Many of us have realized how big of an impact our landlords can have on our emotional wellbeing. Not to mention our wallets! Someone who’s empathetic and responsible can make you feel like you’re always supported. On the flip side, some folks who rent out their property seem like they clawed their way through the Earth’s crust from the 4th Circle of Hell.
The members of the r/AskReddit community spilled the tea about their most awful landlord encounters. We’ve collected their most candid stories to share with you, Pandas. Read on to see just how bad things can get.
#1
Came in two weeks before my lease ended (I was in the process of moving out) stole all of my cleaning supplies, couch, and half of my w**d.
Image credits: anon
#2
I woke up to her kid running around my room, and her husband rooting around downstairs. They gave no notice and didn’t bother knocking.
We had a bug problem since day one and she decided to do a ‘surprise’ inspection to prove it was our fault.
Image credits: arcadiaware
#3
I had a landlord that was taking my rent money then NOT paying his mortgage. He did that so long our place was foreclosed on and suddenly for sale. I figured this out on day when somebody hammered a ‘For Sale: Foreclosed’ sign in my front yard.
Image credits: phatmexican13
Before you sign your lease, make sure to read it in full. Take your time. Don’t rush. If your landlord pushes you to sign it ASAP, they might be hiding something and hoping you won’t notice it. If they’re resistant to making any common sense alterations to the contract, that’s also a red flag.
Meanwhile, under no circumstances should you sign anything without first visiting the property in person. Sure, the market might be extremely competitive where you are, and you want to put in an offer ASAP. But you deserve to live in a clean, tidy, quality place, not an overpriced, unmaintained hole.
#4
80 year old Landlady;
*came into my locked apartment uninvited the day I moved in and screamed at me for being naked in my own bathroom
* regularly took my laundry off the clothesline and dumped it on the ground so that she could use the line instead. It happened so often that I bought a clothesdryer so I wouldn’t have to use the line.
* would come into the apartment when I wasn’t home and reorganise the furniture on multiple occasions
* called me “Putana” (Greek for whore) every day I lived there
*tried to kick my dying dog in the stitches in his face after he had an operation. Then tried to fight me. Then I called the police, and she called the female police officer a putana too.
* pelted garbage at my boyfriend when he came to help me move out, until the police were called again
Image credits: labile_erratic
#5
While deployed, my wife remained at our home in Texas. The A/C broke in the middle of summer. They told her that the temperature wasn’t hot enough to constitute a repair. When she showed them pictures of the thermostat reading over 100 degrees indoor they finally said that they would send a repairman but that I needed to be there because I was the primary name on the lease although she had power of attorney. I threatened to sue. A/C was eventually Jerry-rigged (the repair guy told her that he was paid to do the bare minimum fix) near the end of summer.
Fast forward. I’m home, it’s getting hot again, and the A/C breaks again. Same story as before claiming it wasn’t hot enough. This dragged on for awhile and I finally had orders to move to a new duty station. Gave them 30 days notice and moved out. They tried to tell me that I couldn’t leave the home with a broken air conditioner and wouldn’t honor my military orders, I had to pay to fix the A/C, and wouldn’t get my deposit back. I once again threatened to sue and contacted the actual owner of the house. He was a cool dude living in New York and said he’d take care of it for me. He flew all the way to see me in Texas, fired the property managers, sued them himself, said I was actually the cleanest/most respectable tenet he’s had and eventually paid me double my deposit for my troubles. Nice guy.
Image credits: anon
#6
When I was living with an ex up in Massachusetts my landlord was this 90 year old man named Fred, who didn’t care much about tenant laws. MA is one of those states that has some pretty strong laws, like one where you have to give a certain amount of notice to the tenants before showing their apartment to potential buyers.
Fred didn’t give a f**k, and would bring people over with no notice, and expect me to let them into my apartment when I was chilling on a saturday afternoon. Once he came by, opened the door to my apartment and brought some people by, while my gf and I were having sex in the living room.
Not cool Fred.
Image credits: anon
You and your landlord ought to be on the same page when it comes to the maintenance of the property. Ask them upfront about what would happen if there are problems with leaks or if one of the appliances breaks. One of the best things that a landlord can do is react quickly when there are serious maintenance-related issues.
Good landlords care about their tenants’ quality of life, not just the property. It’s in their best interest to have reliable and trustworthy tenants who rent for long periods of time, instead of constantly looking for new people. Bad landlords, on the other hand, only care about making as much profit as they can, while minimizing the upkeep costs.
#7
Terrible, falling down house. Mouse infestation. Landlord heard somewhere that cat litter keeps rodents away. I enter the laundry room one day to discover 2 inches of scented cat litter everywhere. She (perhaps fortuitously) didn’t realize that it’s used cat litter that keeps away mice, not clean scented stuff. It remained there for a year until we moved out.
Same landlord attempted to drive to Ikea. Closest one was in NJ, about an hour away. She lived upstairs and after a few days I realized I hadn’t seen her in awhile. Turned out she got lost in NJ, couldn’t find her way out after hours, and ended up just booking a hotel and staying for 2 days until someone came and got her.
She believed that the house was overrun by squirrels and would illegally enter our apartment to look for them. She also had all of the blooming trees (the only nice plants in the yard) cut down because of “squirrels”. Still not sure what was going on there. Any time I did anything she didn’t like, she’d accuse me of letting squirrels into the house.
Back in the laundry room, I overheard her teaching her son how to do laundry. She warned him to never ever mix bleach and ammonia because it makes a toxic gas. She then proved this by purposely mixing the two. They instantly started choking and gagging and abandoned the laundry room to run back upstairs.
There are many more stories. It was a good day when we moved out.
Image credits: rebecca_de_winter
#8
When I was a kid, our slumlord refused to fix anything that broke in our house or do any preventative maintenance. The house had already had an electrical fire from a leaky upstairs bathroom, but he refused to fix any further leaks.
