“There’s no place like home.”—Dorothy Gale, The Wizard of Oz
Although home is where the heart is, sometimes that’s about all that’s there. When one is stuck with a bad landlord, there can be no end to the horror stories of just how low some will go to avoid providing decent living conditions and service to their tenants. Read on for 42 examples of some poor Redditors' first-hand experiences with nightmare landlords who robbed the phrase "Home, Sweet Home" of all its meaning.
42. Health Care Can Be a Controversial Matter
I used to get medication shipped to me. It was a self administered shot, with a spring loaded needle casing. I had a safe disposal method, etc, all set up. It was a medical issue.
Well the little coolers of medicine each month went to the main office of my lousy apartment building. For the first year everything was fine, but then my building was sold to a new company and we got a new jerk running the place.
The first time my meds got shipped to me, I went down to get it from the office like always. First off there is a massive sticker that says "Refrigerate upon delivery." The previous people always just popped it into the fridge that was set up in the office for me. This woman did not. She left it in the sweltering back room instead. Rude and inconsiderate, but I could deal with it.
But then, when I asked for the meds, she did the thing where she mimed like she was handing it to me and then pulled it back when I reached for the box. She then asked me "Are these needles? Are you having needles delivered?"
I was like "That's not any of your business. Give me my medication."
She kept holding on to it and said "Well, some of the neighbors are concerned because needles usually mean drugs..."
Miss, my neighbors have never seen my needles and even if they did, you can't actually see the needle part because it's all encased in a spring loaded tube. There is no way my "neighbors are concerned" about this, they have no clue that this is something I need.
I told her again that it wasn't any of her business. She finally gave me the box, but she gave me the stink eye every time I received my medication after that.
Theresa, you're a nosy jerk, you know that?
41. An Interesting Business Model
Landlord 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 six 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 dishwasher 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 in fact that it rented out for $300 more a month than I had rented it for. It also rented out four days after I moved out. She did not have to do anything to move a new family in.
So a 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 nonsense 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 he was holding back laughter before he ruled in my favor.
40. A Scarce Resource
I've discovered that I might not get any water if too many other people in the building are trying to use water at the same time.
39. Changing Their Tune
I once had a landlady do our walkthrough and agree in writing that there was no damage to our property and that we would be getting all of our deposit back, take custody of our keys, and then walk us out of the building. Two weeks later we got a letter stating that they were keeping all of the security deposit because someone had gotten drunk, destroyed a screen in the window, gouged a hole in the wall, and dented the refrigerator. This occurred two days after we moved out. Turns out that she used the property as a place for her in-laws to stay over Thanksgiving and fully expected us to pay for their damages because our name was still on the lease. The judge was really hung up on why other occupants were in our apartment without our knowledge or consent if the woman's position was that it was still our apartment and therefore our liability.
38. Some People Are Actually Nice
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 indoors 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 tenant he's ever had and eventually paid me double my deposit for my troubles. Nice guy.
37. Losing a Game of Chicken
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.
36. Bluffing Works
We paid rent with electricity, gas, and water added on each month. One day, our power goes out. I call the power company and they tell me no one has paid the electricity bill in six months. Even though we were giving our landlord money to cover the electricity the whole time we lived there. I call him up and he says he'll fix it, it must be a mistake.
Two weeks later I'm threatening to take him to court and our power comes back on. That's good because I have no legal experience and had no idea what taking him to court would entail.
35. We Know Your Secret
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 our 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 two 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 six 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 heck 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 butt 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 four 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 an awful landlord.
34. Defying the Stereotypes
Just moved to a state where I knew nobody. Rented a room out of a house I found on Craigslist and a few months into the lease found out the landlord was sporadically paying her mortgage. She was being a weird lady anyways (she lived in the house, just renting out the unused rooms), and has left me with some good stories:
She is the only mean Mormon I've ever met. I hate that stereotype, but being raised in a non-Mormon part of the country I always thought Mormons were this random sect of Christianity that were just over the top considerate and kind. In my experience this stereotype is true, with this lady as the only exception. Never any alcohol or drugs in the house; if you walked in with a soda in your hand she'd take it from you and pour it down the drain. Would get mad if I laid on the couch all Saturday, asking why I'm not at work, but then text my boss (she had his number from the rental application) to ask why some days I'd have to leave the house so early for work. Definitely a good lesson about stereotypes.
