CINCINNATI -- We get a lot of complaints about tenant-landlord disputes, but we took notice when we started getting a few about a single company:
RentClifton.comTwo long-time tenants say they had little choice but to leave the place they called home.
"They were going to carry me out in a body bag," says former tenant Jana O'Neil. "Because I was here to stay."
O'Neil moved into the Porterhouse Apartment at 2570 Madison Rd. in Hyde Park back in 1991. "It became home," she says. "And for 17 years it really was home."
She says all that changed when the old owners sold the building, and Rent Clifton took over. O'Neil is a retiree who makes necklaces to supplement her Social Security checks. She says she couldn't afford a rent increase of more than $200 a month.
"I was paying $750. It was going to be at least $950, plus an additional $40 some utility charge. I was going to round out over a thousand dollars. And I realized that there was no way I could afford to stay there."
The flowers O'Neil would plant every spring now exist only in
marketing photos on RentClifton.com
Someone else lives in her apartment now.
O'Neil moved to a smaller apartment in Mt. Washington and waited for her security deposit of $525.
It never came.
Instead, she got a letter from Rent Clifton's lawyers saying she owed $1,800 more in damages.
According to O'Neil, "when I moved in, it was 'as is.' There were cracks in the walls, there had been no paint, no new paint job. There was water damage on the floor."
The building manager for three decades agreed in and affidavit saying O'Neil did nothing wrong and should get all her money back.
"There was no reason to with-hold her deposit based on condition, in his opinion," says O'Neil daughter, Mollie.
Rent Clifton managers refused our requests for an interview. In a statement they said, "anyone with experience being a landlord will tell you it is impossible to make 100% of your tenants happy 100% of the time. With that said we do everything in our power to offer exceptional customer service. If you take the time to visit our apartments you will find that they are beautiful and our tenants are very happy."
Caitlin Fisher was a very happy tenant for most of her nine years at the Porter House. That is until Rent Clifton dropped a manilla envelope on her doorstep.
"Inside was a letter and a new lease," says Fischer. "The letter was dated Sept. 24, but didn't show up on our front door until Sept. 28."
If they didn't agree to the new lease, the letter said Fischer and her boyfriend had to be out by September 28. Fischer says, "we get a letter stating that we have to be out the same day that we got the letter."
Ohio law requires landlords to give month-to-month renters at least 30 days notice to vacate. Rent Clifton now says the date was a typo.
But Fischer found many terms in the new lease unacceptable. "It says in Paragraph 14 section F, the tenant remove snow and ice from walkways and driveways."
That's right. The lease would require them to shovel the walks and driveways outside their 26-unit apartment building. They would have to pre-lease each February for the next September, and they would have to pay an additional $50 a month in rent for their two cats.
Meanwhile, one day in the heat of August, the building's water was shut off. "So we made phone calls to the Cincinnati Water Works," says Fischer, "and were informed that Rent Clifton was not paying the water bills."
Then in October, Duke Energy posted a disconnection notice on the Porter House because the landlord owed more than $1,600.
The smoke detector battery in the common hallway went out, and after Fischer filed two online maintenance requests indicating the smoke detector was malfunctioning the hallways between apartments, she was told by the landlord to change the battery herself.
"We decided to move out," says Fischer.
Rent Clifton responded, "we recently had a huge turn over in tenants. We had this turn over because we raised rents significantly. We had to do this to cover operating statements. When you raise rents significantly you are bound to have unhappy tenants."
The
Cincinnati Better Business Bureau gave the company an "F" for not responding to multiple complaints. Rent Clifton says it never got the complaints and is now working on answering them to improve its BBB rating.
Someone posted an ad on Craigslist -- we have no way of knowing who -- offering $250 for positive reviews of RentClifton.com to counter negative Google search results.
We wanted to speak with the owner of RentClifton.com, but the company wouldn't tell us who that is, and neither can Ohio's Secretary of State. That's because she
canceled RentClifton's certificate for failing to maintain an agent.
It turns out the Porter House is not owned by Rent Clifton, but by another Limited Liability Corporation, 2570 Madison.
Yet a picture of the apartment building was used on the website for a seminar scheduled for November 14 on how to make money investing in apartments. That seminar was offered by another LLC called
Hands Off Real Estate. When we clicked "Properties We Own" it took us to RentClifton.com.
Now-former tenant Caitlin Fischer says, "they're successful, but are they successful because they're a good company? I don't think so."
And Jana O'Neil concludes, "I think they're heartless."
Rent Clifton did not respond to our request for statistics on the percentage of tenants who get their security deposits back.
It is important to note that everything RentClifton.com has done appears to be perfectly legal.
We found other complaints about RentClifton.com not returning security deposits. But it appears those tenants did not follow the strict lease terms that require 60 days notice to vacate by certified mail, and a professional carpet cleaning with receipt.
Experts say the best advice is to take photos when you move in, draw up your own condition report witnessed by a third party, and send it to the landlord by certified mail.
You do not need an attorney to file in small claims court to get your security deposit back.
