Renting a house or apartment almost never goes completely smoothly—for either the tenants or the landlords involved. There are broken appliances, late payments, and all manner of headaches in between. But whatever our worst experiences as renters or owners, they don't hold a candle to these Redditors' rental nightmares.
1. The Old Switcheroo
My landlord had agreed to remediate the contract because of the mold in our bathroom. I moved in and what I saw immediately enraged me. The mold was still there. He flat out said he had no intention of doing anything about it, so I told him that I had no intention of paying any rent until it was addressed. I then referred him to the relevant section of my state’s housing code.
For some reason, the jerk had the nerve to act like I was being the unreasonable one for expecting him to follow through on what he agreed to do verbally, with a handshake, and in writing.
2. Happy House-Swarming
I lived in a studio apartment above a bar in a downtown area. I had friends who had lived in that building for years, and I was pretty excited to move in. Everything was fine for the first six months, but then I started to have this strange feeling. Almost like the place was haunted. Things would end up in odd places, and I would sometimes see black shadows out of the corner of my eye.
I didn’t put much thought into it until one night when I suddenly saw a few shadowy movements in the kitchen area. I watched as the shadows tipped over my garbage can and turned on the light. They were rats! And not the cute, little ones that I used to have as pets, either. These were massive, mean-looking “don’t mess with me” rats.
From that moment on, they stopped lurking in the shadows and became extremely gutsy—until it reached a terrifying turning point. I woke up one night to find a giant rat sitting on my chest, staring me down. I turned on the light and it didn’t even flinch! I complained to the landlord every day for a week, but he claimed that there hadn’t been any other reports of rats in the building.
The rats were getting progressively more aggressive. They even tore out sections of carpet, which created a terrifying whack-a-mole type of scenario. They would pop out, take something, disappear, and then reappear on the opposite side of the room. I provided pictures of all the damage, but the landlord just shrugged it off and told me he had taken care of it.
I brought a friend over to show him how terrible it was, and when I jokingly opened the kitchen cupboards with a dramatic flourish. Big mistake. A literal squirming pile of massive rats came pouring out. That was the moment I walked. My landlord didn’t care that I was moving since I had a month-to-month agreement anyway.
I tried to get a prorated refund for the remainder of that month’s rent with my deposit. They happily gave me one…after deducting the damages to the apartment. I had to pay for new carpeting, patching the holes that were chewed in the wall, and infestation control, even though I know the owner just sent his son to go look at it.
At the time, I was just so happy to be out of there, that I didn’t care about how much I had to pay, or that I had to replace a lot of my stuff that had been torn apart.
3. Seasoned Swindlers
This past summer, I had a family of seven come live in my five-bedroom rental house. They paid their deposit and the first month's rent. That's it. I haven't seen another dime from them. To top it off, they didn't get the power switched to their name, so I got a $400+ power bill. When I gave them 24-hour notice so I could conduct an obligatory inspection, the woman answered the door. What she said to me made my blood boil.
"You can't come in. We'll get out when you follow all the procedures and when the sheriff kicks us out". I think they've done this before.
4. What’s In The Box?
I used to get medication shipped to me for a medical issue. It was a self-administered shot with a spring-loaded needle casing, and I had a safe disposal method all set up. Each month, the little coolers of medicine were delivered to the main office of my apartment building, and for the first year, everything went smoothly.
Unfortunately, my building was sold and there was a new person running the place. When I went to pick up my meds for the first time after the sale, I went to the office as I always did, and I was in for a shock. The previous people would always just pop my package into a fridge in the office that was set up for me. This woman did not.
Even though there was a massive “REFRIGERATE UPON DELIVERY” sticker on my package, this woman chose to leave it in the sweltering hot back room instead. It was pretty inconsiderate, but I could deal with it. Then when she was passing me the box, she did the thing where she mimed like she was handing it to me and then yanked it back when I reached for it.
She said, “Are these needles? Are you having needles delivered?” And I said, “That’s none of your business. Give me my medication”. She kept holding on to it and said, “Well, some of the neighbors are concerned because of the needles”. I knew this was a lie as my neighbors have never even seen my needles, and they have no clue that this is even something I need.
