Declan Murphy <declan_murphy@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<40B73B53.6020901@hotmail.com>...
> <devil's advocate mode ON>
> Equally politely, I don't see the relevance here. Discoloration due to 
> "Rain falling sometimes in from the balcony" means that the renter 
> failed to look after the apartment as most probably stipulated in the 
> contract. The shikikin is not intended to be a fully refundable deposit, 

I was trying to avoid the whole "the other option is someone left
thier patio door open in a rainstorm and got water in the apartment." 
At least hoping that's not what happened.  Our wood floors are cheap
as hell.  The living area floor is all pushed in (not scratched or
gouged out - but there are definite grooves in it) from where our
furnature moves around (especially the chairs on the dining table),
and the wife installed the little coaster things under all the legs to
try to keep that from happening back when we first moved in.  I've had
to relevel the fridge 2x now - the first time after we'd been in the
house <2 weeks because the floor in the kitchen is MUSHY (probably
just old but who knows).

> - location (no way in hell is the average apartment in a regional city 
> going to have 170000/month rents)

I don't know - we live in the middle of BFE - 20 minutes drive from a
train station and 30 minutes by bus (only good thing is we're withing
walking distance of the runts school, the supermarket, and my work). 
I think we're paying just under 190000/month for our house. 
Apartments might be cheaper but we didn't want an apartment.

> > Probably won't do you any good but we're planning on trying to use
> > that to our advantage when our landlord hits us up for major
> > refurbishing costs (kitty liked the wallpaper so much she decided to
> > scratch through it - same with the old carpet upstairs) to our place
> > when we move out in 2-3 more years.
> 
> Does your current contract allow you to keep indoor pets?

Yep it sure does - allows us to keep 1 inside cat.  If we'd had a dog
it would have been easier - the local landlords are rather nicer about
dogs in our area (I'd say 9/10ths of the people in our neighborhood
own a dog) and well, there's a HUGE stray cat problem here.  The
little monster was the 2nd biggest hurdle in renting a house (the 1st
being my non-asianess - even with a 3 year contract).