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72 Landlords Share Their Most Nightmarish Tenant Stories, And We Have So Many Questions
Renting out a property sounds, on paper, like a fairly straightforward arrangement. You need house; I have house. I want money, you have money. It is, in theory, one of the more civilised transactions available to two consenting adults. And then the tenant moves in, and somewhere between the lease signing and the first inspection, something goes profoundly, structurally, occasionally biologically wrong.
Reddit recently asked landlords to share their worst tenant experiences, and the thread is everything we need to know about human audacity behind closed doors. We have property damage that defies explanation. We have missing rent payments accompanied by excuses of genuinely impressive creativity. In these instances, the security deposit was never going to cover the trauma.
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#1
Not me, but my old landlord and the tenant who occupied the apartment I lived in before me. Sort of.
It was an old lady who lived all alone. She was on social security and her son handled her finances but never visited her in the first floor unit she occupied. He would swing by, take the mail from her mailbox, drop off the rent, and be on his way.
So no one knew she had d**d until the neighbors began to smell it. The police estimated that she'd been d**d on the floor of her bathroom for three months. The body had putrified and no small amount of her vital fluids had seeped through the old floor and into the crawlspace under the apartment. Some of it had even oozed past the lip of the door frame and into the hallway, where it had set up a kind of mold colony and habitat for wayward insects. But that was not the extent of the horror. The stench, I was told, had been so bad and the unit so hermetically sealed that the odor had built up and built up and built up until nothing in the apartment could hold it back. The smell had permeated the doors, the walls, the furniture, the appliances. Everything.
So my landlord, kind old man that he was, ripped out those doors and walls. Tore up the floor. Took out the windows while he was at it. Gutted the bathroom and two feet of dirt below it. Completely re-did the unit with brand-new materials, double paned modern windows, new tile, excellent hardwood floors.
But this unit was in California, you see, where the law states that if someone has d**d in the residence in the last three years you have to disclose it to new tenants. So no one would rent from him. "How did she d*e," they would ask. "Where did she d*e?" "How did you find her?"
No one wanted the apartment.
So when my roommate saw that the list price had fallen 40% of the cost of surrounding units, he arranged for us to see the unit. We didn't care that someone had d**d there. We only cared that the clean-up had been legit. And it certainly had. Everything new, everything clean, everything excellent.
So we got a lease on a two bedroom, 1500 sq. ft apartment in Beverly Hills for $1000/month plus $100 for a tandem parking space. Unheard of.
All because some kid was too lazy to visit his mom, even when he was right outside her door.
For my landlord, he was a wonderful man who took a horrible financial hit as a result of this negligence (of both the mother and the property). A word of advice to landlords: Call your tenants to see if you can help them with anything, and also to make sure they're still alive.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago (edited)
That's so awful. I understand there are elderly people without family who end up d.ying alone, but to be so close and not check on your own mother is horrifying. My mother is alone now and I'm at her house every few days - inside it helping her with things or just visiting. And honestly as long as it had been cleaned and repaired I wouldn't have a problem living where someone d.ied. Maybe if it had been a mass m.urder or something I'd say no, but the natural d.eath of an older person doesn't bother me. It's going to happen to all of us eventually.
RELATED:
#2
First day I moved into my apartment last year, my landlord told me about the worst kid to ever live there.
He told us that there was this kid subletting an apartment over the summer for his rather shy sister. No problems, the sister was normal and he came with good recommendations. However on the first night there, he threw a rager of a party. Loud music, too many people, didn't end until the police needed to be called for noise violations.
The next morning, my landlord comes up and tells him that, get togethers are fine, but parties of that scale are not allowed, it was in the lease he signed, and he was willing to give the kid a second chance.
Bad decision. More violent party this time, with property damage to boot. Landlord stormed up there and told him to have his s**t out of the apartment by tomorrow at noon.
The kid was pissed off, and decided to throw a "getting evicted party" and got about 5 of his friends in there to trash the place and break everything they could find. They punched holes in the walls, broke lights and smashed the windows. It all came to a grinding halt when the kid decides to headbutt a hole in the wall and hit a supporting metal beam and broke his neck.
The kid got charged with absolutely everything, the girls who lived there previously were politely told to not return the next year and the kid missed his freshman year of university and $10,000 dollars worth of scholarships because he couldn't leave the hospital or move independently.
My landlord pretty well told me that as long as I don't do anything that stupid, that we will probably get along.
#3
I've got some good ones for this.
Had a whole house being rented. Evicted tenant. Went to clean up after they left and this was the basement. They had a dog that went in the basement to c**p. Instead of cleaning it up they poured latex paint on it to seal in the smell. The dog kept c***ping and they kept pouring. A latex-dog p*o lasagna filling an entire room. The floor was a mound about 4ft high and 10ft wide, filling the entire basement, of nothing but layers of latex paint and dog c**p from several years of them living there. Took air hammers and chisels and weeks of work to clean.
Once we got that done we were able to get the the storage closet in the basement. It was jammed shut from this c**p on the floor but the door had a hole in the top. They used this closed off room with the hole as a diaper disposal for their infant. A room about 4ftx4ft filled to the top with years of dirty baby diapers.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
That's beyond disgusting. How could people possibly think that was a better idea than putting things in the garbage???
Landlords get a lot of hate. Lord knows I have had my fair share of bad ones. But they deserve a little slack. Research from Pegasus Insight found that 26% of UK landlords experienced rent arrears in the past year alone, more than one in four. Landlords are just running a business, so if money is constantly late, I wouldn't be very happy either.
And the property damage figures are equally grim, with between 24% and 29% of landlords reporting active damage to their properties by tenants every single year. Not even just wear and tear. Actual, deliberate, or catastrophically negligent damage to someone's property and investment. The landlord experience is not, for a significant portion of people doing it, the passive income fantasy that the internet would have you believe.
#4
My parents used to be landlords back in the early 2000's. There are a lot of stories but this one sticks out to me the most.
One of their tenants was a nice French couple. Pretty new to the city, broken English and all. Didn't complain much never caused any problems. The husband used to have polite conversation with my dad and brought up his cat being sick. His fur falling off, losing a lot of weight, which was very odd since everytime they left the apartment for work they would leave food for this cat and come back home to an empty bowl. So they took the cat to a vet with no prevail.
Until a couple of weeks later..
The husband comes to my parents door and starts complaining about a lizard in their apartment. Confused as to why this dude didn't just throw it outside, since it was probably someones pet that went astray, he decided to have a look for himself after the French mans persistence.
My dad gets to the apartment and the man tells him its in the closet. So he swings it open casually but falls backwards from pure shock.
A m***********g komodo dragon sticks out his slithering tongue right at my dad as he hurriedly calls animal control. If you didn't know, komodo dragons are f*****g huge. Far from the size of a tiny lizard.
This dragon made a den with whatever was in that closet and grew up in it for months, feeding itself with the poor cats meals. Very eerie to think about that couple living with a gigantic creature in their closet for months.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
Komodo dragons only live in one place in the world. And in zoos. They're not roaming unnoticed in cities. I'm thinking it was another large lizard, like a monitor, and the OP got it mixed up. Monitors can get huge and they sometimes end up in stores and dwellings.
#5
We had one tenant who wouldn't pay rent. We followed the protocols to evict him but he kept getting the judge to agree to an extension. He ended up staying rent free for 7 months. He also complained about anything and everything. "The neighbors are too loud" "Someone's car alarm went off across the street", "one of the neighbours has a cat and I'm allergic". There is literally nothing I can do to remedy those situations.