Yet again I told her that this wasn’t any of her business. She finally gave me the box, but every time I received my medication after that, she would give me major stink eye.
5. Cuddle Buddy
I rented my garage apartment to an acquaintance of mine. The first night after he moved in, we both went to the bar down the street. We drank for a while, and I got pretty lit, but I went home by myself, locked up the house, and crashed. I woke up the next morning and someone was spooning me...I rolled over and nearly screamed.
It was the guy. I woke him up with a resounding "WHAT THE HECK?!" He apologized and said he had gotten tipsy and lost his keys, so he'd broken into through a back window of MY house, found a bed, and just immediately passed out.
6. Something Fishy
This happened to my friend who runs a rental property. He had to evict one of his tenants, and instead of trashing the place, the guy cut out chunks of drywall, put fish in the walls, and sealed it back up. He was a carpenter, so he knew what he was doing. My friend couldn't figure out the smell for weeks. He repainted the walls, got the unit professionally cleaned a few times, and searched endlessly.
Eventually, he realized something was in the walls, so he started knocking out holes. He was livid when he finally figured it out. I'm not sure if he pursued legal action against that tenant, but man, that must have been a nightmare.
7. What A Knob!
My landlady found out that I was a renovation specialist with a lot of experience in historic renovation and water/fire/storm damage. So she asked if I would do little odds and ends around the place to fix it up, and I agreed. She would either pay for the materials I needed or she would deduct the cost of them from my rent. I did a lot for her.
For one job, I replaced ALL of the doorknobs with new knobs. Each door took about six hours to complete because I had to file, sand, paint, and reset each new knob. I also replaced and refinished the front door, refinished the concrete floor in the laundry room, did some rewiring, repaired walls, and repainted the whole place.
In the kitchen, I hung new cabinets and installed a dishwasher after adjusting the layout to accommodate it. When I moved in, the house sat empty for a year because it was in such rough shape. When I moved out, the place was awesome. So nice, in fact, that my landlady was able to charge $300 more per month than I had paid.
After I left, she was able to rent out my place in just four days. A few weeks later, I started to wonder where my deposit was since I should definitely have been getting it back. Nope. Instead, I got a letter saying that she was keeping it for some ridiculous list of reasons. Well, I got the last laugh. So I took her to court and her argument was basically that this is how she makes money. The judge looked like he was holding back laughter as he ruled in my favor.
8. Turns Out I’m 100% That Dog
When I moved into my apartment complex, I had to get my dog’s mouth swabbed so that the landlord would have a record of his DNA. The reason why was truly ridiculous. They claimed they would do a DNA test on any dog poop that wasn’t picked up and would then proceed to fine me for it. That's when I knew I was in for trouble.
9. On The Fence
My tenant said she wanted to get a dog and asked me for permission. I said yes, and she told me the puppy would be arriving in three months, but she was concerned about the side fence on our property. She said it would need to be replaced with a new one or else her puppy would get out. The fence would have needed replacing within seven or so years anyway, so I figured her request wasn't too unreasonable. That was my first mistake.
Then she said that the neighbors were up to no good, so the fence should be extended down the driveway to stop them from hovering near her car. I could see her point—the neighbors definitely were criminals and constantly in trouble with the authorities—so I told her I'd look into doing that as well.
The neighbors had been kicked out a few days later and social services put their house up for sale. We put the fence on hold until the sale went through. A nice man bought the house and started renovating it for his family. Great guy. I replaced the fence and he helped with the labor. However, I did not catch on fast enough. In fact, I'm a total idiot, because she then told me she was not getting that dog after all.
The dog ploy was sufficient to get the fence replaced. So now she had a shiny new fence...but that still wasn't enough for her. She still wanted that fence extension put in, but seeing as the bad neighbors were no longer a threat to her, I told her it would be unnecessary. Fast forward a few months later—she sent me a text saying that she really needed a fence extension installed because, and I quote: "The fuzz is all over and there are dead bodies in the street".
