Landlord deducting from deposit for cleaning and repainting entire unit

Advice Needed

My partner & I moved out of our apartment roughly 3 weeks ago now (we live in CA). We were just informed by the apartments that they would be deducting $403 from our deposit for “cleaning” and repainting the entire unit.

We lived in a studio with vinyl flooring that we vacuumed, steamed and mopped after moving everything out. Everything was as clean as it could get. The paint is obviously layered. The typical “landlord special” that starts to chip almost immediately, but we did not paint, mount anything, or do damage that would require repainting the entire unit. Just normal scuffs and chipping. I pushed back on this and asked for documentation that they needed to hire a cleaning crew and repaint. They sent it over, while also mentioning that they decided to only deduct half of the original $403. The pictures they sent of our apartment? Spotless. They even had comments on the documentation that the “wall and roof” needed to be repaired, but all the other comments on everything else in the apartment was “good”. So basically, they are still having us pay for half the cleaning, and partial paint. As for the cleaning, she said we didn’t clean inside the oven to their standards, but the documentation they sent over the comment on the oven was “good”. lmao. $200 isn’t crazy for a deduction, but considering they tried to pull a fast one on us and we shouldn’t be having to pay for them repainting or even “cleaning” is wanting to me to take this to small claims. Just wondering if anyone thinks this is worth it?

Posted Oct 11, 2025, 7:34 PM UTC

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