When he finally got evicted he left the apartment in shambles. Holes in the walls, curtains stained with what I can only assume was doo doo, and the rug was littered with cigarette burns.
I wouldn't wish someone like that on my worst enemy.
#6
She brought three cats and drama. It was my fault for accepting someone who wanted to keep three cats. Surprisingly, none of the trouble stemmed from her pets, which she kept immaculately clean. In fact, it was the *cleaning itself* that grew out of control.
The first few months passed peacefully, with no problems. Then, she started lagging with her rent. This wouldn't have been a terrible issue, since I'm tolerant of a few days late and maintain a healthy savings buffer for unexpected expenses, vacancies and late rent checks.
It was when I surprised her in the middle of one of her cleaning binges that things began to disintegrate. I had stopped by to grab some supplies in the house for a minor repair, or for a monthly inspection. She didn't expect me to appear in the building, and was carrying a spray bottle and rag in her hands. Apparently, this had been going on for some time. Another tenant warned me of some eccentric behavior she had noticed in her housemate, but didn't go into details. I should have seen the warning signs, but brushed it off at that moment.
Her cleaning and reorganizing grew more intense, until it transformed into hostility towards the other tenant who did not share her intense focus. She insisted that the three of us meet, to compile a schedule of how and when the other tenant would participate in cleaning of the house. The “Cleaner” rejected any proposals that did not explicitly set an hour and minute along with the specific cleaning tasks for her housemate. The other housemate found this absurd, and would only agree to a general description of the cleaning tasks. Our negotiations failed to converge on an acceptable schedule, and I had to excuse myself while the Cleaner shouted for me not to leave. After that, she bullied the other tenant and patrolled the kitchen any time her housemate walked through or prepared coffee.
Was it an obsession, or just a front? She stopped paying rent, and this drama might have been just a distraction to earn extra time out of sympathy. In the end, I had to evict her. Strangely enough, both of them left at the same time, and I think that she might have shamed her housemate into footing the bill for her next apartment.
Looking back on the whole thing, I'm surprised that she didn't find more success in a job where she cleaned houses. It won't make you a billionaire, but it will pay the bills and can always be found, especially in my city.
#7
We had a tenant who lived in a shared apartment room for a few months. His flatmate was complaining about smells and cleanliness issues. When we checked, everything seemed sort of normal, very messy, but nothing extraordinary. After the guy failed to pay his rent again, we evicted him.
One day before the eviction date I sat with him and we agreed that he could leave some heavy furniture in the room to be picked up a few weeks later, but the room needs to be otherwise cleared out and he has to hand over the keys. He agreed that he would be able in the following morning.
Well, the next day he did not give the keys back in the morning and his room door was locked. I texted him and he claimed he had forgotten to return the keys and took them with him. I explicitly asked if the room was cleared out - except for the furniture - and he wrote "Yes.".
I fetched the spare key and opened the door and to my disbelief, the room was not cleared out.
At first I only noticed about 8 plastic shopping bags on the ground, a lot of rubbish, including rubbish bags lying around openly with actual rubbish in them. Dirty dishes all over the place, especially on the table. A lot of personal items still flying around.
At first it seemed his room was so messy, that he simply couldn't finish cleaning it up and had to leave after starting. Since the room was supposed to be rented to another person a few weeks later (luckily I already expected some troubles and postponed this), I had to start cleaning it up.
Then the real horror came to light. The plastic bags were filled with plastic bottles, and in those - you guessed it - was urine. There were about 30 or 40 of them, each containing about 1 or 1.5 liters of urine. The dishes were also awful, they have been standing around for several weeks by the smell and larvae in them. The least problematic dishes "only" hat mold/fungi on them...
Opening the wardrobe it was clear that he had stored wet clothes in it. The whole thing was already falling apart and solid wooden boards were just bending from their own weight, so soaked were they. The wall behind the wardrobe was full of mold (luckily only on the wallpaper surface, otherwise this would have gotten really expensive). Under the table was some spilled food on the carpet, which was moldy as well. The same for under the bed, which he had apparently two king-size mattresses on. The stench was really strange, a mix of all the dirtiness in the room and some scented candles or room spray or something.
It took me and 2 other people about 3-4 hours to superficially clean the room out. It took another few days of a few hours work each to renew and clean up the whole room (mold removal, wallpapers, carpet, cleaning doors and windows, ...)
We never saw anything of the rent that was still due and that guy even had the audacity to threaten to sue us. Also found out that apparently he has very high debt everywhere, so suing ourselves would not bring us the money back. We got really careful after this with our tenants.
The security deposit exists specifically to protect landlords from tenant damage, which sounds like a reasonable system right up until you look at how it actually plays out. Industry data shows that in 80% to 90% of all tenancies, tenants receive all or part of their deposit back. This means that in the cases where genuine damage has occurred, the deposit is covering it only a fraction of the time.
In fact, 90% of the time that a tenant causes significant property damage, the repair costs completely eclipse the deposit, leaving the landlord to cover the difference out of pocket. The deposit is basically just a gesture of good faith, because it won't cut it when the landlord needs a financial safety net.
#8
My time to shine!
My father, Mr landlordgb, has some stories from the 70s that can outshine mine. For some reason it was a crazy time!
The best one was a man who lived in a studio flat and seemed to have a few issues. He covered his entire floor in bin bags and essentially tried to create an indoor swimming pool. He was on the ground floor, however the huge amount of weight from his (presumably semi successful?) plan meant part of his floor collapsed and he came crashing through into the flat below.
Other than this to be fair most tenants have been pretty good. I'm sad that our longest serving tenant (53 years in the same flat!) is moving out as climbing the stairs is getting a little tricky.
#9
I own one house that I rent out. I took a small apartment to be closer to work. Had the same tenant for 6 years, rarely any issues.
One day he decides to stop paying. This happened about a month into a long work strike I was in. So I have no work income and no rental income (about $800 after paying mortgage). He says that I didn't fix a few relatively minor things and I was forcing him to live in unlivable conditions. It was: broken sliding glass door handle, 1 cracked kitchen tile, leaky refrigerator. I scheduled to go out and fix it several times but he always canceled.
Anyways, his dad used to be a lawyer and the tenant started making threats that he wasn't paying anything until I fixed stuff. At this point I decided f**k him. Served notices to pay or leave. He said go f**k yourself, he'll own my house at the end of this B******t and told me to get a lawyer. I didn't. I just had him served with eviction papers.
On court day he pays me everything he owed me and messages me 'not to lie to the court'. he didn't show up for court , so I win and a sheriff will be tossing him on his a*s within 2 weeks.
A few days before he was getting evicted he contacts me and asked me to please not evict him and that he'll cut the s**t out and pay his rent. Since the prime real estate selling season was over I decided sure. Raised the rent. He's been good for 2 months now.
The case of Elizabeth Hirschhorn is the kind of story that makes property lawyers salivate and landlords reach for something stronger than tea. Sascha Jovanovic, a homeowner in Brentwood, Los Angeles, originally rented his luxury guest house to Hirschhorn through Airbnb for a short-term stay. When the stay ended, she declined to leave. What followed was 570 days of rent-free living in a multi-million dollar property.
Hirschhorn countersued Jovanovic for extortion and emotional distress, and her lawyers identified that a shower in the property had been built without a specific city permit, which, under Los Angeles's strict housing ordinances, meant the unit could be classified as an illegal rental. An illegal rental means no rent is technically owed. The legal gridlock this created kept her in the property for over a year and a half before police finally oversaw her departure.
#10
Story from my Uncle.
An asian family moved into his building. They owned a restaurant.
