paint match was good so that the repair area was just spot painted.  Cost $16.00 equals one-hour labor.Clean walls, furniture, kitchen floor (remove 1’ circle of candle wax), carpets and oven.  Included in this cleaning was the sticky material on the walls in the [redacted]. front bedroom.  Cost $234.00 minus $26.00 cleaning supplies and carpet machine rental equals $208.00 labor divided by 13 hours equals $16.00/hour. The above listed responses are the only issues relevant to this complaint.  I do not know who was in which bedroom.  Tenants are responsible for the actions of friends and others invited into the house.  The tenants, jointly and severally responsible, may subrogate between each other to recover individual loses. The two people named as tenants on this lease are adults.  Mr. [redacted] was not named as a tenant or co-signer on this lease.  Therefore, he has no legal attachment in this tenant complaint.  This complaint has no valid ethical or legal standing and should be withdrawn.George S[redacted]Tree House Apartments

In response to Mr. S[redacted]s reply to the Revdex.com, I would first like to point out several areas of that letter that I feel need to be clarified, corrected, or justified.
First, let me start by pointing out to Mr. S[redacted] that the last statement in his letter regarding "the students being adults, and the tenants, and that I have no legal attachment to this complaint" is incorrect in several ways. If I am not mistaken, I believe that when the students first signed for the apartment, I also had to sign an agreement/contract stating that I would be responsible for my daughters portion of the rent should she not be capable of acquiring the monies to pay it. Also, if Mr. S[redacted] were to review the checks that were sent to him for the rent, they were written and debited from mine and my wife's checking account, and lastly, and evidently something Mr. S[redacted] was not made aware of was, that per request of the Revdex.com we faxed a written statement to them signed by my daughter allowing me to file this complaint on her behalf.
Secondly, not that I want to seem like I am rambling, and since Mr.S[redacted] mentioned it in his letter, I want to comment on the the wonderful opening remarks he made regarding the overall condition of this townhouse/apartment. Those remarks in my opinion are slightly exaggerated especially if one is to see this apartment in person. Several examples are, on the inside of the apartment the beautiful interior doors (raised panel pine) and trim (tulip poplar) he speaks of are all painted either a transparent blue or white color and none of the wood can be seen. Just enough paint to cover the wood lightly. As per prepping and repairing the apartment in May and June for the next school year renters, when the ladies moved in the fridge didn't work(needed a new one) and only two of the stove burners worked, and this never got repaired.
As per the outside, both porches on this apartment are in sad need of paint and repairs. The paint on the houses horizontal wood siding is so old and dried that it is literally peeling off, with the porches having the same issue. Have some good pictures of this. Looks to have been many-many years since the outside of this place has been given some attention. Some minimal painting on the top front of the house was started the last semester the girls were there, but never progressed further.
With that being said, and to get back to the initial complaint. After reading Mr. S[redacted]s rebuttal, I want to clarify that the bedroom in question that needed the supposed repairs, was not my daughter's bedroom. But, as previously stated in my initial complaint, both of the young ladies were seniors and knew not to use nails or push pins, and both used sticky tack to put up any pictures or posters on the walls or doors, thus making the excessive wall and door repairs in this room still hard to believe.
The last point that I would again like to make, and one that I feel is most important regarding this whole issue is that if Mr. S[redacted] would have returned my wife's and my daughters calls like they requested, and spoke to one, or both of them about the issues, we would have never had to get the Revdex.com involved. But that never happened, so that is why the complaint was made.

Hopefully after all of this is resolved, Mr. S[redacted] will learn that if he takes care of his business as he should, communicates with the students and/or the parents by returning their calls quickly, and address the issues in question, then maybe he won't have these types of issues arise again in the future where the Revdex.com has to get involved on the parents and students behalf.
I would like to end by saying that this will be my last correspondence with Mr. S[redacted] regarding this issue. The reason that I say this is that he states in his letter that he already repaired the issues that he found to be a problem. With that being done, it is now the students word against his regarding several of these issues, and as I see it, they don't have any other recourse but to accept what they have been given by Mr. S[redacted] as a reimbursement of their security deposit.