When I was about 13, a family of squirrels moved in to the space between the ceiling & roof in my room. I could hear them scratching and running all the time. They eventually scratched through the ceiling and left a few areas with small holes. I was always afraid they would drop into my room and attack.
Then, my ceiling started leaking when it rained, first in just one area and then gradually across the entire beam that ran across the ceiling. We set up buckets and I would fall asleep to the music of raindrops hitting different containers. The sound of water hitting carpet would wake me up in a panic and I’d have to find another bucket to catch the new drips.
One night while I was staying with a friend, the entire ceiling collapsed directly over my bed. All of the soaking wet sheetrock (?drywall?) Landed on my bed, desk, etc. And the entire family of squirrels was released into my room. They hid in my closet, under the bed, everywhere, and it took three days to get them all out.
That bastard landlord took another week before sending someone in to “fix” it, and even then, it was only his son, who had zero experience/skill fixing anything.
Image credits: JustGiraffable
#9
When I was 20 and living in my first apartment in Philadelphia, my 80+ year-old landlord was walking up the stairs behind me, and cupped my a*s with his claw-like hand. I took his hand off my a*s and said “Don’t do that.” He didn’t even flinch. F U Mr. Hymowitz, you dirty bastard.
Image credits: anon
Which of these stories caught your attention the most, dear Pandas? What’s the worst landlord you’ve ever had to deal with? How did you manage any disagreements with them? What, for you personally, are the signs of an awesome landlord? If you have a moment, tell us all about it in the comment section!
#10
I never actually met him, but we nearly ended up taking him to court. We complained about a ton of broken things that he would never fix. When they did get fixed, it was by the unqualified worker that he hired from the Home Depot parking lot (no offense to those guys, but they didn’t fix our roof correctly).
Being college kids, we go to the free legal council out university offered, hoping we had some options to get things fixed. The lawyer found out that the house we were renting had been foreclosed on 2 months prior and the bank owned it now. Extremely pissed off, we decided to stop paying rent to this guy while we got our things in order (we never did get our two months rent back from when he didn’t own the house). About 6 weeks later, he comes by the house furious that we hadn’t paid rent in over a month. My roommate simply said, “We aren’t paying you anymore, get the fuck off this property.” This pissed him off even more and he started threatening my roommate until my roommate said, “We know you don’t own this place anymore and we are going to sue your ass for the money you stole from us.” He shut up at this point and left, never to be heard from again. We didn’t sue him because each of us were only out like $600 dollars (rent was stupid cheap for 4 college kids in a big city).
We made a deal with the bank to pay them the same rent we had been paying in order to stay until graduation in May. We were also responsible for cleaning up the yard and they would get someone out there to fix a few big issues (roof and plumbing) since they were going to sell the house anyway. We held up our end and enjoyed our last few months of college without a shitty landlord.
Image credits: forman98
#11
I was renting a studio apartment with seperate kitchen in a decent building in an “up and coming” neighborhood. Rent was $500/month, rent stabilizes. Dot Com happened, population grew, a wine bar opened close by… my neighbor, who also had a studio, same size but imo not as good layout, passed away. They refinished his floors, painted, and rented his place out for $1300/month. Then I started getting letters from the owner, whom I had never met. Accusing me of mistreating the apartment, living in filth, causing roaches and mold, threatening to evict me. Ok my apartment was not filthy, you’ll just have to trust me on that one. I responded to each of the letters, refuting the claims, offering to speak by phone and got no response other than yet more threatening letters. I finally offered to move out at the end of the month if they gave me my deposit back, which they did. I moved across the country, which I had been planning to do anyway. I get so angry when I think about that person.
#12
I subleased a room from my friend one summer while he did an internship.His three roommates also were out of town the entire summer but paid rent and their portion of utilities for the summer.
At the end of my sublease, I cleaned the house, moved my stuff out, and turned in my key. Three months later, I get served with a lawsuit for over $5000, alleging excessive damages and cleaning fees. I sent them back a letter demanding an itemized list of all fees I was being sued for.
When I get the itemized listing, it’s absolutely bullshit. For example, they’d charge me a $500 “chandelier cleaning charge” to clean the dining room overhead light, then a $300 “chandelier maintenance fee,” and then a $700 “chandelier replacement charge.” $1500 to clean, maintain, and then throw away a chandelier? Nope.
They also obviously fluffed their expenses, charging me $25 to replace a lightbulb in the basement and charging me $750 for 2 hours of “lawn maintenance,” which was the responsibility of the landlord in the lease anyways! It turns out they also filed a separate lawsuit against each of us, so they were suing us all for $25,000 total for what couldn’t have been more than $1000 in expenses (covered by our security deposit).
Anyways, I work for the Housing Department of my city and sent them a response on my office letterhead saying that I refuse to pay for the damages and that they could come and get me if they wanted to try. I never got a response, but the suit was dropped and I promptly advised the city to deny them any future city contracts for what I alleged was extortion of a college student.
Fuck you Jeanne, you cheap twat.
#13
We spent some time in South America, and our landlord there decided he’d been charging us too little rent, so he attempted to up it. We kicked up a bit of a fuss so he backed down, only to try again under the guise of having someone in every week ‘to clean cobwebs off the outside of the windows’. He wanted an extra $150 a month for this – the same amount he was trying to increase the rent in the first place by. The windows didn’t have cobwebs on them.