As you can imagine, I was floored by this. My rental house is on a nice street that is mostly populated by retirees. It is not, by a long stretch, any kind of ghetto. I rang the new neighbor to confirm, and he told me that no, there were no officers anywhere and that the street was quiet as usual. He questioned whether my tenant was possibly schizophrenic...God knows. Maybe.
I think it's more likely that she's just compulsively manipulative because she's got a very clear end game in all of this and she's showing remarkable dedication by coming up with complete nonsense to achieve it. But in the end, she was kind of telling the truth. Turns out, there was an accidental carbon monoxide incident that took the lives of two people nearby, and the authorities were simply on the scene.
10. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
Back when I lived in an off-campus apartment, the landlord bought a large RV so that he and his wife could go on spontaneous road trips. One time, without realizing that my car was parked inside the garage that was included with my rent, he parked his regular car in front of my garage bay door and took off in the RV—never thinking about my inability to get in or out.
The landlord and his wife were traveling for more than two weeks and did not leave any contact information. Since I had no way of getting my car out of my garage, I had his car towed to a nearby parking spot during his absence. When he got back, he was so furious that he refused to pay the towing fees despite having blocked me in all that time.
11. The Fight For A Freebie
A tenant rented an apartment that did not come with a parking space, so when an apartment in the building that did come with a parking space became available, he asked if he could have it. I told him that it would be an extra $50 per month. His reaction stunned me. After getting angry at the very thought, he started posting propaganda all over the property about the injustices that I supposedly committed for not giving him the parking space for free.
He even tried to get other tenants to sign a petition that would make me give up my parking space on the property. Eventually, he took us to court. He lost, but he was definitely a nightmare to deal with the entire time. The most annoying part of it all was the fact that he was this self-proclaimed "salt of the Earth" hippy dude who was all about peace and positive vibes. Turns out, deep down, he was the vilest human being you'd ever meet.
12. We Don’t Want To Do Your Dirty Work
My wife and I rented a furnished apartment that was broken into and burglarized. We lost everything, but the only thing that belonged to the landlord that was taken was an old TV. When we moved out a month later, the landlord gave us an inventory of every tiny item they said was in the apartment. They wanted us to sign it, even though no inventory was taken when we moved in.
We did an inventory for the big stuff, but we refused to count every spoon and coaster (I’m not exaggerating) and sign off even though many of the stated items had never been there in the first place. This made the landlord so mad that he took $200 out of our deposit to pay for the TV and his sister’s time to take the inventory.
The lease was absolutely clear that we were not liable for loss or damage in such a situation. After three months of threatening to sue them, we got our full deposit back with a lovely “We forgive you” written in the corner.
13. Water Works
I used to have a job that involved doing minor repairs on 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 jerk decided to pack plumber's putty into the sink and bathtub drains, then turn the taps on before he left. It was a total disaster.
The entire place was absolutely flooded with water. The owners 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.
14. Bonnie & Clyde
I used to work in lettings, and we had this one young couple move into a house. They were only using benefits to pay their rent, but the landlord wanted to give them a chance. Two months later, we got a call from a locksmith contracted by the authorities. Officers had raided the house the night before because the young man was dealing with substances.
They had literally smashed the front door frame out of the wall and the locksmith had been called in to make good. We called the girl immediately and she told us her boyfriend was in custody. She said she couldn't afford the rent and wanted out of both the tenancy and the relationship. We made a house visit to check on the state of the door. It was even worse than I expected.
They had a dog (this was in a house with a no pets policy) and it had been locked up in a bedroom. There were chew marks and scratches everywhere. The landlord agreed to let them out of the tenancy and get the house back on the market. It cost thousands to get the house right again—new front door, new carpets, redecorations, etc.
It was just about ready to be advertised when we got a call from the neighbor. There had been a disturbance the night before and he had to call the authorities. The young man, upon being released from custody and unable to get back with his girlfriend, had broken back into the property a couple of days earlier to squat. During that time, he had a visit from his supplier, to whom he owed a lot of money.