33. The Art of the Steal?
My landlord had a fascination with Donald Trump. This was 2013-2014, so before he made a run for office. She had a ton of self help books, a lot about real estate, and they all had forwards by Donald Trump. One was titled "How to Get Rich Quick Off of Friends and Family" which was about buying more houses than you needed, renting out the extra space, charging more than market value because you know friends will pay it out of generosity, and how to keep your house without making all the mortgage payments. When I found out that she was 3+ payments behind after only living there less than a year (the state had a website of people that were pre-foreclosure, which is defined as being three or more payments behind) it was evident she was taking pages out of this book. Side note, my boss joked that if Trump actually ran for office, would she vote for him. I'm sure she did.
32. Trying to Tug On the Heartstrings
My lease was month to month, where I had to give 30 days notice that I was moving out. I did so, but when I was moving out I was roughed up a little bit by the boyfriend about moving out. A ton of stuff, guilt trip about she's going to foreclose if she doesn't have that room filled, they'll take me to small claims court if I leave, why can't I continue to pay her rent on top of my new apartment's rent to help her keep the house, etc. She was a PA, so if she wanted to work she could probably make good money, but she was working two to three days a week at some private practice that was flexible with her working that little and allowing her to take one to two week vacations often. The boyfriend didn't work, so IDK if he was paying rent to live with her or not. Despite being listed on the state's website for being 3+ payments behind, she bought another house a year later and was renting it out.
31. Employee Discount?
She was the only person I've never met that would reduce a tenant's rent if they would do her dishes and clean her bathroom. She had a backstory about a hurt wrist, but that never seemed to prevent her from rock climbing and surfing often. It seemed like laziness, but considering the late payments and work situation she'd want to be saving as much as she could.
30. Home Improvement
Last November I get a knock on the door of my "newly renovated" basement apartment from the fire department saying I'm living in an illegal apartment and will be evicted in three 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 my furniture, and he says "no, they’ll just work around it."
I then spent seven 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, paint cans, tools, and garbage in every nook, and paint splattered on the floor, windows, and all of my furniture including the mattress. 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."
29. Abandoning Post
I bought my house from my landlord this year (a tall, skinny house in a historic district that's kind of a hip German town), after renting it for a few years. It was constantly a struggle to get the landlord to do anything. All maintenance was done through a contractor, who they apparently were really bad at paying because he eventually just stopped working and showing up.
We even had the gutters break and rainwater start leaking through the wall and causing huge stains/mold to one of the rooms. They never fixed it. The basement is unfinished and filled with dirt along with all of the old crap from past tenants (there's an old Gateway computer monitor down there, along with old tables and rolls of carpet padding and old water heaters. Also found out the dryer has no vent out of the house). There was a tacked on kitchen (to make it a multifamily, which it was until I bought it) that was little better than plywood and had no insulation. They never fixed our fence that someone slammed into with their car while speeding down an alley behind my house.
28. Do Your Homework, People
My landlord got into a petty email argument with me because we replaced a door that had been broken, and when they had someone (in hindsight, I don't know who, you'll see why below) try and come by the house, they couldn't get in because the locks had changed. Even though I had tried to contact them multiple times about fixing the door and about the locks changing. They just did not care about this house or ever really even took care of it.
When my fiancé and I bought the house (we do love it, and are fixing it up), we were trying to find out construction and renovation information from my landlord for our mortgage. It turns out he had never been to the house, he lived somewhere else (way out west), and didn't actually know anything about the house. His best guess is that some of the plumbing was updated "in the 90s" when the second kitchen and bathroom were added.
Which worked out in our favor, because he didn't want to deal with a realtor and he didn't know the value of the neighborhood had gone way up, so he offered us the house at almost $150,000 less than other houses in the neighborhood/what the house and land are technically worth.
In the end, I came out on top with the price that I paid.
27. Music is the Universal Language
They promised me a unit in a quiet area of the building, then held outdoor concerts outside my window all summer. Wouldn't let me move out before my lease was over without a penalty of two months rent + forfeit security deposit.
They also towed my car from the resident parking lot two days before I moved out for having a flat tire (no notice given), to the furthest auto shop in town when there was a shop right across the street. Yea, towing companies charge by the mile.
26. Squirrels Can Make Nice Pets
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 that the place was a dumpy slum. 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 complaining 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.
