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Illegal sublease, tenant profiteered -- can we get deposit?

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Illegal sublease, tenant profiteered -- can we get deposit?

Postby treven77 » Sun Mar 27, 2011 5:51 pm

Hi everyone, my wife and I rented a house from somebody in California a couple of years ago, but last year we discovered that he wasn't the owner of the house. He said he owned it, but it turned out he was just renting it and was illegally subleasing it to us. We have kids, so we immediately took off and found a new place. While he was demanding the rent, we tracked down the house owner and let her know what was going on. She evicted him.

In the meantime, we've been trying to get our deposit back from the guy, but since the lease itself was illegal and therefore void, do we have any chance of getting it back? He was also charging us $2200 a month for a house that he was renting for $1800 a month. He's been nonresponsive to our requests so it looks like our only option is to take him to court, which I'd rather avoid but will do if we have to, I guess.

Thanks everyone for your help... I've tried to figure this stuff out with Google searches but legal stuff is just beyond me sometimes.
treven77
 
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