What is rent deposit and utility deposit?

What can we do if we pay deposit on a rent house and it gets rented to someone else?

• My boyfriend and I recently put down a $600 deposit to rent a house, I was given a receipt stating that it was for rental property. We had a verbal agreement that we'd pay the rent two weeks after the deposit to give everyone time to pack, and move things (she still had items in her house, etc). She told me when I looked at the house that if we gave her a deposit on it that it would promise us the house because she had other people looking at it as well, so we agreed. Now I received a phone call a week later saying that she was showing the house to another couple that looked at it before we did. I told her the reason we gave her the deposit was to promise the house to us and she said it wasn't so. That we did all we could and the rest was up to the application process (which we filled out before we gave her the deposit). She said she had about 7-8 other applications she was looking at and processing and would call me back in 3-4 days to let me know something. I'm very upset and have never had to deal with this before. Every deposit we have given was to promise it was ours and now she is telling us this isn't so that she could simply rent it to someone else due to their application even after we paid her. Is there anything we can do about this? Is she responsible for giving our deposit back if she rents it to someone else? What is the actual reason for deposits if you can easily do this because you like someone elses application more?

• Answer:

  You are getting ripped off A deposit is just that --- to hold the property and NOT rent it to anyone else I would ask for my deposit back, and find a different place. They are NOT entitled to any of your deposit money since you have not signed a lease and never took possession of the place. For all you know, this person is just collecting deposits from all sorts of unsuspecting people and running off. Hopefully, they actually own the property!!! You may have to sue this one.