At some point, they got into an altercation and his supplier ended up impaling him. The young man almost bled out completely on the brand new cream carpets. Once we'd got MORE new carpets in and fixed the broken window where he'd broken in through, we found a new, reputable tenant. He was a nice young man who was actually an addiction counselor.
That turned out to be good because a lot of the local addicts didn't get the memo about their dealer being apprehended and impaled...so he had a lot of visitors in the beginning and knew how to deal with them.
15. Windows Of Opportunity
In our rental, the windows in both bedrooms were sealed shut—and this was in Texas in a house with no air conditioning. We asked our landlord to unseal one window per bedroom so we could put in window A/C units. We also lived in a sketchy area and our house had old wiring and appliances, so we were worried about not being able to escape during a fire or break-in.
The landlord refused our request, so we had the city inspect the house and they determined that she had to replace every single window in our house with LEED-certified windows.
16. Totally Inconsiderate
My parents have owned properties for a while, so there are a number of stories, but the one that I'm personally invested in is that of their last tenant. They decided to rent out my childhood home and I suggested it to a co-worker. I had worked with this woman for several years and I thought she and her family were decent people. I trusted them.
Boy, was I wrong. They brought bed bugs into the place and did quite a bit of damage to the walls. They also pulled out 100-year-old hardwood trim, removed the central air unit, and sold all of them. They then proceeded to skip town after being kicked out once they found out that their wages were being garnished.
Having tenants leave behind piles of trash, messy bathrooms, and holes in the walls is common, but I hold a bit of a grudge on this one specifically.
17. Hitting The Roof Instead Of The Books
My landlord decided to replace the roof of my apartment building during finals week in college. Instead of hiring professional roofers, he just had the building’s maintenance workers do it. I live on the top floor and it honestly sounded like some fat guy was repeatedly jumping up and down on my ceiling while I was trying to sleep and study.
This went on for eight hours each day for an entire week. I called the landlord twice because chunks of drywall were falling out of the ceiling and I didn’t want to be blamed for it. By the end of the week, I counted nine nails that they had somehow managed to pound right through the ceiling. I could see the points poking through and pieces of drywall had started to crumble off around them.
If they had only waited to fix the roof just one week later, no one would have been on campus because it would have been summer vacation. In any case, I’m glad that nightmare is over.
18. Modern-Day Serfdom
My boss is my landlord. Yes, I know it sucks. We work together, and I needed a place to stay so that I would not be driving two hours a day for minimum wage. Unfortunately, she started getting into multi-level marketing businesses like Pampered Chef and she keeps putting ads in my face when I am in the kitchen. Somehow, that’s not the most deranged part.
She also set up a camera in the kitchen and watches it and controls it remotely, so it follows me as I move around while cooking and preparing food. I’m not sure how I can get out of this.
19. Kim's Inconvenience
My dad owned a property that used to be a restaurant. One day, he asked what I knew about "Kim"—she was a year ahead of me in school and she seemed reliable, so my dad rented the old restaurant to their family. Big mistake. They TRASHED it. Their two gross, big, ugly dogs went #1 and #2 everywhere, and they put holes in the walls.
They also took plates and cups that had been part of the restaurant's original collection and used them out back for target practice with their pistols. They just messed up the place in general, and it was horrible. They ended up not paying several months' rent and my dad eventually kicked them out, but not before they made the place totally unliveable.
You never really know someone until you see how they live. I just don't know how some people can be so horrible and trashy.
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20. Revenge Is A Dish Best Served In The Buff
My wife is a shift worker, and one day she called me at work, freaking out because she woke up with three people in our bedroom. Apparently, the landlord had been showing the apartment (we had given notice that we were moving out) and had never told us about it. So, I went down to the rental office and expressed my displeasure. It was quite heated.
When I told them they needed to give us 24 hours’ notice, they got all huffy and said, “What if the prospective tenant wanted to see it right then?” I said, “That’s fine, but next time there’s a chance I might be sitting there without any clothes on, and I will start playing with myself and yelling about the bedbugs as soon as the tenant walks in”.
