Having a hard time.

My wife and I started renting a place about 2 1/2 years ago, then it was bought by another owner sometime last summer and we signed another lease. Finally the owners gave responsibility to a management group where we now send our rent and place our maintenance requests.

A few issues : we've made several maintenance requests since November. I FINALLY got a response today after the 6th request and threatening to deduct from rent what we'd pay to get fixed ourselves. However, in the voicemail the person made mention that they can't do anything until they are given the OK from the owner (which blows my mind and infuriates me even more because he hasn't responded to 2 calls this week). Also, with the change of ownership we're nervous about getting our security deposit back since they don't have photos of when we first moved in nor do we. Any help or input is huge. Thank you.