These landlords were an absolute nightmare for my partner and I, and they are the definition of petty criminals. DO NOT rent from them. They will treat you like utter garbage while you are a tenant and try to steal your entire deposit when you leave. They were rude to us from the beginning of our lease - before we moved in, Katelyn sent us an email demanding in a completely unprofessional way that we hand over the deposit before we moved in- as if we had no common sense that this was a given. The day we moved in, while showing us to the apartment and giving us the keys, Jason remarked, "well you just HAD to move in today” as if we were in the wrong for moving in on the 1st of the month. They tried to blame us when they were at fault for not having finished the work being done before our move-in date. Hey, if they didn’t charge us for the 1st, we would be glad to not move in on the 1st. Not the case though.
Throughout our lease they frequently sent us rude emails blaming us for not paying rent when the problem was their own fault for not properly counting the money we consistently transferred ON TIME to their accounts. They were complete slumlords and did not come to the house once during our entire year there, nor did they ever attempt to fix anything wrong with the place...including severely rotted floorboards on the porch (pretty sure that’s a liability). We assumed they were just rude people, but we had no idea that they were actually crooks. When we left the apartment August 31, we sent them multiple communications asking when we could expect the security deposit back. We sent several of these emails with only one reply stating we could expect a target date of October 1. By October 15, we had heard nothing and received NOTHING, and at this point they were in violation of the 45-day law which requires landlords to notify tenant of intent to withhold and/or return the deposit.
The ONLY time they responded to us was after they got SERVED with court papers, at which point they tried to build a case for themselves with many mentions of how they never intended to keep the deposit. They NEVER made any attempt to notify us or contact us about returning the deposit - save for one communication about 2 weeks after we moved out. After that, they IGNORED every single communication we sent them. These snakes still offered us less than the amount of the deposit even after all of this, trying to get us to settle out of court. In mediation, they offered to return the deposit to us, and told us that if we took them to court we would wait 6 months to find out we’d "get nothing” and had no chance at getting treble damages (triple the amount of the deposit that tenants are entitled to if a landlord acts in bad faith in not returning a deposit).
Curiously, in court, they claimed to be unaware of the 45-day law. That was an outright lie, considering they knew what treble damages were. They had no problem lying under oath. Even more astonishing is that after we took these jerks to court and presented copious evidence of their complete failure to return the deposit to us, they got away with only paying us the amount of the security deposit - I was disgusted that crooks like Jason and Katelyn Bongard are ENCOURAGED to continue dishonest behavior through a legal system that reinforces it and offers absolutely no protection for tenants. Please take this as a warning to NEVER rent any property or have anything to do with Jason and Kate Bongard. They are LIARS and absolute SCUMBAGS for how they treated us, and I am absolutely certain they will continue to treat others the same (and have already done so many times) for as long as they can get away with it.
Jason Bongard Reviews
These landlords were an absolute nightmare for my partner and I, and they are the definition of petty criminals. DO NOT rent from them. They will treat you like utter garbage while you are a tenant and try to steal your entire deposit when you leave. They were rude to us from the beginning of our lease - before we moved in, Katelyn sent us an email demanding in a completely unprofessional way that we hand over the deposit before we moved in- as if we had no common sense that this was a given. The day we moved in, while showing us to the apartment and giving us the keys, Jason remarked, "well you just HAD to move in today” as if we were in the wrong for moving in on the 1st of the month. They tried to blame us when they were at fault for not having finished the work being done before our move-in date. Hey, if they didn’t charge us for the 1st, we would be glad to not move in on the 1st. Not the case though.
Throughout our lease they frequently sent us rude emails blaming us for not paying rent when the problem was their own fault for not properly counting the money we consistently transferred ON TIME to their accounts. They were complete slumlords and did not come to the house once during our entire year there, nor did they ever attempt to fix anything wrong with the place...including severely rotted floorboards on the porch (pretty sure that’s a liability). We assumed they were just rude people, but we had no idea that they were actually crooks. When we left the apartment August 31, we sent them multiple communications asking when we could expect the security deposit back. We sent several of these emails with only one reply stating we could expect a target date of October 1. By October 15, we had heard nothing and received NOTHING, and at this point they were in violation of the 45-day law which requires landlords to notify tenant of intent to withhold and/or return the deposit.
The ONLY time they responded to us was after they got SERVED with court papers, at which point they tried to build a case for themselves with many mentions of how they never intended to keep the deposit. They NEVER made any attempt to notify us or contact us about returning the deposit - save for one communication about 2 weeks after we moved out. After that, they IGNORED every single communication we sent them. These snakes still offered us less than the amount of the deposit even after all of this, trying to get us to settle out of court. In mediation, they offered to return the deposit to us, and told us that if we took them to court we would wait 6 months to find out we’d "get nothing” and had no chance at getting treble damages (triple the amount of the deposit that tenants are entitled to if a landlord acts in bad faith in not returning a deposit).
Curiously, in court, they claimed to be unaware of the 45-day law. That was an outright lie, considering they knew what treble damages were. They had no problem lying under oath. Even more astonishing is that after we took these jerks to court and presented copious evidence of their complete failure to return the deposit to us, they got away with only paying us the amount of the security deposit - I was disgusted that crooks like Jason and Katelyn Bongard are ENCOURAGED to continue dishonest behavior through a legal system that reinforces it and offers absolutely no protection for tenants. Please take this as a warning to NEVER rent any property or have anything to do with Jason and Kate Bongard. They are LIARS and absolute SCUMBAGS for how they treated us, and I am absolutely certain they will continue to treat others the same (and have already done so many times) for as long as they can get away with it.