The secretary was trying not to laugh. At least she was on my side.
21. Ears Of A Bat
When I was a teenager, my family rented our downstairs unit to a small family. The mom annoyed the heck 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 non-issue like that.
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 to be up and about after 10 pm. I thought that was it, but I was so wrong. Even after all that, she still found something to call about. Like, how the heck are you going to complain about someone walking down a carpeted hallway?
Keep in mind that we've had several tenants in that unit before they moved in and none of them had ever complained about the 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 started ringing at 1 in the freaking 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 riddance.
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22. Kevin's Big Secret
I was a landlord when my girlfriend moved in with me, as she had an empty condo. The first two renters were fine, but then there was Kevin. Kevin was a single male with a good income, so he seemed like a perfect tenant. Then we got into month three and the rent checks stopped coming in. So we went to the condo to find out what the deal was.
First off, there was a nice new flat-screen TV, but no furniture other than a giant beanbag chair. We asked him where the heck the money was, and Kevin looked frantically through his bible. All he had to say to us was: "I lost the money order, sorry". Ticked off, we did a little more looking and it turns out he had a roommate—a silent muscular Black man.
Okay, whatever; he can have a roommate but he could have at least told us so we could put him on the lease. Long story short, Kevin stayed silent, and a few days later, we came by to serve him papers and begin the eviction process. Kevin's no-named roommate turns out to be a serial offender who was out on parole. What made it worse was that there is a school just across the street, which violates offender legislation.
Thank God he left without much of a fight and we were able to dump the condo at a modest profit.
23. Not-So-Happy College Memories
I never actually met my landlord, but he was about as shady as they come. We complained about a ton of broken things that he would never fix. Being college kids, we decided to try the free counsel our university offered in the hope that they might have some options for us. Our lawyer was pretty shocked by what he found.
Apparently, the house we were renting had been foreclosed two months prior and now the bank owned it. We were so infuriated about this news that we decided to stop paying rent to this sleazeball while we got everything in order. About six weeks later, he stormed into the house furious that we hadn’t paid rent in over a month.
My roommate stared at him and said, “We aren’t paying you anymore, so get off this property. Now”. This angered him even more and he started threatening my roommate. Finally, my roommate said, “We know you don’t own this place anymore, and we’re going to sue you for the money you took from us”. The “landlord” shut up at this point and took off—never to be heard from again.
Although we actually couldn’t afford to sue him, we did make a sweet deal with the bank. We were able to pay the same amount of rent so that we could stay until graduation. The bank even fixed a few of the big issues since they were going to sell the house anyway. We got to enjoy our last few months of college without an awful landlord.
24. Arachnophobia
When I was a little kid, my parents bought a cheap house in a neighboring town and fixed it up to rent it out. Two young women moved in and they were great. They were just out of college, working entry-level jobs and kind of getting by, no trouble. Then, they called at 6 pm 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 get rid of it. So he went out on Christmas Eve to deal with 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...
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 eliminate my own spiders.
25. Up In Flames
The tenant stopped paying rent. Right before they were evicted, the house burned down. My parents, who owned the property, were both just happy no one was hurt...until they found out the dark truth. The officers told them it had been arson. Meanwhile, the tenants had been living in the garage, where they had moved all of their stuff before the fire.
They tried to file a lawsuit saying that the house had been improperly maintained and that the fire was our fault. It took another month to get them evicted. Insurance covered building a new house, though, so the joke's on them!
26. Very Hot Under The Collar
This one is unforgettable for me. I lived in an apartment complex where the owners didn’t pay the power bill. It wasn’t because it was the responsibility of the tenants, and it wasn’t because they just forgot to pay or that they couldn’t afford it. They just wanted to see if they could call the power company’s bluff. Well, I bet you can imagine what happens next…
Of course, it was no surprise when the power company locked half the breakers in the building. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a riot take shape, but try cutting off the A/C and refrigeration for a few dozen Alabamians in the middle of June during a heatwave and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Yikes.
