Out of the dozens of places I've lived I've only gotten my full deposit back twice. Once because a sewer pipe burst and forced all the residents out. The second time was because I was going broke paying the rent because my job didn't pay enough so I got a friend of mine to forge a letter that made it look like I was joining the military. The landlord told me she was proud of me and gave me the full deposit back.
Other than that, I've always had hundreds of dollars deducted from my deposit because I left toilet paper on the roll or forgot some stray ketchup packets in the junk drawer.
I'm moving in a few months and I'm wondering if I should bother cleaning up to try and get my deposit back or just saying fuck it and cut my losses.
Once. Last apartment before this one was a weird basement that smelled like curry. It was half terrible and half cozy.
We didn't even really clean all that well, but the landlord did a walk-through and handed us a check for the security deposit plus the interest it accrued over the 18 months we were there.
But yeah....every other time they fight to the death to keep the money. When I moved out of state before that the landlord kept the whole thing, which is against VT law, but I had no way to actually fight it.