Some time after they moved in, the apartment directly below them was complaining about water damage in their ceiling. Uncle goes to check it out and sure enough, much of the ceiling has water damage. Can't find any broken pipes or the like so he goes upstairs.
He explains the situation to the asian family upstairs and says he just needs to investigate the water problem. At first they won't let him in. Then when he finally manages to get in he finds they have built A FARM IN THE LIVING ROOM.
They literally boarded up the living room, filled it with dirt, and were growing crops. Water damage was basically from them having to water said plants.
#11
I own a few houses, all of them have tenants. For the most part everything has been fine....except for the one tenant.
Important details. I pay for everything in the rent because I didn't want to deal with tenants who got behind on utilities etc. It's just easier that way, all in one price. Each suite has a basement suite and a main floor suite.
Ok. So the tenant from hell....well the first thing she did was get a duck. Yes. A live duck. It s**t everywhere and squawked constantly. Due to a loophole in the lease caused by my own naievity (I said small pets, with no specifics) it took me quite some time to make sure the duck was gone. Next it was rats...except she let them breed so they were bloody everywhere, including their s**t. She also seemed to think old takeaway containers were a great home decoration. So we've got a colony of semi domestic rats, old food everywhere, and yes her two children living in this. She would manage to set the stove on fire at least once bi weekly, frequently had "family" stay for longer than allowed (including inebriated and high people passed out on the lawn) and she apparently decided to sublet my garage at the property to other people as a way of recouping some of the rent. It took me about 8 months and thousands of dollars in legal fees to get her out, and then another thousand + for professional cleaning.
Worst part of this is...she was my friend at the start.
#12
Latest: Rabbits loose and breeding in master bedroom. They just turned them loose in there on the carpet. Pig in side yard. Yes, actual PIG. This house is in the middle of a town. Pulled off shower spigot and handles so no showering in the house. Pulled down curtain rods, curtains, etc.
Two years ago: Parent rented one year, kid rented the next year. There was two years' worth of dog s**t in the backyard when they moved out! They never picked up a single t**d.
Many years ago: They built a fenced in pen against the back of the house and threw all their garbage in it. I paid the garbage, all they had to do was take it to the curb! I had to clean up two years worth of garbage, dirty diapers, food stuffs, etc. which was full of rats, mice, roaches and various other beasties. OMG!
Linda and Russell Callahan are the closest thing the rental market has to a full-time criminal enterprise. This husband-and-wife duo spent several years systematically defrauding independent landlords using a refined method. They would identify high-end properties, approach landlords with forged financial documents, fake references, and in some cases stolen identities, secure the keys, and immediately stop paying rent.
From that point, they deployed every available legal mechanism to drag out the eviction process for months (sometimes years) before law enforcement finally forced them out and they simply moved on to the next property and the next unsuspecting landlord. The scam unravelled when local journalists identified the pattern across multiple cases and published it, and criminal charges followed.
#13
I'm a landlord, but this was something my crazy cousin did. He built a full on skate half-pipe ramp in his 4th floor Manhattan walkup. It was insane, and took up basically the entire place.
I have no idea what it took to build, but to get rid of it they just parked a truck outside and tossed the bits out the window into the truck below.
#14
A month ago we had a tenant whose friends were asking us if we had heard from him. No one had seen him in two weeks. A couple of serious heat waves come through and I go to the apartment to see if he's in there d**d.
I get to the apartment and there are flies everywhere and the smell of cat p**s. I prep myself mentally that there's definitely a d**d guy in there. Open the door, two cats run up to me. They're seriously hungry and thirsty. I start calling out the tenant's name to no reply.
I walk toward the bedroom and see his body underneath the blanket. I walk closer to see him and his head had melted into the pillow and his back was covered in maggots. The grey color of his body is something I've never seen before and will never forget. F**k, I had a few stiff drinks that night.
#15
I have a couple of good ones;
I got a call from my tenants saying there was a water leak, I arrived to find that the tap on back of the house was pulled off the wall and leaking water everywhere, I asked the tenant what happened and she told me that it was just like that when she went outside. I turned the water off and while fixing the pipe I heard banging and saw the garden shed shaking like it was about to fall down.
I went over and had a look to find a pony "hidden" in the shed, when I asked the tenant about it she told me "Well when I had it tied to the house water started coming out"
I had to take the bond of the same tenant as when I went in for final inspection I found that the lounge room floor was covered in burns from a clothes iron, when she was told that she would lose her bond her excuse was "because you are kicking me out, I got stressed, and when I stress I drink and I wanted to get back at you for kicking me out"
So Classy....
Texas provided one of the most extreme examples of tenant damage. A property owner returned to her home after a lengthy legal battle to find it not simply damaged or dirty, but completely stripped. The occupant had sold all of the large appliances online. They had then held a garage sale on the front lawn, selling the landlord's personal furniture, family electronics, and household goods to the neighbours.
All that was left was rotting food, destroyed drywall, and piles of rubbish. The financial devastation was total. The neighbours, presumably, got some excellent deals on second-hand appliances and have chosen not to think too hard about where they came from.
#16
2 bedroom unit, rented to two girls. [Grown woman, mind you with jobs etc]. Complained there were roaches [previous tenant had no roach problem, we even had it cleaned and so none]. We get it taken care of, still complained there were. Now we're thinking she or her roomate brought them.
Skim to them both leaving on Oct 31. We get the key and check the unit, it is trasheddd. They left most of their behind, bottles on the counter, glasses, plates, cutlery, clothes, shoes, food just all over the place. And roaches...lots of them.
We call junk removers, they dont remove unless it's roach free. Called pest control; they advise to remove the things before they do their jobs. FML.
#17
My parents have owned properties for a while, so there are a number, but the one that I'm personally invested in is the last tenant. They decided to rent out my childhood home and I suggested it to a coworker. I had worked with this woman for several years, and thought she and her family were decent people. I trusted them.
They brought bed bugs into the place, did quite a bit of damage to the walls. They also pulled out and sold 100 year old hardwood trim, removed the central air unit and sold it, and just generally f****d the place up. They then proceeded to skip town after being kicked out once they found out that their wages were being garnished(show up to your court dates, kids).
Having tenants leave behind a pile of trash, horrifying bathrooms, and holes in the walls is common, but I hold a bit of a grudge on this one specifically.
#18
My extended family are, or were, landlords. Not sure if they got out of that what with the kind of c**p you sometimes have to deal with.
One story I heard was my uncle was having a conversation with someone outside a flat he was letting to some students. As the two were talking a couch came crashing out through the front window. I don't know how long that lot stayed after that.
The better story is another uncle had a nightmare family staying in a flat he owned. He had to kick them out because they caused nothing but trouble. Their son was sitting exams so they asked if he could stay until they were finished and my uncle said yes. Eventually he left ans my uncle went to see what damage was done to the flat. He found it immaculate, everything was clean and tidy, yet something seemed off. He went from room to room but could not find so much as a stain. Satisfied with the condition the flat had been left in he exited a room and went to close the door. That's when he realised what was wrong. There were no doors, anywhere. They had stolen every single interior door.
Since this thread has been somewhat one-sided, the Independent Landlord offers a gentle reminder that being a good tenant is neither complicated nor particularly demanding. Pay your rent on time. Take care of the property as though it belongs to someone else, because it does. And communicate clearly with your landlord when something goes wrong rather than ignoring it until it becomes significantly more expensive to fix. Three things that should come naturally to most people, so make the effort, people!
#19
Obligatory not me, my grandfather.
