We found the listing for a home in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas on craigslist and contacted the owner, John Ta directly to set up a meeting. After a mutual agreement from both parties, we signed the lease and paid our deposit equalling one month rent. We paid our rent every month on time and never bothered him - we completely took care of the house.
So after 16 months of staying at the house my boyfriend got a job offer in San Francisco, which is conveniently where John Ta lives. We let him know as soon as my boyfriend got the offer which was over 30 days notice. We figured with the housing market as is, it would be nice to give him as much advance notice to start looking for other tenants.
We made the move and John Ta actually came to our new house to pick up the garage door openers, keys, and a couple of other remaining items that belonged to him. After 30 days and no deposit we both attempted to call and email him with no response. My boyfriend finally called from his work number and John picked up the phone.
After being startled that he was "caught" he made up some excuse about having his car totaled and losing his phone and some other crap. He stated that we were great tenants, only a couple minor things that needed fixing and that he would get us our deposit. We just stated that we don't care what is wrong with the place, it's been way over 30 days, that we just expect a list of whats being deducted the rest of our remaining deposit. After another two weeks of nothing and some more unreturned and unanswered emails, we're obviously filing a lawsuit.
We've seen his house listed again on craigslist, apparently it's now been furnished and he is looking to try and make it a vacation rental. I just want to warn anybody that is considering this place that he is obviously in some hard times because he can't even afford to pay back previous tenants $1000. We even gave him options to pay in full a smaller amount than what he owes us, or to spread out the deposit over a few months and nothing.
It just sucks after a decent landlord/tenant relationship that he had to be such a dishonest person and not even contact us at all about his situation or what is going on. So hopefully this will at least stop a couple people from renting from him and his $1000 dollar profit on us, will eventually turn into a few thousand dollar loss for him.
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