In that house, we used to get stray dogs coming by to say hello. We are dog lovers and used to feed them if they looked skinny, give them belly rubs and so on. Landlord didn’t like this, but as there were holes in the fence we couldn’t stop them coming in the garden. One dog started coming every day, and then one day stopped leaving. She stayed outside our front door all the time, waiting for food or to be stroked. She was such a sweet little thing. Landlord noticed her and started complaining. We told him she never came inside, and wasn’t doing any harm. We also mentioned the holes in the fence. One night when my husband was out at his regular gym class, I heard the landlord’s car pulling up. I was already in bed so I assumed he’d knock on the door and realise I wasn’t going to answer… but he didn’t. I heard him open the gate, mooch around a bit, and then he started his car up again and left. In the morning the dog was gone. We never saw her again.
#14
Seemed like the nicest couple in the world when we first rented the place, they even invited us to dinner and we had a great time.
3 months in we found out that they argue quite loudly and curse like truckers, not that big of a deal. Then my wife stepped on a piece of blue glass that was on our kitchen floor (we didn’t own any blue glasses).
Sure as shit I remembered that dinner, they had blue glasses on the table. I setup a camera in the living room and over the next week caught this guy in our apartment when we weren’t home.
Son of a bitch was going through our dressers and playing with my wife’s underwear, caught him red handed and gave him a nice beating and called the cops.
He tried playing it off like he smelt smoke and wanted to investigate, then I played back the previous weeks video’s of him visiting on 3 separate occasions.
They locked him up, we found a new place really fast and never looked back.
Image credits: MadLintElf
#15
It was an apartment complex, but this one stands out still.
They didn’t pay the power.
Not, “they forgot to pay the power.” Not, “they were in financial trouble.” They just wanted to see if they could call the power company’s bluff.
The power company killed and locked half the breakers in every building.
I dunno if you’ve ever seen a riot take shape, but try cutting off the AC and refrigeration for a few dozen Alabamians in the middle of June in a heat wave.
Image credits: TenthSpeedWriter
#16
I lived in a few different apartments while I was in college and all my landlords where cool except one. I lived in the first floor of the building while he lived in the second floor.
He has many “interesting” stories but there is one that stands out.
One day, all of a sudden I found small black things that looked like burnt rice through the living room floor. At first I wasn’t sure what it was and swept it up with a broom. Not long after I found the same in a desk I had in the living room. At that point my roommate realized it was rodent droppings.
We called the landlord to find an exterminator, and he just told us “I’ll be there in a moment”. About 15 minutes later he comes down with a small carton box full of fruits filled with rat poison to put around the apartment.
I looked at him in disbelief and he just proceeded to let us know that his pet snake had died and decided to release the rodents he had to feed it as he had no longer use for them and was sure they would just go and live in the woods peacefully.
Still in shock I asked him to leave and dealt with the issue myself.
I did not accept his offer to renew the contract and left as soon as possible.
Image credits: Sj410
#17
Basically every landlord I had in college would find excuses to take as much of your security deposit as possible. We’d make sure everything was spotless when we left, and they’d be like “oops, there were some crumbs in the oven. Better charge you each $20/hour for a cleaning service to come through for 5 hours”
Image credits: anon
#18
This landlord would randomly come in the apartment around 9 PM saying he came take out the trash. He gave the spare keys to his father and cleaning lady, both kept randomly coming inside without any notification.
He also forgot to mention that the garage directly under my room was actually a workshop and he would work there in early morning / late night. The final straw was when he came in the apartment at 8 AM on saturday and brought his wife and small son in my absent roommate’s room for several hours.
To this day i still wander if he was a sociopath or just complete a*****e.
Image credits: Frisbeeman
#19
We got along great with the landlord and we left the place in excellent condition. We cleaned like crazy and cut the grass. But then he tried to screw us out of our deposit by saying we had poured acid down the bathroom drain as a malicious act.
We sued him and he never showed up for court. In my state you’re entitled to three times your deposit back. That’s what we got. He paid us every cent.
Image credits: Ohsoeasy
#20
My first apartment when I was 18 had a rat and roach problem. My landlord refused to fumigate or call an exterminator. Instead, he just showed up one day and started opening up the walls looking for the pests.
I remember sleeping at night and I could hear the rats in the walls. I’d wake up in the morning and there would be drywall in the kitchen because the rats chewed through and got into the pantry.
I refused to pay rent until he called an exterminator. After 6 weeks or so he told me to move out and just up and changed the locks, holding all my possessions hostage.
Fortunately I took him to small claims court and won.
Image credits: DrBairyFurburger
#21
Ooooookay. I have one.
I rented a 500acre ranch with an old ranch house from a 95 yr old man. He lived in town (small hill country town in Texas) where his live-in nurses cared for him, and the ranch was 5 min outside of town.
I was very thankful because the ranch was really pretty and peaceful and rent was only $400 month. The house had 4 large porches and the rooms were huge; lucking into that place is still a highlight of my life.
….I was in my 30’s and I visited the owner in town to show him pictures of what I was doing to the house. I was allowed to do anything as long as it was an improvement. I planted a garden, some trees, laid slate tile (blue and cream 18″ tiles, checkerboard pattern), etc
I seriously thought we had become friends, like grandpa-style, because he acted so dang happy to see me. My boyfriend and I would take him meals from Whataburger, we took him to eat in town, our families sang xmas carols to him, etc. This man was old but he had full use of his facilities.
So when I moved out and went to tell him goodbye…..it was sad for me. I was almost crying.
That man looked me straight in the eye and seriously said “I gotta have ya. At least once. I want to make love to you.”
You can not believe how shocked I was. The man was 98 by then. “Mr.Oldie!! I have a boyfriend!!”
I walked straight out the front door. His nurse was sitting there outside having a ciggie.
“I……I……..I………can’t believe what just happened…..I can’t even say it…….I’m not positive it could be true….”
She said “Oh s**t, did he try to have sex with you, Texastexastexas??!!”
Of course I said “Yes?!…..”
Then she told me that every time people came to visit she had to wrestle with him to put his pants on. And that part of her duties were to return the various vibrators and butt plugs he ordered.