He was(retired) a doctor at a Children's Hospital. He decided to rent this house to some young nurses he worked with. Well I guess stuff started happening and they weren't paying rent. Now my Grandfather is the best man I have ever known. Intelligent, kind, giving.. I mean hem was an oncologist for children! You have to be a good person to do that. They must have pushed him really hard. He eventually told them they had to leave.
What do these young nurses do?
Trash the house. **S**t** in the sinks and on the floor. They tore the house apart! He had to do a lot of work after to fix everything.
They s**t in the sinks! They worked with him. Who in their right mind does that!
He called their parents and told them what they had done. I think there were also repercussions at work.
#20
We're military and rented out our house when we had to move duty stations. We had a property management company overseeing the day to day stuff. Basically we just sent money when something big broke. They would send us a yearly report full of normal maintenance things and on top of that, notify us of things that needed immediate attention. The HVAC busted one summer and needed replacing within 24 hours. The tree in the backyard got hit by lightening and took off a corner of roof. We really depended on the management company to let us know how everything was going.
We moved back into the house a year ago after 6 years gone, only to discover our management company passed every single tenant's move out inspection despite numerous lease infractions. Broken doors, holes in walls, towel bars hanging by a very literal loose s***w, screens missing, landscaping 10 kinds of f****d up, trash and cigarette butts stuffed into each and every air conditioning/heating vent, windows that had been sealed (painted) shut for over 2 years, cockroach infestation, f****d up paint, huge room ruining carpet stains, pets when there shouldn't have been pets, broken appliances, trash left behind, and to top it all off, the place hadn't been cleaned and no one had put a filter in the HVAC system for what must have been over a year.
We're still repairing. Still fixing years of a***e and neglect. We walked in the house and my husband and son immediately had asthma attacks. The tenants were sucky, obviously, but a whole hell of a lot of money could have been saved if the property management company had done it's f*****g job and taken the security deposits from s****y tenants.
How does one live like that? Treat other people's property like that? We are not realtors or property hoarders. You f*****s literally ruined my actual home, that I fantasized about returning to, that I bought when I was pregnant, to raise my children in, that I signed for on my f*****g birthday. You didn't wreck the house of some faceless bank or corporation. You slopped all over my memories like filthy f*****g pigs. Who the f**k stuffs garbage in air registers?! You could have set my s**t on fire and k****d yourselves. You were literally putting out burning cigarettes in trash filled air vents. What the f*****g f**k were you thinking you goddamned dipshitted a*****s?! And what the hell did you spill on literally half of the living room?
Holes in walls and broken doors are easy enough to fix, carpeting was ripped up and replaced. I had to hire a landscaping company to fix both front and back yards, had to hire a fire restoration company to clean all of the air ducts of more than a year of soot, grime, foot and pet smell, and had to replace all of my appliances. We patched, spackled, and painted for weeks. We still can't get the f*****g kitchen window open.
We took the property management company to court and settled for the amount of every single tenants' security deposit. It didn't cover all of the damage.
Tl;Dr don't ever rent out your home. Humanity is f*****g awful.
#21
Throwaway (but I really like this username...)
Tenants accidentally burned down my 2-unit building. Honest accident; s**t happens.
Building was a total loss, had to be demolished. Insurance covered mortgage only (not recent renovations), and demolition costs exceeded insurance allotment by tens of thousands of dollars.
In the fallout, I had to file for bankruptcy.
All of that I could handle. But when the tenants asked for their security deposit back, that's what pissed me off.
In the interest of complete fairness, Avail also has some guidance for landlords, because the tenant from hell does not always emerge from a vacuum. They urge landlords to respond to tenant messages within 24 hours. You should also put everything important in writing, including rules, fees, and any changes to the arrangement, because verbal agreements are worth exactly nothing when things go sideways.
And maintain professional boundaries while remaining polite and fair, because a landlord who treats a tenant with contempt tends to get a property back in a condition that reflects that contempt. The relationship works better when both parties treat it like one.
#22
Several years ago I found a missed call from my renter after a nice long 4th of July holiday weekend. The voicemail went something like this, "Jordan was taking a shower and broke the handle on the shower and now we can't get the water off." I called right away (one or two days had gone by) and told them how to turn off the main. Yes water was still coming out until I called. These people truly were i****s. They would call for a simple clogged toilet. And when they stopped paying the rent and utilities, they threw away all of the smoke detectors because they couldn't get them to stop chirping. (The smoke detectors were wired to the house electrical as well as battery) I like to think there is a special place in hell waiting for them.
#23
Not me, but my best friend and his father run a property management company nearby.
They had a a couple for tenants in the third floor of a building that were pissed off, out of work, alcoholics and apparently just not nice people.
They were getting evicted and knew it, but in my state that is a a LONG process (3+ months). So, they proceeded to take anything of value and destroy everything else. They took the dishwasher, refrigerator and some carpet. They destroyed the closets, bathroom fixtures, cabinets, walls, etc. They even s**t in a bucket and left it in the unit, just cuz.
And then.. the Coup de grace...
The guy used to work construction and mixed up some quick-setting concrete and poured it into EVERY Drain. It literally destroyed most of the plumbing in the building as the pipes all drained down to the floors below. They had to tear the walls apart and completely redo all of the plumbing it touched.
I mean, it was terrible and one of the biggest a*****e moves I've ever heard. But, on the other hand, the best way I've ever heard of completely f*****g your landlords.
#24
I had a tenant remove the kitchen island and bring it outside by the pool because they needed an outdoor serving area.
The landlord and tenant relationship is, at its best, one of mutual respect. At its worst, it is a legal nightmare, a financial catastrophe, and occasionally a garage sale on someone's front lawn. The stories in this thread sit firmly at the worst end of the spectrum, which makes them entertaining to read and harrowing to have lived through.
Most tenancies are fine. Most tenants pay their rent, take reasonable care of the property, and leave without incident. The ones that don't, however, tend to leave a mark on the walls, on the finances, and on the landlord's willingness to ever do this again.
Are you a landlord who has a hair-raising story to share? Head straight to the comments!
#25
My parents had some tenants when I was probably 7 or 8 that never paid the rent and they wound up getting evicted. My parents decided that they would save some money and we would just clean the place up ourselves. This was their worst idea ever.
I didn't know what a lot of the stuff I saw that day was until much later in life. The first thing I saw when we walked in the door was a fish tank full of d**d, exotic fishies. In the bedroom we found used c*****s, used tampons, and used needles. Like, just laying around. Once we saw that bedroom my parents gave up and hired a cleaner but I heard what else they found.
They found a cat shoved into the toilet of the master bathroom. It was terrible.
Edit: to those who are wondering, my parents did report them for animal a***e/neglect but unfortunately nothing came of it.
#26
Used to have a job that involved cleaning and minor repairs of rental apartments and houses between tenants. Usually it was easy enough, but the ones who were evicted often made it a point to wreck the place on the way out.
One particular a*****e decided to pack plumber's putty into the sink and bathtub drains, then turn the taps on before he left. They had to get professional contractors to fix most of it, but I got to rip out a bunch of stinky wet carpet and water-damaged floorboards.
#27
Was renting a house and subletting a room to an 18yr old couple. Real nice, considerate, devoute Christians. Had to leave for 2 weeks and asked them to clean the house spotless so we could get the security deposit back and in turn, pay them for the trouble.
Came back a couple days early to find they had completely trashed the entire house (crack den status), moved the matresss down into the living room, including our TV. Went through all of our stuff and incorporated it into their stuff, adopted 2 cats 2 days after we left (no pets, found the adoption papers) kitty litter in every square inch of carpet, used condoms everywhere, the whole house smelled like cigarettes (no smoking), pawned our $800 drum set and $200 bong and stole most of my sentimental keepsakes I had kept in a small box since I was a child.