27. A Disgusting Discovery
My significant other and I were looking for a place together. We finally found a one-bedroom apartment, but I had a really bad gut feeling about it. I decided to ignore it, however, since we had been looking for a place for close to three months and just wanted the search to be over. We signed the lease, got the keys, and started moving our boxes in.
Surprise, we’ve got roaches! We called the landlord about the infestation and he cheerfully said, “Oh, yeah, haha, well, this is a city so there are roaches”. I really chewed him out because this was not a roach or two, but thousands—and they were everywhere. Even the molding on the ceiling was caked with roach filth.
Unfortunately, we didn’t notice it during the walkthrough, but upon closer inspection, it was evident that the roaches had been there for a long time. I couldn’t believe that the couple before us had been living in this filth for two years. After I complained and told the landlord we were leaving, we had to deal with six days of an escalating nightmare.
At one point, the landlord’s wife called me late at night in hysterics. She kept asking why I was such an awful person for breaking the lease and moving out of their roach motel. There was a lot of screaming involved. I essentially told them to screw themselves for knowingly letting us move into their total dump of an apartment.
Over the six days that my boyfriend and I were there, we did not clean up any of the roaches we squashed. When it was time for the landlord to come and collect the keys, there were HUNDREDS of roach bodies covering the floors. There were literally everywhere. The landlord took a quick look-see, shrugged, and said “It’s not that bad”.
I despise slumlords. Most of them operate without a license and many of their properties are truly revolting biohazards. What sickens me most of all is that this landlord had children. I even asked him, “How would you feel about your daughter living in these conditions?” Of course, he wasn’t able to give me an answer.
28. Doo Doo Revenge
My landlord rents the house next door to us. Well, the tenants next door were flushing baby wipes down the toilet and they messed up the pipes. Since they were in the process of getting evicted, they never said anything. When the landlord went into the house, all the sewage was in the basement. I watched multiple workers run outside to puke. It was pretty disgusting.
29. The Big Bang
A few years ago, in the very early morning hours, I woke up having to relieve myself. I shuffled to the bathroom and on the way back to bed, I passed by my husband in the hall on his way to use the bathroom. Suddenly, a horrible sound echoed through the hallway. It was so strong that it t felt like my heart was skipping a beat.
Also, we were adults living in the post-9/11 world, so we were immediately concerned. I even said, "That was some kind of explosive!" Car alarms throughout the neighborhood were going off like crazy. It was warm that day, so we had both our windows and sliding glass door open. I heard a guy scream, "CALL 9-1-1!!!" And the guy was so close to us...like, really close.
Turns out, some stupid idiot in our apartment complex had too much to drink on the 4th of July and duct-taped a bunch of sparklers together. He then set it down in the middle of the street and lit it, not expecting it to go off as fast as it did. The aftermath was chilling. There was wire shrapnel everywhere—it was embedded in cars parked on the street, in the walls of people's houses, and even in trees 30 feet away from the blast site.
The street was also absolutely wrecked—it looked like a cartoon with a black blast smear in the middle, right on the freaking yellow line! But the idiot who set it off got it the worst by far. The guy ended up losing his lower leg, and he had shrapnel in his right arm. He coded in the ambulance, but they managed to bring him back. I never heard if they pressed charges against him.
30. Oh, Were You Using This?
My landlord knew I was a clean and quiet tenant who loved baking. He decided to “renovate” my apartment and removed the stove while moving the cupboards, sink, and fridge to the other wall. I couldn’t believe it when he replaced my stove with a toaster oven. He also removed my living room door. He then increased my rent by 30% for those “renovations”.
We’ve been in hearings ever since, and now he’s trying to keep my damage deposit out of spite because I hung shelves (there was no storage in the bathroom), curtains (to cover a huge window right by the toilet, which faces a busy street), and a few pictures. The neighbors upstairs flooded three apartments and still got to keep their deposit.
31. Parting Gifts
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 seven months. He also complained about anything and everything. "The neighbors are too loud," or "Someone's car alarm went off across the street," or "One of the neighbors has a cat and I'm allergic". There was literally nothing I could 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 burns. I wouldn't wish someone like that on my worst enemy.