And that was the last time I ever saw old Mr.Miller.
Image credits: Texastexastexas1
#22
Backstory: The previous occupants of this house received their deposit back before even moving out, so as can be expected they had a massive house party. Luckily for us the house itself got away fairly unscathed, however the garden got royally smashed up, especially the fences and gate leading to the street and neighbours.
As soon as I moved in I sent the landlord a message about what had happened, four months of trying to get their attention later they put up a new fence and gate… which was shoddy to say the least.
I kid you not three days after they had put it up it was blown over by the wind. Not hurricane level wind, just a strong breeze.
Months more of messaging and they still didn’t do anything about it. Then we had to leave the house, the bastard took the money to fix up the garden out of our deposit!
#23
Two friends and I were moving into a house together. Before we moved in, the landlord wanted to meet us to sign the paperwork, etc. One of my roommates is Black, and he showed up to the meeting about 10 minutes before I did. He introduced himself to the landlord and took a seat. The landlord immediately excused himself to go to the bathroom, then went and sat in his car until I showed up.
He was quite upset that we didn’t all show up together and kept saying, ‘Was I just supposed to sit there with a person like that until you arrived?’ He then spent the rest of the meeting making thinly veiled racist comments toward my Black roommate. Things like, ‘Are you moving from an apartment? I don’t want you bringing roaches and gangs with you.’ To cap it off, when we were leaving, he spent about five minutes telling the teenage hostess how beautiful she was, and that he got her schedule from the manager, so he will be sure to be there every day she is. Racist, sexist, hitting on a child.
#24
We had a new management company take over the complex after we’d lived there for three years. They fired all the staff that had been there for years and replaced them with people that didn’t know what they were doing.
When we first moved in, if something broke, the first company would come right over to fix it either the same day or the next and they’d call to confirm it was okay to enter the apartment. They’d leave a note to say what they were in the apartment for and exactly when.
The new company wouldn’t fix anything in a timely manner. Our air conditioner broke during summer when the average temperature outside was 105F. Our lease specified we had to keep the apartment in a temperature range to prevent mold. It took 4 phone calls and threatening legal action. A week later, we came home to our door unlocked, all the lights on (even in the bedrooms) and an absolutely freezing apartment. So cold, in fact, the air conditioner froze and it burned out. It took another week to “order parts” to fix it. They left all the lights on and door unlocked again when they finally fixed it the second time.
A month later, the bathtub broke. The hot water wouldn’t turn off. It was on full blast. They said it wasn’t urgent since the water was draining down the tub. They waited 3 days to come fix it. The hot water made our room super humid and it was loud. So we closed the door. They got mad because the door split from the moisture.
One day, I stayed home from work because I was sick. I was taking a nap on the couch and when I woke up, there was a man standing in my doorway. I screamed, “Who the f**k are you? Get out!” He said, “umm…maintenance.” I called my husband and he was pissed. The guy was gone when I got back but he propped my front door open. He was no where to be found. I closed and locked the door. I called the leasing office and they acted like I was being unreasonable. They gave no notice they were entering the apartment and the guy was standing there watching me sleep. They said “We didn’t think it was necessary since he wouldn’t be actually entering the apartment. He’s just painting your front door.”
The last straw was we were required to give 60 days notice if we were moving out but they waited to give us the new lease terms until 29 days before the current lease expired. When we got it, they raised the rent $500 per month. We didn’t renew the lease, gave them notice, and moved out. They decided to file for eviction instead.
#25
A*****e busted my main water line when he was mowing the lawn, put the blame on me since he had to mow the lawn (I didn’t own a lawnmower at the time, so I was paying him an extra 50 a month, it was part of the lease deal), I had to pay for the repairs and outrageous water bill I generated as I was unable to fix the leak.
Things that have changed since then:
-Got good at basic plumbing.
-Got a better lawnmower and got good at fixing those.
-Got a new landlord.
-Got a well system.
Image credits: biomech36
#26
My first landlord was the slum lord of a college town in Michigan. He literally owns almost all the cheap rentable properties in the town.
It was the first place my roommate and I had ever lived in away from our parents. The landlord took advantage of our naivety in major ways.
Not only was our place a dump that should have been condemned, but we were paying way more for it than we should have been. Comparing prices to the rest of the units in the building, ours was the worst in condition. We paid over 100 bucks more than any of the other units.
Then to make matters worse, the landlord had his maintenance crew go through our belongings to steal the receipts for our previous 6 months of rent.
We found out when he tried suing us for those six months, and discovered that the folder with the receipts (which we kept hidden at the very bottom of the kitchen junk drawer) was completely missing.
He called my parents and told them he’d drop the lawsuit if they paid him half the amount we owed in one lump sum. He was doing us suuuuch a favor by not evicting us and offering us a way out that wouldn’t leave us with a lawsuit on our records.
He almost succeeded with his plan, right up until we found the third or fourth months receipt in the glove compartment of my roommate’s car. It clearly stated that we had no overdue rent at that time… And the landlord had signed it himself.
Unfortunately, he had still successfully stolen the three most recent months receipts in the folder and we were forced to pay that again. He did not evict us, so we still had to finish out our lease.
My roommate and I literally starved ourselves just to be able to pay the rent.
I really hope that guy gets a*s cancer. Who knows how many people he pulled that s**t on.
#27
My landlord told my boyfriend (now my husband) that he would lower the rent for him when I moved out. Not the worst landlord ever but the audacity of that comment makes me so mad!
Image credits: littlelivethings
#28
The house I lived in last year was in a constant state of disrepair, partly from the strain of having eleven people in in, and partly because of the mismanagement of the property owners.
When a shower stopped working, I walked into my room one day to find a very tiny elderly Chinese man who spoke absolutely no English (and I speak no Chinese) attempting to patch a two-by-three-foot, irregular hole in the drywall. He had apparently cut it open to access some plumbing, but didn’t find what he wanted. I ended up covering it with a poster and hoping they wouldn’t come back.
