Charged Rent for Time After I Moved Out

My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: New Mexico

I have presently moved out of a rental unit in Albuquerque and my landlord has decided to charge me for the time it took him to clean the apartment after I moved out. I did a walk-through with him and returned the keys to him, but he has still decided to bill me for rent for the time it took him to clean after the end of the lease.

I signed a lease in February of 2009 on a month-to-month basis until January 03 of this year. I gave him a 30-day notice and I asked him for a few extra days in the apartment, which he agreed to, and paid him a pro-rated amount as agreed to out of my security deposit.

During the walk-through, he and I noted items which needed to be cleaned and estimated a reasonable $200 fee of what he expected it would cost for his cleaning crew to clean the apartment. Out of my $350 deposit, I assumed that a pro-rated 3-day rental fee and the $200 dollar charge would be covered.

However, coming up on February 5th now, he has mailed me a letter claiming a charge for rent for the time it took him to get around to clean my apartment to move-in conditions. On top of the $350 dollar deposit, he claims that I owe him a total of $116 (the rough equivalent of two weeks worth of rent on top of the cleaning fee).

My question is: is he legally allowed to charge me for rent after the lease has been terminated, after I have given him proper 30-days notice, and after I have returned the keys to him? I am not disputing the charges for cleaning, only the claim to rent after the fact.

Thank you,

Troubled renter.

What sort of mess did you leave behind?

According to the itemized list of the cleaning charges provided by the landlord, I was charged for cleaning the blinds because they were dusty, cleaning a part of the oven I had not known you could open, cobwebs in the closets and on one of the windowsills, and for cleaning some grease off the wall near the oven that I could not get off.

The itemized list is as follows:
$260 for cleaning all of the above.
$2.50 for photos taken of the state of the apartment (I am not disputing this, I really don't care)
$203.50 for rent for "prorated rent for January for the time it took to make the apartment ready to rent"

Sounds like he's trying to screw you over. You could threaten to see him in small claims and see what he says.

You can't charge a tenant for the photographs you decided to take, haha. That one, in particular, would be a strong point in court that the guy is out of his mind.

My landlord tried something similar. Gave us back $37 from a $1600 deposit on a house that we actually left in better shape than he gave it to us in. This was in Washington, but it was clearly just dumb, and the judge thought so too.