Cops were called and they were in the green legally, proceeded to pack up whatever they wanted (including our stuff) and left with their parents who "didn't care" what their kids had done.
F**k Reno, Nevada.
#28
I work in property management, I used to work at a high rise in downtown San Diego. I had a resident who would constantly complain about things that were out of our control, and then ask for a rent credit for his "inconvenience." These complaints included: too many homeless in the area, the restaurant across the street smells, tired of the dog next door barking when the owners come home (barks for only a couple minutes) etc.. My personal favorite (where I just went off on him) was when he was parked in front of our building (a designated loading zone) and he received a parking ticket. This is a public street, mind you, so the only personnel that can give out tickets in this area are the meter maids with the city. He comes in barking at me about this ticket and asks us for reimbursement and an additional credit added to his account due to the emotional stress. I explained to him that it was the city and we have nothing to do with it and that your request is absurd. People will ask for any sort of reimbursement for the stupidest things.
So I kindly ask, if you live in an apartment community, please be nice to the leasing professionals and management. I am not the reason your dishwasher stopped working and no I didn't decide how much your rent was. Thanks!
#29
I rented one of my house to a gal i worked with. Mother of 2, married. Did ok at work didn't think much of it
It was my first and last time renting out. I didn't know the laws well for my state. I was *very* nice in that i was forgiving if rent was a few days late but she never paid for the deposit as i was also a student and was busybwith school and *needed* someone in that second home so i didn't have to pay.
She took me for a ride. Knew all the laws and had to go to court twice. I was lucky in that A) we communicated via text and i SAVED every message and gave a copy to the judge and B her boss wouldn't give her the day off to go to court so her husband of whom seemed to also be along for the ride was stuck trying to defend them not paying. She tried to say i said s**t when i didn't but those messages saved my a*s and luckily they got kicked out with very little damage to the house.
#30
My family has had rentals all throughout my life. By far the worst renters have been family and friends. My moms worst was her long term boyfriends daughter, her apartment caught fire and my mom let her rent an old mobile home. Not long after moving in she almost burned that house down too. She ended up evicting her for non payment. That same house was rented afterwards by my older sister and she neglected to notify us of any needed repairs. Had to replace the carpet, subfloor in the whole place.
The last renters in my moms nicest unit ruined brand new laminate with spills, broke a pedestal sink in half and left pretty much every appliance in non working order. They even changed the locks without telling us. I vacuumed three rooms for 10 hours and the dirt was still coming up. I don't think they ever vacuumed.
#31
My mum rented out a house to this nice mum, her young son and they're two dogs. She wasn't great at paying on time but my mum sympathised as she knew what it was like to struggle with money as a mum and was very forgiving. When mum had enough she had to ask her to leave. When we all went to get the house ready for viewings it was disgusting. There was dog p**s and s**t rubbed into the carpet, on the walls, in the wardrobes etc. The house was vile. So much for beinv thankful.
#32
Bronx landlord. Had a tenant stop paying. I tried to work with her to get the Department of Social Services to pay a portion of her rent. After a year, nothing ever materialized of it. I went to evict, and here I am, 7 months later still trying to get her out. The judge keeps giving her more time to get DSS to try to pay. They've already denied it twice, but the Bronx housing court is just there to let tenants get by as long as possible without paying. It's the most tenant friendly court in the nation.
Another Bronx tenant refused to sign a new lease. He also stopped paying, and I went to evict after 8 months of nonpayment (keep in mind, the city taxes me as a class 2A building, taking $400+ a month for an apartment that rents for $1400). So tenant moves out, but his son (30 year old convicted felon) stays behind. I now have to evict him, his girlfriend, and the three friends that moved in. I gave them a blank lease to show them what a new one would look like, and offered to sign it if they came up with the arrears. No dice. They came up with not a dollar. Five adults had zero money.
We get to court, and the judge starts talking about the blank lease I gave them, and how it's basically as if I offered them the lease. My attorney and I are both shocked. The judge was ready to throw out 3 months of waiting on the courts, on a completely fabricated technicality. I can always spend thousands to appeal, but that makes no sense, and the judges know that. Luckily my leases state they are only valid if the 1st month's rent and security deposit are paid. F**k Bronx judges.
#33
I run a successful incubator in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of my incubatees figured out he could live with me rent free for a year because squatters rights prevent me from kicking him out, and the process of getting him removed legally can take a very long time in court. He smoked in the house, left his fish guts in the sink, ate my Fage Yogurt, and makes prank phone calls at inappropriate times.
#34
Had a tenant call me to put in a maintenance request because their microwave wasn't working and the fridge door wasn't working and would not shut. I go up to their apartment and check out the fridge with the tenant next to me. I then proceeded to move a milk slightly farther into the fridge (that is what was blocking the door from shutting completely). Then I looked at the microwave and saw it had no power. Checked to see if it was connected, it wasn't.
#35
My grandma owns several rental properties. Three stories stick out in my mind:
1: They built a chicken coop on the front porch with a chicken door into the house
2: Old house dating back to the 1890s, still had the original door with the original lead crystal glass... they broke it and told us the baby, who was 2, hit his head on it.
3: This is the most disgusting. We had to go in to clean up after evicting one of the renters.. the walls were moving with roaches. You had to open the door, step back, wait for the roaches to stop falling before entering.
#36
Rented out a room in my house to a girl I knew who was trying to find a place closer to her work. She was normal for the first few weeks and then it devolved into a s*******m. Her bedroom and bathroom were constantly trashed with dirty dishes, clothes, shoes, and hair styling tools plugged in and left on. Luckily she kept it contained to mostly her areas, but then other things...
Random guys coming over all the time, at all times of the night. She had a boyfriend, too, that had no idea she f****d around, but he was a c**t, too. Constantly demanding my boyfriend and I write her prescriptions for her nasty yeast infections (we never did, but that never stopped her stupid a*s from asking every f*****g week). Then one day I came home and heard scratching and whining coming from her bathroom. She got a f*****g puppy. Told her she needed to find that puppy a new home by that night or they'll both be looking for new homes by the next day. She thought it was going to be fine to just leave it locked in her bathroom while she was gone all day and most every evening. C**t.
And then the thing that made me kick her out? She got pulled over for a DUI and thrown in jail. There was a pay phone inside the cell she was being held in. She called me and demanded I come down and spring her out of jail. I decline. I'm at work and don't want to deal with her s**t. She proceeds to blow up my phone calling over and over and over screaming at me. I turn off my phone. When I turn it back on, my voice mailbox was full.
That night after work, I packed up all her s**t in hefty bags, called her bf to pick it up or it's going to the dump, and changed my locks. I braced myself for retaliation and prepared by putting up cameras to catch her if she tried anything. Surprisingly, she disappeared and I never heard from her again.
#37
My parents moved us across the county and decided to rent out our previous home. When we the spawn found out who they were considering as tenants, we warned the parentals.
They didn't listen, and the tenants trashed the house so thoroughly that my folks gave it to the volunteer fire department for practice. It was an old farmhouse, and burned most impressively.
#38
My grandparents owned 68 rental houses at their peak, and while they're too old for that s**t now, they have plenty of stories. This one is my favorite.
Dateline, mid-80's:
One of their longest-standing properties was a long structure containing five flats alongside each other. In #5, there lived a young couple with a toddler who were a little bothersome, but paid their rent on time and never caused significant troubles. After a little over a year, they paid their last month's rent and moved out. A week or so later, my grandfather went in to make sure the place was ready for new tenants.
They. Took. *Everything*.