When the roof started leaking over the winter causing water damage in my closet, the solution was to have a crew (including the same man that cut the hole in my wall) nail plywood over the top of a section of the roof and shingle it. It took them three weeks.
Our heater also stopped working in November. It was an oil furnace that ran out of fuel despite being purportedly filled in September (which we paid for). It never actually started working properly again, so it was a rough winter.
The landlord also refused to get a plumber to fix our kitchen sink, which was completely unusable for three months because of some fault that was never explained to us. I suspect one of my roommates clogged it with his nasty cooking.
Midway through the lease, our actual property manager (effectively the landlord, the company’s “liason”) was arrested for fraud and fired. We went through two temporary agents before getting a new one, who immediately ignored us and every request we submitted. At least the fraud guy was nice.
#29
I have two, because I live in a city dense with students so every landlord is a “slumlord”.
First was an Indian family who had a little rental business and some large apartment houses. It was my first year living on my own, and in my youthful idiotic nature I did not notice some clear warning signs. After I moved into my ground floor studio it became immediately apparent the place was a dumpy shithole. I had every type of pest, minus bed bugs, that you could imagine. Two species of roaches, house centipedes, mice, spiders, flies, and squirrels. I lived next to a nightclub that was loud, gross, and full of drunk baboons who did coke and shot each other 12 feet from my window.
I toughed it all out for a year with minimal bitching to my landlord. Even when they broke into my apartment, or told me “no, that open hole in the foundation that lets the squirrels in can’t be patched”, I steadfastly survived it all. I did let them know how uncomfortable and pissed I was about the living situation but they gave a “meh” response.
Until move-out day happened.
The lease did not specify a required date to provide move-out notice, and they relayed zero info of when I was to let them know I would not be renewing. So, I only gave a 35-day notice after I secured another apartment. They got back to me saying, basically, that was too late and they re-signed the lease in my name and bumped the rent up by $150. Sucks to suck!
I threatened to sue. They immediately backed down, tail between their legs, whimpering about how they “were just a small family business, why was I mean?” Thieving bastards still yanked most of my security deposit. I left mouse carcasses behind for them.
Second landlord story! This was more recent when my SO and I were looking for a place together. We found a first floor one bedroom that my gut said “no” about but we had been looking for close to 3 months and just wanted the search to be over. We sign the lease, get the keys, start moving my boxes of shit to be moved in.
Surprise, motherfucker! You got roaches” The German kind, because fuck you. These landlords were also family, a husband and wife with a son who acted as the liaison because the parents were not native English speakers. Yeah they could speak and understand English but not as well as their adult son. We called the son about the infestation. “Oh yeah haha, this is a city so there are roaches” he said cheerfully.
I bitched him out. Because this was not a roach or two, but thousands. Everywhere. The molding on the ceiling was caked with roach filth. You don’t notice it during the walkthrough when the lights are on and people stomping about but upon our inspection it was evident that the roaches had been there for a long time. It was a couple who were there for 2 years before us and they had been living in this filth.
What occurred was 6 days of bullshit. At one point, the wife called me at 9:30pm, hysterical, because “why was I doing?” “why was I such an awful person?” For breaking the lease and moving out of their roach motel. Lots of screaming involved. I essentially told them to get fucked for knowingly letting us move into their shithole.
We broke the lease and the landlords came over to collect the keys. Over the 6 days my boyfriend and I were there, we did not clean up a single roach after we killed them out. Hundreds of roach bodies on the floors. The husband took a look-see, shrugged, and said “It’s not that bad.”
What disgusts me most of all is in both situations, the landlords had children. I asked both sets of landlords, “how would you feel about your daughter living in these conditions?” to which they could not answer. I despise slumlords. Most operate without a license and all their properties are gross biohazards.
#30
Live in landlord that we rented a room from. Was patronising, dismissive and rude towards me but not towards my partner. Repeatedly mentioned that his sister-in-law was a “bad wife” because she argued with her husband. All round bad attitude towards European women who he considered to be too difficult and not uninterested in his advances. We live in a western country so basically doesn’t like any women here.
Often talked about how we “live in sin” and did other things that would not be considered acceptable in his country. I should point out that we were not throwing raging parties or behaving anti socially, we were just normal tenants who were too westernised for his liking.
Aside from this, he would generally make us feel uncomfortable. There was a significant language barrier so we never really made it past small talk but this was not particularly a problem for us. What really made us feel uncomfortable would be the way he would stand behind us when we were watching television. He would not say anything and if we spoke to him or asked him if he wanted to join us (not that he needed permission, we just thought he might be waiting for an invite) he would walk away.
We put up with this for several months because we didn’t want to make the living situation worse. After around 6 months my partner and I had an argument. It was not a raging one with us screaming and shouting, just a heated disagreement in the privacy of our own room. Opened the door to give us a bit of space from one another and our landlord is stood on the other side of our door listening to us. He asked if we were arguing and I told him, politely but firmly, that this was a private matter. We apologised if we made him feel uncomfortable but he never spoke to us in persona again after this argument.
One month after this he disappeared without telling us where he was going and sent us an email saying we had to leave the apartment. We disputed this as he didn’t give us the period of notice required by law (signing the email from both of us) and when he got in touch one week later it was with rude and abusive messages saying that we were absolutely wrong and that, because it was his apartment, he could do what he wanted. These emails were directed to me only, he sent polite emails to my partner even though he had received the same emails from both of us. Though we were willing to fight him on the notice period and already had been seeking legal advice about this, we found somewhere better to live and decided it would be easier to just leave and not have to deal with him any more. We moved yesterday. It’s much better.
