[Rick Lee]

My lease clearly states that the deposit is not to be used for the last month's rent. But my first tenants did just that, skipped out a week or two early, but left the place in pretty bad shape. They never tried to get any of it back from me, which is good.

When I was renting a year ago, I had the yard done by some pros before moving our. When we moved in, the yard was in rough shape, but the landlord sent over a crew to make it nice, so we'd be required to do the same on move-out. The non-refundable cleaning deposit of $400 was a little steep though. Didn't make me feel bad at all about taking just our belongings and locking the doors behind us. And he mailed us our deposit back a week later. He was one of the good guys.