[Porsche-O-Phile]

That is highly unusual also. Our security deposits have always been held in interest-bearing accounts (we've lived in two different places here in southern CA, including the one we're currently in).

Sounds to me like it's time to look someplace else. There are a gazillion apartments out there and good tenants are a valuable commodity. They're idiots to be quibbling over such stuff with someone like yourself, who will undoubtedly be a good tenant, not cause any problems and be there a long time.

Is this one of those "overly managed" big complex-type developments? Those tend to be the worst, IMO. Our current place is great - it's owned by some 80-year-old Pakistani woman and managed by a cheapo "property management" company that employs a bunch of "I-don't-care-I-just-want-half-off-my-rent" college students from UCLB. As such, they don't get in our faces much about stupid stuff. As long as there aren't wild parties going on or people breaking stuff and the rents are getting paid on time, they don't come around and let us pretty much do what we want.

That's the way I like it. Most of the neighbors are cool and we have our own unwritten rules about how things get done around here. Nobody ever calls property management unless there are no other options. I've only gone to them once in four years about something (had to have someone kicked out of the unit next door - they were harboring a "transient" girl with a lot of extremely annoying habits, including breaking and helping herself to my stuff).

I've lived in a couple of those big complexes over the years too, and they're always overly-managed by nosy, control-freak types. We actually got threatened with eviction from one once for (of all things) having Christmas lights up on the porch. Of course, so did the rental office, but evidently that didn't matter. That's the mentality you deal with in those places. We were month-to-month so I packed my stuff up and bailed a couple months later, getting progressively sick of their crap (this was back in college).