Tl;dr: live in landlord was sexist, creepy and uncomfortable to live with. Tried to evict us without the legally required notice. Sent abusive emails when we challenged him on this. We left, it’s better.
#31
We had a huge storm blow through, tons of rain, tornado warnings, the whole 9 yards. It turns out that the storm drain was clogged in our parking lot so we had about 10 inches of standing water in our parking lot. Nobody could drive their cars in or out of the lot. We called out landlord who berated us about not telling them earlier. The same landlord also took several days to fix our heat in the middle of winter. And also accused us of mold growth in a closet the day after we moved in.
#32
Had termites. They refused to believe me. Didn’t send someone out for a month to check it. Sure as shit, Termites. 3 months later it was fixed. I never had termites, so I didnt know how fast they worked, and my upstairs neighbors were, judging by the vibrations in my apartment and thuds everywhere, colossal giants chucking bowling balls across their apartment all day, I was worried they would come crashing down thanks to those termites. Fucking hated that place.
#33
I had to move in a hurry so I took the first available flat I could find. Really regret it now.
Here’s a brief list of all the s**t the landlord did in that time:
* sent his brother to do the initial viewing and negotiating. When I accepted and started to move in, the landlord finally showed up and quoted a much higher price for the rent. I was screwed at this point so couldn’t do anything about it.
* refused to produce a tenancy agreement until I withheld rent.
* said tenancy agreement clearly stated that payment included all bills. IE: landlord would collect rent and bill money together as one lump sum. This will be important later.
* would routinely enter my flat and rummage through my stuff. I later discovered that a silver pocket watch my mum bought for my 18th birthday was missing…
* entered the house every day and stole the mail before anyone could read it.
* when told that the house was totally infested with rats and cockroaches, said that “this is normal in India”. This isn’t India pal…
* turned up every other week to collect money for “additional bills”. Would not specify what these bills were or provided a breakdown of what each tenant owed. When I refused, he changed the locks until I paid.
* and the crowning glory of this walking sack of s**t: didn’t pay the council tax.
As I said, he collected money for all of the bills along with the rent but apparently failed to actually pay this money on to the council. We (the tenants) were taken to court, sued and lost in our absence. When we failed to pay the entire outstanding debt and court costs, bailiffs were sent to collect. This is the first time any of us knew that there was a problem.
I convinced the bailiffs what had happened by showing them my tenancy agreement (which no one else had) and got them to back off.
Tried calling the landlord and his mobiles were both deactivated. When I finally got through to a member of his family, they said that he had moved to India and was never coming back.
F****r.
So, at this point, most of the tenants dissappear except for myself and a student, who was exempt from council tax. At this point, I approach the council to explain the position and am told in no uncertain terms that:
* I was the only person listed as living at the property.
* the other tenant’s names I provided weren’t even registered as being in the UK. Which makes them likely to be illegal immigrants.
* this happens so frequently that the council no longer accepts the tenants as innocent parties.
* the landlords in these cases vanish without a trace.
* as the only person connected to the address who was eligible to pay, the entire debt was dropped on my head.
It took three years to pay off. If I ever hear of this landlord resurfacing, I will find him. I will end him.
#34
My landlord knew I was a clean and quiet tenant who loved baking. He “renovated” and removed the stove while moving the “kitchen”(cupboards, sink and fridge) to the other wall. He replaced the stove with a toaster oven. He also removed my living room door. He increased my rent by 30% for those “renovations.”
We’ve been in legal hearings ever since, and now he’s trying to keep my damage deposit out of spite because I hung shelves (no storage in bathroom) and curtains (huge window almost to the floor by toilet, which faces a busy street and a few pictures. The neighbour upstairs flooded 3 apartments and kept their deposit.
#35
Last November I get a knock on the door of my “newly renovated” basement appartment from the fire department saying I’m living in an illegal apartment and will be evicted in 3 months if the landlord doesn’t get the place up to code. Landlord kicks me and my girlfriend out in february for “just two weeks, but we’ll say three just to be safe”. I ask if i have to move out ny furniture, and he says “no, theyll just work around it.”
I then spent 7 weeks living illegally in my buddy’s basement 30 mins away, paying rent, and commuting to work. Finally, in April, landlord gives me the ok to move back in, saying the place looks great.
When I got back, the entire place was filthy. There was thick drywall dust on every surface, paintcans, tools, and garbage in every nook, and paint splattered on the floor, windows, and all of my furniture including the matress. Some of my wooden furniture had scratches in it, and the shoe rack and shower curtain were destroyed.
I argued with him for days. He gave me $150 for cleaning and damages, then upped rent by $100/month because the “apartment is so much better now”
#36
Land lord found out I was a renovation specialist. With a long background in historic renovation and water/fire/storm damage. Asked if I would do little odds and ends around the place to fix it up. Took it off the rent or paid for materials to do the work. I did a lot for her. Refinished the concrete floor in the laundry room, replace ALL door knobs with new style knobs. (They were the old slide in glass knobs, so each door took about 6 hours to complete. Because of wood filling, sanding, and painting then resetting the new knobs.) Replaced the front door. Repaired walls all over and repainted the whole place. Hung new cabinets and installed a new dish washer after somewhat redesigning the kitchen to accommodate the dishwasher. Refinished the ancient front entry door. Rewired a few problem outlets/lights and switches.
When I moved in the place sat for a year empty. It was in rough shape. When I moved out the place was awesome. So nice on fact it rented out for 300$ more a month then I had rented it for. It also rented out 4 days after I moved out. She did not have to do anything to move a new family in.