As per my daughters reimbursement, we will accept the initial $51.00 that was sent, and the extra $50.00 sent to her on June 17th from Mr. S[redacted] as a partial reimbursement for the mattress issue. Mr. S[redacted] can discuss any other issues regarding withdrawing the complaint further with the Revdex.com. The decision will be theirs to do as they feel.
Respectfully ---- [redacted]

Review: Mr. George S[redacted] - Owner/Proprietor June 15th, 2016

Tree House Apartments

Ph # - ###-###-####

E-Mail Address - [redacted]

Mr. S[redacted]

I was out of town until this past Tuesday the 14th and came home to find what appeared to be a joke of a security deposit refund on my daughters apartment at [redacted] that she rented from you this past year. After looking at your itemized bill and speaking with my wife, daughter, and the parents of [redacted] whom was my daughters roommate, I to find that your billing for various issues is totally out of line, and is definitely an attempt to basically restore the inside of an apartment that was in sad need of repair and upgrades, both inside and out, when both the girls moved in back in August of last year.

To begin, After speaking with my daughter and questioning the various holes that you say needed repaired in her and [redacted]'s room, I was informed that they both used Command Strips to fasten any type of poster or drawings to the walls and doors, so your $152.00 charge ($76.00/person) to fill 16 holes is definitely something that was made up on your part and most certainly something that was done previous to their moving in. Please, keep in mind that these students were not freshmen, but seniors and have lived off campus for several years, so they know not to use push pins on the walls or doors. You also charged $67.00 ($33.50/person) to spackle and paint 17 pin holes in their rooms. Sounds to me like this is a "double-billing" issue for the same pinholes mentioned above. So all together you are stating that there was 33 pinholes in the walls. You can't be serious !!!! Since we already mentioned that they used Command Strips for anything that was on the walls, I feel that these charges are fabricated on your part and a return of this monies is due each of these young ladies

The mattresses are another subject that needs addressed. You stated that you had replace each of their mattresses ($100.00/ea) due to excessive stains. My daughters bed had a mattress protector, fitted sheet, top sheet and a comforter on her bed at all times. Due to the fact that my daughter didn't want to make her bed, she told me that, as she usually does at home, slept on top of the comforter 99% of the time and maybe only under the comforter occasionally when it was cold. Also, we did inspect the mattress when we moved my daughter out and found it to be in excellent condition at that time, so again, I feel that we need to have this monies reimbursed.

Moving on to the final issue/s, The stove in the kitchen didn't work most of the time and the girls called you several times about this, and you either never called back, or just told them you stopped in and it worked for you when you were there. Maybe it should have been replaced, like you had to do with the fridge. Before moving my daughter out, my wife and I vacuumed the entire living room, steps, and upstairs in each of the girls rooms. We also cleaned the counter tops, stove top, and checked the inside of the stove which appeared to be fine at that time, and to say that it cost $234.00 to clean the carpet, walls and floors in this tiny apartment is also outrageous. I would like to see the bills for this from your cleaning service, so hopefully you have them to send to me.

Finally, I am to understand that my wife and daughter have both attempted to reach you on several occasions to discuss all this with you. My wife did speak to your wife once while I was away, and your wife stated she would have you get back to her to discuss these matters further, but as usual, you have never called back, and you have never returned any of my daughters calls either. This leads me to believe that most of these costs on the bills have been made up by you, and you are afraid to discuss the matters personally with us. So since you won't speak to us about this matter, I have no other choice but to address this issue with the Revdex.com. It is my understanding that the [redacted]'s ([redacted]'s parents) are also pursuing this with the Revdex.com, so we will both continue to work with the Revdex.com until a resolution is reached.

On a personal note, I find this kind of business practice despicable and ridiculous. An attempt to "trump-up" the supposed repair costs on these students is truly a "no class act" on your part. It's bad enough that these students owe $80,000.00 for their education, but having to deal with this, just tops it off. Hopefully the Revdex.com can get us some satisfaction.

Respectfully,

[redacted]

Father of [redacted] -IUP Student

[redacted] -- Tenant 2015-2016Desired Settlement: I would like monies refunded to me for the mattress replacement - $100.00. Would also like to be reimbursed the amount for the supposed wall repair - $76.00 and $33.50. Also would like an adjustment and reimbursement for the excessive cost for cleaning.

Business

Response:

In response to the complaint filed against me regarding security deposit refund debits, I should begin by describing the two -person apartment which the tenants leased for the 2015-16 university year. The duplex house is located approximately 100’ from the IUP campus. It is a townhouse apartment containing approximately 900 square feet with two bedrooms and bathroom on the second floor, each bedroom slightly containing over 120 square feet. The first floor has a large living room (15’x15’) separated by a large pocket door from the kitchen. The living room, steps and bedrooms are fully carpeted, the kitchen and bathroom floors are vinyl covered. The walls are basecoat/hard coat plaster with a swirl textured finish, except the bathroom which has moisture resistant drywall. Most walls have moulded wood tack hanging strips approximately 6’ from the floor for picture and poster hanging. All doors in the apartment are raised panel pine and all finish trim is tulip poplar. The stair bannister railing and newel post are walnut stained red oak as well as the exposed beam living room ceiling. The apartment is architecturally well designed and painted in light colors. The apartment has all new wiring and plumbing. The exterior of the house is horizontal wood siding that should have a fresh coat of paint soon. The house has a large covered front porch entry way into the living room and a medium size covered porch to the kitchen. The parking area is located within 20’ of the kitchen entrance. Conveniently located off the kitchen is a doorway to the basement that has a nicely lite non-coined operated full size washer and dryer.As to the condition of the apartment and how I run my rental business:When tenants move out the following cleaning and inspection is done every time and this is the resulting condition found when new tenants move in:All walls, doors, trim windows, dressers, bed frames, cabinets, appliances, table and chairs are cleaned and/or vacuumed.Light fixture bulb coverings are removed and cleaned.Ceilings are cleaned.All carpets are cleaned and vinyl floors are hand-scrubbed, not just wet mopped.Prior to cleaning, I personally go through each apartment and list damages such as nail holes, broken wall areas, broken chair legs, stained mattresses, carpet stains and burn holes, candle wax debris on floors, broken window glass, broken doors, broken refrigerator bars and shelves, dirty stove and oven, and other poor conditions.During the cleaning process, the cleaning staff keep a running list of issues, whether damages or maintenance items. All damages are addressed and all cleaning and damage work is done during May and early June of each year. In late August, before tenants arrive, I again go through the apartment to recheck conditions and make sure nothing is left to chance.When tenants arrive in late August, they are given a one- page sheet titled Important Reminders, listing the locations of emergency shut-offs, security measures, and a short review of lease policies. Disregarding the fact that I would like to respond to each of Mr. [redacted]’s unprofessional remarks, including ramblings and cliché’s, I will confine my responses to justifications for the itemized damage and fee debits listed on the security deposit refund.Fill and paint 16 nail holes - this charge was specifically listed for the [redacted]. front bedroom only. Cost to repair holes and repaint was $76.00 per tenant. To begin, on hard coat plastered walls, nail holes spald, usually when removing the nails. The nail holes had to be filled twice because of joint compound shrinkage, then contour sanded to match the existing swirl textured plaster finish, then spot primed, and finally the walls painted. Since the holes spanned all bedroom walls, the entire room had to be repainted. This involved moving the bed, desk, dresser, and chair out of the room, covering the floor with a canvas drop cloth, doing the hole repairs, vacuuming the joint compound dust, primer and top coat, removing the drop cloth, and finally replacing the furniture. This process took place over a span of 4 days and required 7 man hours and nearly one $40.00 gallon of paint. $152.00 total minus $40.00 paint equals $112.00 divided by 7 hours equals $16.00/hour. Fill 17 push pin type holes in bedroom door and repaint – this charge was specifically listed for the [redacted]. front bedroom only. This involved removing the door, relocating it to the porch area, bringing saw horses to the house, removing the door hardware, filling the holes twice, lightly sanding the door, masking and priming the affected panel areas, repainting one side of the door, reinstalling the door hardware, and finally moving the door upstairs to the room and rehanging it. This process took place over a span of 4 days. Total cost $67.00 minus $19.00 for paint equals $48.00 labor divided by 3 hours equals $16.00/hour.Fill and paint two 1” square drywall paper tears on bathroom wall near mirror and sink. This repair involved putting down a drop cloth, removing loose paper from on top of the drywall gypsum substrate, sanding the areas, applying joint compound, re-applying joint compound after shrinkage, sanding the area to level and blending the joint compound, lightly sanding the entire wall area, spot priming the joint compound areas and finally top coat painting the wall. This process took place over a 3 -day period. Cost of $37.00 minus $9.00 supplies equals $28.00 labor divided by 1.75 hours equals $16.00/hour labor.Repair two 1” square burn marks in [redacted]. front bedroom carpet. This repair involves moving all furniture to one side of the room, rolling the wall to wall carpet halfway across the room, cutting out the burn area, cementing a 6” square fiber backer on the carpet back, rolling the carpet back down and stretching, cementing a new piece of carpet against the backer. Cost of $42.00 minus $2.00 supplies equals $40.00 labor divided by 2.5 hours equals $16.00/hour labor.Replace two stained mattresses. During the general cleaning process, all beds are taken down, bedrails wiped, mattresses and box springs vacuumed, stained mattresses replaced. Both mattresses were stained. Cost to tenants, $200.00. Actual replacement cost of mattress, $506.68. Fill and paint two push pin type holes on kitchen wall adjacent to the parking lot. As stated under repair number one, the problem of spalding holes in hard cut plaster, similar repair techniques were used. However, this paint match was good so that the repair area was just spot painted. Cost $16.00 equals one-hour labor.Clean walls, furniture, kitchen floor (remove 1’ circle of candle wax), carpets and oven. Included in this cleaning was the sticky material on the walls in the [redacted]. front bedroom. Cost $234.00 minus $26.00 cleaning supplies and carpet machine rental equals $208.00 labor divided by 13 hours equals $16.00/hour. The above listed responses are the only issues relevant to this complaint. I do not know who was in which bedroom. Tenants are responsible for the actions of friends and others invited into the house. The tenants, jointly and severally responsible, may subrogate between each other to recover individual loses. The two people named as tenants on this lease are adults. Mr. [redacted] was not named as a tenant or co-signer on this lease. Therefore, he has no legal attachment in this tenant complaint. This complaint has no valid ethical or legal standing and should be withdrawn.George S[redacted]Tree House Apartments