The usual suspects like the fridge, oven/stove, washing machine... but then the kitchen and laundry sinks and taps. All the lightbulbs, all the curtains, and they pulled up and removed the carpet. The lightswitch fittings on the walls, not just the doorknobs but also the doors. They even managed to dismount and remove the f*****g toilet.
Just about the only thing they left was the drywall, windows and front door.
They avoided contact, but upon being summoned to court, they seemed to genuinely believe that they, as tenants, were entitled to take whatever they wanted with them, since they'd paid for the place over the previous year. They'd already installed the g*****n toilet in their new place.
The resulting legal battle effectively resulted in #5 being completely refurbished at the ex-tenant's expense.
#39
My mom had some tenants in a rental property who apparently were serial c**p sacks and would live in a place until they got evicted, then move on to the next place. They'd do things like not pay rent while claiming AC was broken or some other property related issue then avoid actually letting it be examined or fixed. Long story short, after getting evicted they waited until the very last minute to move out, left a bunch of their stuff behind, and filled a microwave with hot dogs which they left to rot.
While my mom was in the process of getting a court order the TV show "Hot Bench" (a Judge Judy spinoff) called and asked them to come on. Everyone got flown out to LA and my mom got her money and the c**p sacks got berated on national daytime TV, so I suppose it worked out in the end.
Edit: Removed link due to personal information rule. Sorry, wasn't thinking.
Edit 2: Re: Credit Checks. My mom and step dad have full time jobs and started buying rental properties a few years back. Being inexperienced they thought they were good judges of character and didn't do background checks. It mostly worked out for them, but they got burned and they've since learned their lesson and do a little more digging rather than assuming a signature on a lease and "I'll really pay I promise" will be good enough. Moral of the story for prospective future landlords: Save yourself a lot of hassle at the end by going through a minor hassle at the beginning and check applicants backgrounds.
#40
Tenant rented an apartment that does not come with a parking space. an apartment in the building that did come with a parking space came available. he asked if he could have it. i told him it would be $XXX.00 extra per month. he then started posting propaganda all over the property about the injustices that i supposedly committed for not giving him a parking space for free. he tried to get other tenants to sign a petition that would make me give up my parking space on the property. he then took us to court. he lost, but not without just a f*****g nightmare of his little s**t of a personality and sociopathic tendencies.
the most annoying aspect of it all was the fact that he was this b******t hippy dude who was all about peace and positive vibes and teaching yoga and s**t. "wrong" him though, and he was the most toxic human being you'd ever meet.
#41
When I was a teenager, my family rented our downstairs unit to a small family. Nothing crazy happened, but the mom annoyed the c**p out of me. My bedroom was right above theirs and she was constantly calling my parents to complain about "noise." And when I say noise, I mean the faint sounds of someone walking down a hallway or some other BS. My parents decided to accommodate them by purchasing a rug to line our hallway and making it a rule for me to not be on the phone or up and about after 10 pm. But even after all that she still found something to call about. Like how the f**k are you going to complain about someone walking normally down a carpeted hall way? Keep in mind that we've had several tenants in that unit before they moved in and none had ever complained about noise. Once, I was up late in my room watching TV and the remote rolled off my bed, hitting our hardwood floor. I immediately grabbed it to mute my TV. But moments later, what do you know. Our home phone starts ringing at 1 in the f*****g morning. The mother called about the loud noise she just heard and felt compelled to complain about it, even though it lasted less than a second. This type of scenario happened all the time and at the end of their lease they moved out. We then rented the unit to another family and never heard any more noise complaints. Good f*****g riddance.
Edit: Added details I remembered.
#42
I was a landlord when my girlfriend moved in with me, and she had an empty condo. First 2 renters where fine, but then there was Kevin. Kevin was a single male, good income, seemed like a perfect tenant. We get into month three and the rent checks stop coming in. So we go to the condo to find out what the deal is. First off there is a nice new flat screen TV, but no furniture and a giant bean ball chair. We ask where the hell is the money, Kevin looks frantically through his bible and is all like "I lost the money order, sorry". Pissed off we do a little more looking and it turns out he has a roommate, a silent muscular black man. Ok whatever, but if you have a roommate you got to tell us Kevin so we can put him on the lease.
Long story short, Kevin stays silent, and a few days later we come by to serve him papers and to begin the eviction process. Kevin's no-named roommate turns out to be a rapist who is out on parole. That is greats and all but we were right across the street from a school, old Kevin was violating s*x offender legislation. Thank god he left without much of a fight and were able to dump the condo at a modest profit.
#43
Brought bedbugs into the apartment building (4 apartments total) then called the health department to complain about bedbugs. Another person walked through the grass to go for a smoke while dragging the oxygen tank, tripped, fell and sued. Another person vacated her apartment, left the window open in the middle of winter, water pipe in the ceiling froze and cracked by the time we got to the apartment 1 hour later; whole ceiling collapsed.
#44
I have an eviction story! I found another veteran Marine on Craigslist that was looking to rent a room in my house. When dealing with Craigslist, I always meet the person several times before they move in so I can get a feel for them. He was very chill and his dog was calm. I gave him the green light!
Well.. it turned out his dog has severe separation anxiety and barked and scratched constantly until Brayden came back. Except Brayden is a bartender and would be out of the house for upwards of 12 hours (one time was 2 days!!) and he would just leave the dog in the house s******g and p*****g everywhere. I got fed up and moved the dog to the garage so I could sleep.
Now I have a big boy job. I wake up at 445 in the morning to go to work. Meaning I expect quiet hours to start at 10 pm. Well Brayden would come home from bartending at 2am Hammered drunk with several friends and blast music and argue politics. On more than one occasion I had to pick up broken glass bottled out of my grass from when his girlfriend got pissed off.
The culminating event was when he threw a party on a Monday night where he left the door open to my house where both my cats escaped, my wallet was rifled through, and he j****d on my ottoman. I broke up the party with a (unloaded) s*****n.
I comped him his rent if he just moved out and didn't make me go to court to get eviction papers drafted. J**z never really comes out.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
Gross. J.izzed is the censored word. And if you don't know what that is you need to go look it up. Because I'm not going to explain it. 😂
#45
My wife and I help manage my father in-laws rental properties. Once I had a tenant let her sister move into her house "for a weekend visit". That Monday the tenant moved back in with her estranged husband and the sister stayed. After a month of normal payments the tenant mised a payment so I messaged the tenant and was told "I don't live here anymore. My sister has a key and won't leave. Sorry."
Where I live squatters can not be kicked out of a house, it must go through a judge after 3 billing periods of non-payment, the land lord must pay the court costs, and the squatters still have a minimum of 1 billing period to get their items out of the house. Luckily we have a billing cycle of 1 week so we were able to get them out rather quickly considering.
Tldr: tenant left property after giving permission to other people to stay without being a part of the lease. Took 4 billing periods to get them out of the house.
Upstaged75 1 hour ago
Squatter's rights baffle me. How can someone who's living there illegally have rights??
#46
I had a Section 8 rental property (government subsidized housing for low/no income/welfare people). This lady I rented to was arrested for shoplifting. Sixth arrest so now it's mandatory jail time. When she left she cancelled her natural gas service. The gas company never called me. A week later I visited and found a waterfall in the kitchen. Multiple pipes froze and I had a water bill of about $3,000 plus $20,000 worth of damages. Insurance paid for all except my $1,000 deductible.
I sold the house immediately after, with the torn up kitchen, bathroom and basement. And I sold it for about $10,000 more than what I bought it for. Even in the condition it was in! The new owners realized that after the contractor is finished, the house will be in a lot better shape than what it was beforehand. In a way, that lady did me a huge favor!