So few weeks go by and I’m starting to wonder where my deposit is. Clearly I should be getting that back. Nope. Got a letter in the mail say she was keeping it because of a bull shit list of stuff. So I took her to court and won. Her argument was basically that this is how she makes money. It’s her only income. Judge looked like her was holding back laughter before he ruled in my favor
#37
After five years of renting I discovered my place didn’t exist on paper. The city only knew it as a pigeon coop. No building permit, no renting permit, nothing… All the money I paid in these years went directly to the guy without the government knowing he was renting something out. Oh right… of course the fact that there is no way to get insurance for something that doesn’t exist. (He always reassured me insurance was totally fine)
#38
One apartment I rented had on the lease that they paid water and sewer. 3 months in the water was cut off because they did not pay it and they insisted that it was a mistake to put it on the lease and I needed to pay it. I ended up having to pay for the water and sewer but then when I moved out they billed me $1500 for breach of contract.
Seems the clause in the contract stated “In the event of a breach of contract the renter will be liable for a $1500 breach of contract fee” When I pointed out they were the ones in breach of contract they replied “The clause has nothing to do with who breached the contract, it only states that you are responsible for the breach of contract fee.”
#39
Having to pay for basic boiler repairs for my tenants to keep warm during a cold and windy winter. So unfair!
Image credits: norwegian_unicorn_
#40
I used to help people with housing problems (in the UK, worked for the CAB – kind of unqualified but highly sorted free basic legal advice).
Once saw a woman who rented a flat over a shop. Landlord ran the shop. Shop didn’t have a bathroom so he said she had to let him use the bathroom in the flat. Then he started saying she had to let random customers and complete strangers use the bathroom…
And once saw someone with a “tenancy agreement” on a scrap of paper. It only said three things, and two were unenforceable and unlawful. It didn’t give the address, or the rent. It said the tenant has to leave at any time they were asked with no notice. I can’t remember the rest of the details. Something really pointless, and something about paying for damages??
I took a photocopy of it, and we were all just staring at it in the office. The tenant said we were weird for being so excited by it (not in a nasty way, she was amused).
Tenants have basic rights. Agreements can add to them, but not take away from them. So you can’t do that ! But it’s not like you want to fight to stay with a landlord like that.
#41
I caused a burn stain over the oven. Landlady goes Berserk how dumb this was. Blah blah blah, the entire Kitchen needs replacing! So she then sends a dude over and he basically tells me this will be 2.3k. While I thought i misheard, i also talked to my insurance and they said they cover it. THANK GOD. So time goes by and i then notice how a new Countertop gets delivered to her house next door. Okay, fine, coincidence.
Yeah, the burn stain got covered up with a big piece of metal over the oven and she got herself a new kitchen. What a b***h. Good thing we moved out soon after.
#42
She ONLY accepted checks or cash. No direct deposit. Her bank had the worst hours in town and didn’t allow drop-offs after hours by non-members. I literally never came home from work early enough to pay rent on time.
So I mailed my rent. It got lost. I had to pay it a second time before she found the first one, ten days late. No apology.
House was in absolutely s**t shape. One of my outlets had scorch marks on the outside and would fry anything you plugged in it–I tested it once and promptly decided I would never touch it again. Windows all super drafty single-pane, rattled in a high wind.
Visibly rotting exterior walls. I went outside with pruning shears and trimmed some bushes f*****g up the siding and HOLY S**T I was not prepared.
Other prizes include hilariously uneaven fake wood flooring that didn’t quite meet the baseboards, patchy stick-on ’tile’ linoleum in the kitch, and (my favorite!) the shower/bath lining was peeling off to reveal utterly terrifying amounts of black mold. I showered as little as I could get away with.
Just before I left, she replaced… the kitchen flooring. And tried to get me and my roommates to buy SOD for the weed-riddled backyard that had clearly been abandoned since long before I arrived.
#43
Oh, do I have stories. I have two favorites from the same agency.
One of their rental agents was showing our place (we weren’t renewing). We found her on our steps, panting, smoking a cigarette. She was unable to get up the flight of stairs to show our place, so the potential renters just…left. We received a phone call about creating an unsafe environment for their staff because we lived upstairs?
Same agency, shortly after, did a “surprise inspection” while we were gone and took all my houseplants out of the house and smashed all the pots outside the front door. Never received a reason why. The lawn guys ended up cleaning up the pots.
#44
A few friends and I rented a s****y apartment in downtown Iowa City from a company that owns most of the rental properties in the city whether it be through the company we rented from, or one of their sister companies. We failed to read any reviews on the company until after we found out how crooked they are. Come to find out, they’re in a lawsuit almost every year, and are so big that they can push their customers around and get what they want because who else are people going to rent from? They don’t have competition. Oh and their office is open from 10am-4pm four days a week.
Despite having turned in accurate damage reports prior to moving in, they still charged us for said damages. We were charged over $200 to replace six functioning batteries in the fire alarms. Another $150 or so went to replacing the hollow core front door with a hairline crack between the deadbolt and the door latch (taught us to look at the frickin’ doors before moving in somewhere). They replaced all four sets of blinds in the bedrooms. Blinds they charged us $60 each to replace. Blinds we could have gotten at Walmart for under $20 a piece.
Our biggest gripe with this company was how they worded their lease agreement. When you read it at first (all of us tenants AND our parents read it), they make it sound like you are paying for 12 months on a year lease (makes sense, right?), but you are actually going to end up paying 13 months of rent (don’t ask me to explain because I still don’t understand it). We ended up telling them to keep our deposit to cover the rogue 13th month, we sent them a check for the remaining balance for the damages, etc. and washed our hands of the entire thing.
TL;DR Four friends rented an apartment in a college town from a company that owns most of the rental properties in the city. They didn’t take us to dinner first, and they used sandpaper.
#45
I was moving across the country to move in with a friend from college who was already leasing a house with a few other people. He got me in touch with the property management company’s employee who was in charge of that house.
I spoke with him and filled out the application, my mom filled out the cosigner’s app, and he gave me approval to move in. Everything was great, except the property management guy stopped responding to me about halfway through my 3,000 mile road trip.