Consumer

Response:

In response to Mr. S[redacted]s reply to the Revdex.com, I would first like to point out several areas of that letter that I feel need to be clarified, corrected, or justified.

First, let me start by pointing out to Mr. S[redacted] that the last statement in his letter regarding "the students being adults, and the tenants, and that I have no legal attachment to this complaint" is incorrect in several ways. If I am not mistaken, I believe that when the students first signed for the apartment, I also had to sign an agreement/contract stating that I would be responsible for my daughters portion of the rent should she not be capable of acquiring the monies to pay it. Also, if Mr. S[redacted] were to review the checks that were sent to him for the rent, they were written and debited from mine and my wife's checking account, and lastly, and evidently something Mr. S[redacted] was not made aware of was, that per request of the Revdex.com we faxed a written statement to them signed by my daughter allowing me to file this complaint on her behalf.

Secondly, not that I want to seem like I am rambling, and since Mr.S[redacted] mentioned it in his letter, I want to comment on the the wonderful opening remarks he made regarding the overall condition of this townhouse/apartment. Those remarks in my opinion are slightly exaggerated especially if one is to see this apartment in person. Several examples are, on the inside of the apartment the beautiful interior doors (raised panel pine) and trim (tulip poplar) he speaks of are all painted either a transparent blue or white color and none of the wood can be seen. Just enough paint to cover the wood lightly. As per prepping and repairing the apartment in May and June for the next school year renters, when the ladies moved in the fridge didn't work(needed a new one) and only two of the stove burners worked, and this never got repaired.

As per the outside, both porches on this apartment are in sad need of paint and repairs. The paint on the houses horizontal wood siding is so old and dried that it is literally peeling off, with the porches having the same issue. Have some good pictures of this. Looks to have been many-many years since the outside of this place has been given some attention. Some minimal painting on the top front of the house was started the last semester the girls were there, but never progressed further.

With that being said, and to get back to the initial complaint. After reading Mr. S[redacted]s rebuttal, I want to clarify that the bedroom in question that needed the supposed repairs, was not my daughter's bedroom. But, as previously stated in my initial complaint, both of the young ladies were seniors and knew not to use nails or push pins, and both used sticky tack to put up any pictures or posters on the walls or doors, thus making the excessive wall and door repairs in this room still hard to believe.

The last point that I would again like to make, and one that I feel is most important regarding this whole issue is that if Mr. S[redacted] would have returned my wife's and my daughters calls like they requested, and spoke to one, or both of them about the issues, we would have never had to get the Revdex.com involved. But that never happened, so that is why the complaint was made.

Hopefully after all of this is resolved, Mr. S[redacted] will learn that if he takes care of his business as he should, communicates with the students and/or the parents by returning their calls quickly, and address the issues in question, then maybe he won't have these types of issues arise again in the future where the Revdex.com has to get involved on the parents and students behalf.

I would like to end by saying that this will be my last correspondence with Mr. S[redacted] regarding this issue. The reason that I say this is that he states in his letter that he already repaired the issues that he found to be a problem. With that being done, it is now the students word against his regarding several of these issues, and as I see it, they don't have any other recourse but to accept what they have been given by Mr. S[redacted] as a reimbursement of their security deposit.

As per my daughters reimbursement, we will accept the initial $51.00 that was sent, and the extra $50.00 sent to her on June 17th from Mr. S[redacted] as a partial reimbursement for the mattress issue. Mr. S[redacted] can discuss any other issues regarding withdrawing the complaint further with the Revdex.com. The decision will be theirs to do as they feel.

Respectfully ---- [redacted]