Should I take my landlord to small claims court? North Carolina

[treshay]

Were in wake county. In what I could find on the law I've read that LL cannot charge to paint as this is covered under normal wear and tear. But we really wouldn't know what were walking into if we went to court because we were stupid and don't have pictures. However, if he does that would be great unless he altered things to make it look worst. We left the place looking great aside from the one wall which was painted to cover the holes in the wall.

The charge for painting, carpet cleaning, cleaning the property and lightbulbs is all up in the air on whether we would win or not, but the fact still remains that he did not give us our deposit until 5 days after his 30 days was up and stating it was due to lack of forwarding address even though we emailed it to him on July 1 and again on July 26 - my husband also left several emails for him but I wouldn't expect that to mean much since there's no way to prove that.

I'm not sure it's worth my time either. We are financially secure and aren't depending on that money. But I don't like that he's taking advantage of us thinking he can get away with it.

[treshay]

Oh and to answer an above poster, we lived there for 3 years. He sent copies of the checks written for services. The check for the paint job was written to some individual not a company and on the itemized statement he lists that his company received the payment for painting. I'm sure it's acceptable to do that, but just mentioning it as an added fact that he paid his own company to do the job. Also, in his response to us he said he only charged us for 1/3 of the paint job and could have charged us for the entire amount but it was a courtesy since the other walls didn't really need painting. But the checks for painting only totaled $1600 and he charged us $1100.

Not trying to sound like I have a better case just trying to provide as much info as I have in case it changes anyone's opinion. I also spoke to the attorney generals office who wants us to submit a formal complaint and said their office would contact him on our behalf.

[treshay]

Another thing that just occurred to me. The law states that the LL must itemize all damages in the return of the deposit. He does not itemize any damages, he simply provides a list of services that he paid to have done to the property - none of which were "repairs". I'm wondering if that's a technicality that would help our case. For instance, after we sent him our demand letter he returned our email stating that he had to paint because of the patch jobs. But he did not list that as a reason for painting on his original letter. NOt to mention the form we completed when doing our initial walk through inspection lists nail holes and patched up paint. We have our copy of that but not the one that the landlord signed off on - we never got that from him because he had us mail it in :-(