I get to the house and less than a month later my friend’s original roommates tell us that they’re moving out. I call the property management company to figure out what our options are and get this lovely surprise:
I was never put on the lease. I was never approved to move in. My dog, who I was told was allowed at the property, was not. The guy I spoke with, filled out the application for, and got approval from had given his two week’s notice and just “yepped” me into moving 3,000 miles away from home because he couldn’t give a s**t about his job anymore.
We “rectified” the situation and they moved my friend and I into another one of their rental properties.
Three months later the house is covered in mold and we’re being told that we need to leave for our “health and safety” but that we’re still responsible for paying rent, and because we didn’t keep the house at a certain temp (there was no thermostat in the house!!) the mold was our fault and we were responsible for repairs.
Sued them real fast, got a couple grand out of it. The last time I drove by they were in the process of completely replacing the roof on the house.
#46
I still feel defeated when I think of this. When I was a senior in college, I lived in an older two-bedroom apartment with a roommate. Shortly after we moved in, water started pooling under the bathtub so it would depress and sink as you stepped around in it. I submitted a repair request and after two weeks, landlord “repaired” it by DRILLING HOLES in the floor of the tub and draining it by stepping on it. Never resealed the holes or tried to find the underlying leak. I pity anyone who lived below us.
#47
Where do I start?
– Gouged on price. This one didn’t bother me as much, since it’s a very in-demand area.
– The people he had hired to renovate it before we moved in were incompetent in many ways. For example, the wiring was so bad that when we wanted Internet the tech found it easier to run a whole new line from the phone box to the outlet.
– The first time it rained, water started leaking from the light fixtures.
– It turned out there was a hole on the roof. His “quick fix” was to cover the entire roof with a tarp “until he could get someone out to fix it”. It was then ignored for 3 months. Fortunately, one of my roommates knew a person on the city council who happened to live nearby, and the LL was told that there would be consequences if the hole wasn’t fixed.
– The hole was finally fixed – by the same person who had done the renovations in the first place. Guess what happened the next time it rained?
– Due to a quirk in the way the pipes were laid, there was a ~2 foot section of sewer main aboveground in the backyard. This leaked the entire time we lived there, and sewage was being absorbed into the groundwater.
– The walls were overrun with termites, to the point that multiple times I woke up or came back from work to find shedded wings on my bed or in my closet. After I moved, I found that a bunch of my books were ruined from burrowing insects. There were also silverfish.
– When we finally moved out, he took part of my security deposit. There was nothing egregious, though – just a lot of little things that were BS but I would have to go to court to dispute. I ended up deciding it wasn’t worth it.
#48
My apartment manager just told the three apartments upstairs that we have to find a place to stay for one to three nights while the stairs are being repaired. He’s not offering a hotel and just keeps saying he has no empty units to put us in.
Image credits: JessiicaaAnn
#49
My first apartment. The landlord tried to get my now ex to forge my signature on the lease, saying that I was going to sign anyways so this will make it faster.
The tile in the shower started to fall on me, which revealed a SHITLOAD of black mold. Like, the entire wall. Blamed me for it.
Each apartment had an individual gas furnace that was built into the AC closet, and it would use the AC to vent hot air into the apartment. Caused my power bill to be something like 150 for a small one bedroom. I had them turn off my furnace which dropped the power bill down to around 40 a month.
I found her in my apartment, just kind of standing there.
She’d bring people over to show the apartment without any notice. Came home one day to her doing that as well.
Last apartment. The apartment manager was overseeing several other buildings in town so he was there maybe once a week. The previous manager had a strict no dog policy on the second and third floor, this Wolfman Jack knockoff got rid of that policy and lazy dog owners would let their dogs s**t and p**s all over the hallways. I called him in a rage because I kept having to dodge fecal landmines all over the floor and he tried to retaliate against me by just ignoring any issue I had the rest of my time there.
The gym had a heater that made it to over 100 degrees, not even a joke. I almost fainted a few times, and I was the only person who used it. I asked him to turn it down to something less heat stroke inducing, since a guy from Florida shouldn’t get faint indoors in an Iowa winter. “Well I’ve gotten no other complaints from the tenants”.
The AC was this old surplus beast that would, without fail, break once a year for a week over the summer. It would get unbelievably hot over the summer, heat index through the roof. And he treated it as though it was just the most minor of inconveniences. I had a sedan, and as he wouldn’t hire a guy to plow the parking lot, he’d plow it whenever he came over. Again, once or twice a week.
#50
Landlord called my roommate asking for the “Black Lives Matter” signs displayed in my room be taken down. They’re on the second floor, facing the street for all to see.
Image credits: DiehlWithIt-
#51
I started the lease on a new apartment in July but couldn’t actually get there until August (new city on the other side of the country). The average temperature for that particular July was probably 105F. When I finally got to my new place, I was greeted by a blast of cold air. The AC had been set to 62 for almost a full month.
#52
**Me:**(My first week after moving in) “There is water dripping from the light bulb over the kitchen…” **Landlord:** “Its Probably just the AC again. I’ll be over next week. call me if you smell anything burning.”
#53
Moving internationally, I took a red eye flight. I was exhausted, edgy from a very turbulent flight and going through customs, and carrying all my worldly possessions in two of those giant duffel bags. I had paid my first and last months’ rent two weeks before, and my landlord assured me the apartment would be ready. He knew exactly when I was arriving.
It wasn’t. He wouldn’t even let me crash there while they finished working. I had to go hang out at the local public library for 10 hours while he got his s**t together. I also managed to lose my cell phone that day, and had to take a cab to the mall to get a new one.
That was on April Fool’s Day 2014. I’m not terribly superstitious, but I’m unlikely to try any international moves on April Fool’s Day again any time soon.