#47
I had a female tenant in her 50's. She was a tall thin white woman, and she had nasty dreadlocks and considered herself true believer of the Rastafari faith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastafari
She rented one unit of a fourplex. I got a complaint one day from the neighbor tenant, that she had been pacing around the entire fourplex all night long, and was shouting incoherently at people that weren't there. It was the 1st of the month when I went there to talk to her, and she yelled and screamed and wrote the rent check out to the "Devil and his followers" and signed it "I am signing under duress!!!" in the signature box. The amount was correct however.
Once I had the check in my hand, I noticed it had her father's name and phone number on it. He lived in the neighboring state - so I called him and explained the situation. He says "Please have her arrested. She is off her meds, and her mother was the Devil yesterday and I was the Devil this morning". I explained that he was off the hook, as I was now the Devil, and then I called the cops.
They had to fight her into the car, even after handcuffing her. Three days later she was back, back on her meds, and apologized for the issue.
And that is why all the units have individual yards and it would be impossible to walk laps around the house now. Side benefit is that people will pay a little more if it has a tiny yard.
#48
My husband manages a 4-plex, and the new single girl in the downstairs apartment asks him to hang her TV off the wall. He figures why not. Two weeks later he gets an email...she wants him to put together a kitchen cart she got at IKEA. I laugh and tell him he'd better shut her down before she has him coming over to open peanut butter jars. He tells her no and life goes on, only a month later she complains about an "infestation" of spiders (pest guy came out and saw one spider), then shortly after he gets a message about BED BUGS, and she's blaming us even though there's never been a problem. Pest guy comes out again, looks at the building and her bed. Nary a bed bug in sight.
She got a boyfriend, and things quieted down after that. I suppose he's taking care of her imaginary bugs now, and assembling her wooden furniture with care.
#49
My grandparents rent out some extremely nice houses on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. A very young couple moved into a home. They didn't have a lot of furnishings but oddly enough could afford the extremely high month to month rent. Long story short they had a huge m*******a farm in just about the entire house. My grandparents found out from a landscaper who cut their grass. Yeah.
#50
Tenant decides to have bonfire in backyard, November, around 2am police knock on my door (lived upstairs) telling me I needed to tell him to put it out as I'm homeowner, apparently he decided to tell firemen they didn't know what they were talking about, they called police of course. I told police that they should arrest him as I'm going back to sleep.
#51
I own a one bedroom condo in Florida. I got a job in St. Louis making a b**t load more, and a friend of mine down there was at the end of the lease. We came to an agreement that she'd do some minor fixing up around the place and pay me a nice, low rent while my girlfriend and I make the move up.
She started falling behind on the rent and I'd decided that the condo wasn't worth holding on to, so I gave her 3 months notice that she needed to leave.
She ended up taking longer than that.
It's been a few months since and I finally had a (different) friend of mine swing by to change the locks out. They sent pictures... I'm on mobile otherwise I'd post them. A cat box with s**t still in it, c**p all over the floor, moldy laundry in the washer, food in the fridge and the power cut... It's basically trashed. The "friend" has disappeared to somewhere in one of the Carolinas.
Don't rent to friends.
Upstaged75 56 minutes ago
Doing business with friends almost never works out. They're the ones who are most likely to think they can take advantage of you.
#52
My aunt owns a huge house that she turned into an air bnb. There was this Aussie guy who rented the place for about a week then left without a word. He left all the doors locked which took us a couple of days to get sorted (we discuss want to ruin the nice doors). When we finally got in, we discovered that this guy cut all the power cords of most of the appliances. Tv, sound system, kitchen appliances. The b*****d just cut them all off and probably took them with him. We never found it.
#53
Brother rented his basement apartment to this couple who suddenly broke up. That's when he found out they disobeyed him and had not just 1 cat but 3 and they left one behind because while moving out it freaked out and got into the walls. Instead of alerting my brother, they left the cat.
Happy ending, he was able to put out a live trap and capture it.
#54
My dad has a great horror story, he's been in the real estate business 30 odd years now but he claims this tops them all.
This was a time when he owned his own business so he had a lot riding on successes.
A client goes on holiday for 6 months, wants to lease/rent/whatever their property (full disclosure I barely know how it all works) anyway, the client has a clause that's like "will give 6 weeks notice before return want tenants gone from property by then"
Except when the tenant got this contract they'd just sorta... struck it out and signed it, gave it to the landlord who didn't think that was worth mentioning to my father.
Well the client gives notice that they're returning so 6 weeks etc, except the tenant refuses to budge. The landlord doesn't come to my father with this issue, in those 6 weeks he was lying to everyone. His boss, his client etc.
The client, and by extension my father, didn't find out he had no home to move back into until he was literally at the airport. It cost my father *thousands*.
#55
Call from tenants the heater is not working. Outside conditions-2. I'm dressesd in minutes and fly out the door. Show up and renter is wearing shorts and tee shirt telling me it won't get warm. They didn't even have covering over the windows. FML.
#56
My parents bought a two-family to convert into a one-family for them to live in. The lady upstairs took her sweet-a*s time moving all her junk out and begged my parents to let her stay on a week or two while she did so (which they did, reluctantly). When she finally did the upstairs reeked of cat p**s. She had a few old cats and would let them just run around and p**s where they pleased. The old man she cared for (father-in-law?) would s**t wherever, adding to the smell. It took so much bleach, rubber gloves, and masks to get the smell out.
One day, while helping out by stripping off old wallpaper in the bathroom, I found an item the lady had left behind sitting up on a high shelf.
It was a cat's litterbox. It must have been sitting there for years.
It was as good as the day it was bought.
It had never been used.
Upstaged75 51 minutes ago
I don't understand how people can be so gross! Cat pee is one of the worst smells ever. How do you just live with it? Poor animals have no choice if you don't give them a litter box. They'd prefer to be clean.
#57
Not me but my dads tenant. To make the situation worst she was his niece, who he helped out so much over the years. She was even driving one of his cars. To start out he said no pets knowing she wasn't the most responsible. So she gets a cat and goes on to ignore it not cleaning after it basically just feeding and letting it p**s and c**p all over the house. He was paying for utilities and she was still to lazy to take the trash out just letting it pile up in the house and garage. I could rant on and on, but to cut it short she quit paying rent when he demanded she clean up get rid of the cat. Ended up costing him a few thousand dollars to replace the carpet and have the house deep cleaned because it was so dirty.
#58
This happened to my friend's rental. Guy gets evicted. Instead of trashing the place. This f*****g guy cut off chunks of drywall, put d**d fish in the walls, and sealed it back up. Tenant was a carpenter.
The owners couldn't figure out the smell for weeks. They repainted, got it professionally cleaned a few times, searched endlessly. Eventually, they figured something d**d in the walls, and started knocking holes in the wall. Turned out to be that piece of s**t move by the tenant.
#59
Had a super Christian tenant once, I was fine with religion and everything but she'd always try to convert my friends and I at any given opportunity. I did go to her church to show that I am respectful of her. After some straight up sketch religious gathering she held at the house I was done with it. F**k that... Told her not to do those anymore, I was creeped out. She didn't stop. I am an a*****e by nature so I changed her toilet to have a cross at the bottom of it, so she'd have to s**t on it. Got rid of her that day. Btw she only wanted to pay half of the agreed rent amount, so there's also that.
#61
My tenants have s**t in front of my front door on multiple occasions.
They leave food everywhere, including on the rug, under the furniture and under the couch.
Sometimes they drag d**d animal parts into my bed and leave it there because they think it's cute/funny. It's not. Gives an entirely new meaning to getting "boned".