25. The Silent Treatment
Probably not as bad as some others here but I just moved into a place and when I tried to get internet installed Comcast told me that my cable jack isn't actually connected to anything and I would need to get my landlord's permission for them to run a line.
My landlord has totally ignored me so now I'm stuck in an apartment that can't get internet for the next year.
24. Where’s Your Permit?
There was literally one handicapped parking spot in the entire townhome complex. He parked his jet ski in it.
23. Regime Change
I lived in a six unit apartment building owned by this nice old man. He was a good landlord and he and I got along great. I'd help him when he was around and we'd share a beer now and then. He sold the place to this young guy. I figured out pretty quick that I didn't care for him. Here is what happened:
In the middle of winter, he thought it'd be a good idea to start playing with the boiler he knew nothing about and broke it. In the middle of winter, we lost heat for three days. Being young and fairly easy going, I put a heating pad on my recliner, covered up with a blanket and that is how I kept warm for three days when my apartment was like 40F. He was apologetic and was sorry, so I didn't make a big fuss.
22. Uniting in Anger
Landlord decided that there was too much hot water for the building and turned the hot water heater way down. Literally, about two showers were all you could get out of the hot water tank for the entire apartment building. I was going into work at like 10 AM because there was no hot water. I called and complained and he kind of blew it off like a jerk until people started getting really pissed with him, then he turned it up.
21. Opening Up New Doors
My front door had that plastic type veneer on it and it was coming apart. I called to let the landlord know and he said he would use liquid nails to fix it. Knowing how unhandy the guy was, I knew where this was going already. Well, he used Liquid Nails and closed the door. The adhesive seeped out and glued my door shut. I called him and told him I was going to kick my door in to try and free it and if it broke, I wasn't to blame.
20. Blaming the Victim
The toilet wouldn't flush right. He blamed my wife for flushing sanitary products (which she didn't). I called his BS and said lets pull the toilet up. He said no because he didn't have a wax ring. I told him wait five minutes and I'd run to the hardware store and buy one, at no cost to him. He left. Never did fix that.
19. Just Why, Man??
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 neighbor upstairs flooded three apartments and kept their deposit.
18. A Plan With No Possibility of Unintended Consequences...
I lived in a few different apartments while I was in college and all my landlords were 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.
17. Merry Christmas!
Week before Christmas our heater went out during one of the coldest winters on record. Landlord said nope not fixing that, wait until the new year and don't call me again it's Christmas.
Well, we paid rent through an estate agent so I called her first and said what's my legal options here. She said "He said what? OK it'll be taken care of." That very afternoon a plumber showed up to fix it. He took a look around and asked us if we were aware our bathroom was not up to code. It's not? The next day we got a new toilet, bath and shower. Hearing the landlord arguing with the plumber and estate agent lady and then freak out at the cost that he was 100% legally liable for? Priceless.
16. Looking for Problems
Two years ago I was living in student apartments. They entered without my permission and fined me for drying dishes on a drying rack ($75 for a "mold hazard").
15. NOT Part Of Our Deal
They asked me to pick up THEIR DOGS' POOP IN THE BACKYARD. Who the heck...what the heck...why the heck....no....no...screw you, no!
14. Ever Hear of Knocking?
When I was 12 we moved into our new apartment. It was a two family apartment house. We rented out the upstairs apartment and our landlord lived below us in the first floor apartment with his wife. We lived here for 15 years.
The guy was a total jerk.
He thought nothing of invading our privacy and freezing us every winter and refusing to make repairs or improvements on our apartment.
When we first moved in, we had the habit of leaving our front door unlocked (but only during the daytime and only when we were home). Our landlord took advantage of this and would barge in without notice. Without knocking or ringing the doorbell. We'd be sitting in our living room watching TV, doing whatever when we would hear our front door being pushed open, someone bounding up the stairs, and the next thing we knew our landlord was standing there in our living room with us. We got tired of this REALLY FAST. So we learned to keep our door locked at all times from then on. Even so, he would still try to barge in. He'd try to open the door normally. When it didn't open, he'd then press his body against the door and try to force it open or break it down. He'd try this for a minute or two before finally giving in and knocking. He did this for many, many years. Many is the time I'd be standing at the top of the stairs, watching him trying to forcibly open the door. Waiting for him to knock before I would answer.
