TLDR: Ex-landlord expects flat to look like new and despite our best efforts forces us to hire a cleaning company. We believe the flat is clean enough, how do we defend ourselves?
Hi, my partner and I were renting a flat in Gothenburg. After two years we moved out. Already when moving in, we were a bit weirded by his really strange expectations, for example shower has to be kept dry at all times and the wooden floor has to be stepped on lightly, otherwise it gets damaged. And he kept talking about the previous tennants and how messy they were.
However, thoughout our stay he kept saying that he's very satisfied with us and that we're clean and careful.
Today, we were handing the flat back over to him. Spent days cleaning it (or rather the whole today and before that a few hours this, few hours that). I don't believe that apartment has seen such a deep clean in a long time.
When he arrived, he immediately started looking for dirt and damages. Of course, when you specifically look for it, you'll always find it. But he was going crazy! Saying the flat is a catastrophe, it's in mayhem, he cannot rent it to the next person which means we have to pay for cleaning AND the lost rent from the next tennant "who will surely not want to live in such a mess". We quickly realised that we lived in a false sense of safety and our initial gut feeling from 2 years ago was right. He simply expects that when you rent his flat, you don't live in it. The flat has to look as new!
As an example, attached is a photo of one of the kitchen cabinets that made him mark the whole kitchen as dirty in the cleaning check list.
Is there any way to defend ourselves? He's holding our deposit (two months rent)
Thank you!
EDIT: Ok, I hear you. It's not the cleanest ever. But do understand, this is just one corner of on cupboard. The rest is clean, so for him to say the flat is in mayhem and absolute disappointing mess is a bit much. There are no "piles of dirt" like someone suggested. We just focused more on scrubbing the shower etc and naively throught with these details that it's good enough.
We agreed to hire a cleaning company but of course, have fun with that on a red day. In the end, we had three companies, one was the cheapest and could do it earliest, so we cancelled the other two only for the first one to cancel now in the evening... So yeah, cool.
The landlord was refusing to let us clean it properly because "you need special chemicals and special equipment" - because now he's been in the flat the whole day and is actively looking for more things. He's suddenly adding more and more things that were not on the checklist (such as remove the lichens from the balcony's concrete) etc. And the whole time when we try to find a solution he's scolding us like little children and blaming us for more and more stuff. He's even taking things apart and saying "yeah, I don't know how anybody would clean this, but this needs to be cleaned". If he just said "It's impossible for you to clean this yourself, hire a cleaning company", we would have done that from the start.
Now, since it's the evening, he agreed that we will clean it tomorrow and he'll just be there to tell us more specifically what he wants.
And to answer some questions: the rent was 14700 SEK for 54 kvm (2 rooms).