It's ruff living with dogs.
Upstaged75 56 minutes ago
Yeah, my roommates think it's OK to puke on the living room rug and just leave it there for me to clean up. And they constantly wake me when they think they're hungry - even though they already have food available. 😂
#62
We bought some duplexes already rented. The tenant was on HUD assistance and her share of the rent was $14, which she never paid. When her HUD was not extended we received no rent whatsoever so we served her with an eviction notice. The county requires a court hearing which takes days. In that time she trashed the unit then she and her boyfriend broke in and burglarized the unit next door. She also was renting furniture an appliances. When the furniture company came to repossess the furniture she had hidden it in a storage unit. She had plead a sob story to the local Mormon church who helped her move the furniture to the storage unit. The police contacted the church to find out where the storage unit was and allowed the furniture rental company to get their stuff back. As far as the unit goes, I had to remove the doorknob and screwed a bold into the door jamb so I could thread a chain through the hole and lock the door with a padlock. When we finally took possession it was a complete repaint and carpet replacement. We filed a claim with HUD and got some of our expenses back but only up to their maximum. While I was painting the place a parole officer came by asking if we knew where the tenant's son was, apparently he had skipped supervision and a warrant was out for his arrest.
Another tenant in another property we had to evict after 2 months; we had new carpeting in when she moved in. Her kid had s**t and urinated on the carpet and there was a purple stain on the carpet we couldn't get out. We tried cleaning but we had to replace the less than year old carpet and seal the underlayment due to the urine stench.
That's the horror stories, mostly our tenants are upper and middle class and leave the places pristine. Aside from the few (and rare) bad experiences having rentals is a great investment.
#63
My mother rented out our apartment when we bought a house, I helped her clean it out when the tenants moved out. The tenant was unable to hold his bowels, and had to wear adult diapers. We knew this because we had known him for a while, but didn't even consider it being an issue. S****y diapers in the sink, in the furniture, hiding in the ceiling tiles. There were holes in the walls with s****y diapers shoved in them. Apparently he didn't know how to wash his hands either, since s**t was smeared everywhere. Total gut job. I will never, ever, own a rental.
#64
I owned a house and rented a room to a guy. This guy meet a girl on World of Warcraft and flew her out to stay at the house for a few weeks. No problem, I thought. A couple weeks never hurt anybody. But when a couple weeks turned into a couple months I was pissed off. She would sit downstairs and watch my television, while sitting on my recliner.
I finally had a conversation with the guy. I had no problem with her staying, but she needed to pay rent. He said something to the effect that she was still on vacation, why would he pay extra rent? And I said, "Bro, vacation ended when she started to DVR her shows."
He agreed to start paying rent, but they moved out a few months later.
#65
Not a real landlord but I did rent my house 1 time. I moved crossed country for work and was having trouble selling my house due to the market at the time, my wife's best friend told her about a lady she new that was down on her luck and was raising three kids on her own and needed a place to live. So we decided to let her rent it for 1/2 of what we paid mortgage wise. She paid the first month but never paid again, after 10 months of not paying I asked her to move out, and after a year I demanded it. She became extremely pissed that I would throw her out since she was a single mother who was having a ruff time but moved out non the less. When she moved out she put raw shrimp in the heating vents all through the house, poured bleach on the carpets of every room in, stole every appliance and even ripped the microwave out of the wall, on top of that her boyfriend cut part of the wall by the stairs out with a chainsaw to get furniture out without having to disassemble it. In total they did around $20k damage to the house which is a hard pill to swallow when I only make $50k and when I called the police I was told it was a domestic problem and there was nothing they could do. Needless to say I will never rent a house again.
#66
Tenants lived upstairs for 3 months, didn't pay the third month's rent, called in (as me) to cut off my utilities, reported me to Children's Division for child a***e... moved out leaving 18 bags of garbage & reported me to the fire department for the garbage hazard.
*just posted this to another similar question.
#67
I was a tenant not a landlord, and heard this story from the apartment complex's handyman.
A new tenant who had just moved in complained that her garbage disposal was making a god-awful noise. Using his arm to prop himself against the wall over the sink, the handyman turned on the disposal. The noise the tenant described was present, but the handyman also felt a strong prickling along his arm; when he looked he saw a number of small nails sticking out of his arm. Apparently a disgruntled former tenant had poured some carpet nails into the disposal.
If the handyman had been looking into the disposal when he switched it on...
#68
Not a landlord but the tenants before us paid 2 weeks rent in the 9 months they were there.
They'd smashed 4 windows, put holes in several walls, and only had 1 light bulb working in the whole house(they had a 4 year old child too). There was dog urine and rat droppings in every room, and not just a little, f*****g heaps. We helped the landlord clean up (we know him and we got reduced rent) and found a syringe also. We started out quite angry while cleaning up all their mess, but it ended up being quite a sad thing to witness. The poor child.
The landlord never gave his previous tenants access to a large shed on the property because it had a lot of valuable things inside. A week before the tenants were evicted they went to rehab and their dogs went to a family member. Their "friends" found out about this and decided to rob the house and break in to the shed, stealing a good portion of the valuable contents such as engines, a go kart, ride on lawnmowers.
The police were called and have since caught the people who did it.
We've got the house looking really good now, my family and I have turned it in to a loving home.
#69
When I was a little kid, my parents bought a cheap house in a neighboring town and fixed it up to rent. Two young women moved in and were great. Just out of college, working entry-level and kind of getting by, no trouble. They called at 6pm on Christmas Eve because there was a spider.
My dad called back when we got home from church service and asked what they wanted him to do. They said they wanted him to k**l it. So he went out on Christmas Eve to k**l their spider. They seemed to think this was normal, like about on par with what you'd expect your landlord to do if your water pipes burst on Christmas Eve - the least he could do given the situation.
Not a horror story by any stretch, but it makes me laugh. He told me that I was not allowed to move out until I could k**l my own spiders, because f**k that.
#70
Had a guy rent a studio in a 300+ unit high rise I managed. He seemed only semi-creepy, but when his brother arrived from Canada for a week long visit I realized it definitely ran in the family.
The brother came out on their balcony at 6AM and starts screaming that he wants to blow up a large nearby tech company that semi-creep worked at. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was wearing an open bathrobe. Nothing else.
One of his neighbors thankfully called 911. We had SWAT onsite for about four hours evacuating the other residents, setting up snipers, the usual. Basically just another Monday.
#71
I had a tenant pour concrete down the drains. There was no repair possible. It was literally more cost-effective to demolish, salvage what we could and rebuild. It even got into the septic system and we had to settle with the city for damaging their infrastructure. Biggest nightmare ever. We sued the former tenants, but when you're suing a s*****g, best case scenario, you might get a 1990 Toyota Tercel.
Tenants are pretty decent as a whole, but if you have to evict, it's worth it to just offer them a couple hundred dollars cash to move out while you're there and can watch the whole process.
Upstaged75 48 minutes ago (edited)
Sc.umbag is the censored word. Sounds like the guy definitely was one. I can't imagine doing any of the things in these stories. I was raised to respect other people and their belongings.
#72
I posted this elsewhere (I think it was places you were banned). Anyway I was sent out my inspection notice from the real estate agent. The letter was pretty standard except for the fact it had the name and photo of the woman doing the inspection.
So I went on facebook and looked her up. Her profile was public so i thought it would be funny if I took pictures off her profile and put them in frames around the house. Turns out she didn't see the funny side and now i'm banned from going to the same office as the one she works at and someone else took over inspection duties.
now when i get notices they no longer have names or photos.
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