13. Federal Crimes
Even though we both had mail slots in our front doors, the mailman would deliver our mail in one bunch into a lone mailbox nailed up on the wall outside our front doors. If any of my family ever got to the mail first, we would separate our mail from theirs, leaving their mail in the mailbox. But if the landlord or his wife got the mail first, they'd grab the whole thing. Take it into their apartment and wouldn’t give us our mail until much later in the day or the next day or a couple days later.
I once subscribed to TV Guide. Normally it came in the mail on Thursday or Friday. One week Thursday came and no TV Guide. Friday, no guide. Saturday morning, no guide. Thinking it was lost in the mail, I went to the local grocery store on Saturday morning to buy that week’s guide. Next day, Sunday night, my landlord slipped my missing guide into our front door mail slot. He had it all that time.
He used to open our phone bill too. We knew this because he was calling us up every other day. We changed our number only to have him call again. And we never gave him our new number. So we had our number changed again. Only to have him call again later on after our new phone bill came in the mail. We changed our phone number again and finally he stopped calling. I guess he got the message.
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12. Peeping Tom
One time two of my uncles and a cousin came for a visit. One of my uncles went inside my apartment while I talked with my other uncle and cousin down the block from my place, alongside their parked car. They were facing my apartment while my back was to it. According to them they witnessed my landlord come out of his apartment, suspiciously look around up and down the block (remember, my back was to the apartment). Then tried to peek inside the little window in my front door. The only thing he could have seen was the bottom of our stairs that led up to the apartment. Then he placed his ear against the glass window in the door for a minute or two before going back into his apartment.
11. Cold Hearted Person
The worst part of living here was the winters. He froze us every winter. He gave us very little or no heat. Being a very old building, our apartment didn’t have a separate thermostat of our own so that we could adjust the heat for ourselves. Our landlord controlled how much heat we got and when. The housing law stated that a landlord must turn on the heat in October and must not turn it off completely until April. No matter how cold it got, he wouldn’t turn our heat on until the last week of October. And no matter how cold it still was, he'd turn it off for good after the first week of April.
When he did turn on the heat, it wasn't long before he turned it off again. About 15 minutes at the least. An hour and a half at the most. And after he turned it off, it would be a long while before he would turn it on again. And it wouldn’t be long before the cold crept back into our apartment. When he did turn it on, that would be cause for celebration. I'd throw up my hands and exclaim, "hallelujah! He's giving us heat!" That joy would be short-lived because it wasn’t long before he turned off the heat.
I became so accustomed to freezing while indoors that it never failed to take me by surprise that whenever I went visiting during the wintertime over someone else’s, a friend’s or a relative’s, house or apartment, no matter what day I was visiting or what time of the day it was, it was ALWAYS warm where they lived.
It was so freezing in our apartment that I was used to going to bed fully clothed, complete with long johns. Many is the time I would use the kitchen stove to try to heat up the apartment. I'd open the stove door, turn it up full blast, then close all the doors in between the kitchen and my bedroom so that the heat would travel up the hallway and into my bedroom.
Oh, you can be damn sure he kept his apartment nice and toasty warm all day, every day during the winter. How do I know? Because at the bottom of our stairs, behind our front door was a very small radiator. This particular radiator wasn’t connected to our other radiators in our apartment upstairs. Rather it was connected through the wall to his radiators in his apartment. And it was this little radiator that was on most or all of the time at the same time while our radiators were off. That bottom part of the stairs was the only place in our apartment that was consistently warm all winter long. Sometimes I would sit down there with a book just to keep warm for a little while.
One cold winter evening I was returning home from a friend’s (warm) apartment. I was walking home from the bus stop. As I reached the front of my apartment house, I turned my head and saw my landlord through his living room window. He was adjusting the thermostat on his wall and had his shirt sleeves rolled up as if he were in the tropics. I thought to myself, "Yeah, but I'll bet my apartment is like a damn freezer." I enter my front door and that little radiator behind the door was going full blast. I climbed the steps up to my apartment and sure enough the place was freezing. No heat. As a matter of fact he wouldn’t turn on the heat for our place until 5 am the next morning. That night, like many other nights before and after it, I slept fully clothed to keep warm.
10. Seems Like an Important Detail to Mention...
I rented a room from a guy who, a month after I moved in, got approval to sell the house. I found out when someone came in and told me to tell him the city council approved it.
The best part? He never even mentioned it was up for sale.
9. Just Passing Through
I was 19 and lived with two girlfriends of mine. Our landlord lived nextdoor. Our landlord decided she wanted to come check out how we were living one day, by breaking the lock on the front door and walking around our apartment. My roommate was asleep in her room and heard her come in. She screamed, and my landlord ran out. About two weeks later, almost the same thing happened except my roommate was in the shower. I stomped over to my landlord's house and lost it on her. I went as far as to print out a copy of the NJ tenants’ rights laws and tape them to every window on the front of the house. I guess she wanted to see if we were doing drugs or something in there... which I mean, yeah, we were, but come on lady.
8. Termites and Bowling Balls: A Recipe For Disaster
Had termites. They refused to believe me. Didn't send someone out for a month to check it. Sure as heck, Termites. Three months later it was fixed. I had never had termites, so I didn’t 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. Hated that place.
7. Cracking Under Pressure
We had a huge storm blow through, tons of rain, tornado warnings, the whole nine yards. It turns out that the storm drain was clogged in our parking lot so we had about ten inches of standing water in our parking lot. Nobody could drive their cars in or out of the lot. We called our 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.
6. “It’s Fine” is Pretty Ambiguous, Right?
My father's Landlord. Doesn't care that it’s either 80 degrees or 35 degrees in apartment. He has lived there for about eight months and has had two leaks which look forever to fix.
But here is the kicker. When my father signed the lease (two years) he was smoking, and asked "my smoking won't be a problem right?" Landlord: "no, no, it's fine"
Woman moves in upstairs, complains about the smoking. Landlord told her to SUE MY FATHER for $6,000 (how much it would cost her in losses to move).
WTF.
It's not a smoke free building but sadly in this state if she took him to court, she could very well win.
5. Unwanted Roommates
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 three months and just wanted the search to be over. We sign the lease, get the keys, start moving my boxes of stuff to be moved in.
Surprise, you got roaches! The German kind, because screw 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 lashed 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 two years before us and they had been living in this filth.
What occurred was six days of BS. At one point, the wife called me at 9:30pm, hysterical, because "why was I doing this?" "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 bent for knowingly letting us move into their hellhole.
We broke the lease and the landlords came over to collect the keys. Over the six 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."
4. That’s Just Outrageous
One apartment I rented had on the lease that they paid water and sewer. Three 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 $1,500 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 $1,500 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."
3. A Deal is a Deal
So he wasn't actually the landlord, but I rented a room from this dude for a month and he was an absolute PoS.
For starters he basically sold it to me as mi casa su casa, provided I don't go in his room or touch his truck. How I understood that and how he understood that were two very different things.
Again, he said I could use whatever was in the house, be it his DVD collection, the bow flex, kitchen tools, provided I don't mess with his truck or go in his room.
He then slowly started to put things off limits:
"Hey it's not a huge deal, but could you not sit in that chair, it's my chair, I don't let other people sit in it.
"The weight machine makes too much noise, there's a gym down the road."
"The microwave is using up too much electric, I don't think you should use it.”
I was basically relegated to my room.
He also asked me to front him $100 for his child support, said we'd call it an advance on rent.
I got out of there when he made a vague threat about the fact he had a criminal record due to my stove usage.
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2. Just Say No...to Fixing Things
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 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 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.
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1. What Happens Overseas Stays Overseas
Lived overseas, housing company managed multiple "landlord" properties. I had multiple issues with them.
First incident, was that we noticed ants started making their way into the house. But, instead of normal places, they were on the ceiling, in clumps. Thousands of them, and they weren't interested in food, they just were in palm-sized clumps along the edges of the ceiling. We called housing several times, to which one came out to look at them and say "sorry this is normal" and didn't want to do anything about it. They finally bought us special traps that helped.
Second and final time before we moved houses, I somehow pulled our oven door off, twice. The outer piece with the handle came away from the inner piece that faces the food. Once they drilled the door back together, the second time they just put it out of commission, and said I would have to wait until the owners of the home came over (we were in Japan, they lived in the US) and bought a new one. We were looking at almost two months until they would return. We complained that it was ridiculous to pay rent and not have a working oven for that long. The company then said instead we could buy an oven ourselves and then they would pay us back.
In the end, we complained so much about that house and what the company wasn't helping us with, nor the owners, so they allowed us to move into a different house owned by the loveliest guy who came by once a month and did yard trimming for us.
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