32. Terrifying Childhood Memories
When I was about 13, a family of squirrels moved into the space between the ceiling and roof above my bedroom. I could hear them scratching and running all the time. Eventually, they scratched right through the ceiling and left a few small holes. I lived in constant fear that they would drop down into my room and attack me.
To make matters worse, my ceiling started leaking whenever it rained. First, it was just in one area, but eventually, it would leak all along a beam that ran across the entire ceiling. Our slumlord refused to fix anything even though the house had already had an electrical fire caused by a leaky upstairs bathroom.
We had to set up buckets, and I would fall asleep to the music of raindrops hitting the different containers. The sound of water hitting the carpet would wake me up in a panic, as I knew I’d have to empty a full bucket. But then, my worst nightmare came true. One night, while I was—thankfully—staying at a friend’s house, the entire ceiling collapsed directly over my bed.
Not only did all of the soaking wet drywall land on my bed and desk, but the entire family of squirrels was also released into my room. They hid in my closet and under the bed, and it took three days to finally get them all out. The despicable landlord took another week before sending someone in to “fix” it, and even then it was only his useless son, who had zero experience fixing anything.
33. I Have Receipts!
I rented one of my houses to a gal I worked with. She was a married mother of two. She ended up being my first and last tenant ever. I was very forgiving if rent was a few days late, even though she never paid for the deposit. I was also a student at the time, and I was busy with school, so I needed someone in that house to help me with its upkeep and for additional income.
She ended up taking me for a wild ride. I had to go to court twice because of her. Thankfully, we communicated via text and I SAVED every message so I could give a copy to the judge. Also, her boss wouldn't give her the day off to go to court, so her husband (who seemed to also be along for the ride) was stuck trying to defend her lack of payment.
She tried to say I said this and that, but the proof was in the messages. Luckily, they got kicked out and not much damage was done to the property.
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34. Sweet Revenge
One summer, I subleased a room from my friend while he did an internship. His roommates were also out of town for the entire summer, but they still paid rent and their portion of utilities. At the end of my sublease, I cleaned the house, moved my stuff out, and turned in the key. Three months later, to my surprise, I was served with a lawsuit for over $5,000.
I couldn’t believe it. They claimed that I had left behind excessive damage, so I sent them a letter demanding an itemized list of all the fees I was being sued for. When I saw the list, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was absolutely fabricated. For example, they charged me a $500 “chandelier cleaning charge,” a $300 “chandelier maintenance fee,” and then a $700 “chandelier replacement charge”.
So, $1,500 to clean, maintain, and then throw away a chandelier? Nope. They so obviously fluffed their expenses, even charging me $25 to replace a lightbulb and $750 for two hours of “lawn maintenance,” which was in the lease as the responsibility of the landlord! It turns out they filed separate lawsuits against each of us.
They were suing us for $25,000, which is crazy because there couldn’t have been more than $1,000 in expenses—and this would have been easily covered by our security deposit. But there was something about me they didn’t know. I work for my city’s housing department, so I sent them a response on my office letterhead. In my letter, I told them that I refuse to pay for the ridiculously exaggerated damages they claimed.
I said that they could come and get me if they wanted to try. I never got a response, but they did drop the suit. I promptly advised the city to deny them any future contracts.
35. It Be Your Own
My family has had rentals all throughout my life. By far, the worst renters have been our own family and friends. My mom's worst tenant was her long-term boyfriend's daughter. Her apartment caught fire, so 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 nonpayment.
That same house was rented afterward by my older sister who neglected to notify us of any needed repairs. We had to replace the entire carpet and subfloor because it was rotting. Then, there were her last renters—they stayed in my mom's nicest unit and proceeded to ruin the brand new laminate with spills. They also broke a pedestal sink in half and they 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 dirt was still coming up. I don't think they ever vacuumed.
36. Prepare To Facepalm
Last November I got a knock on the door of my “newly renovated” basement apartment. It was the fire department telling me that I’m living in an unauthorized unit and will be evicted in three months if the landlord doesn’t get the place up to code. The landlord kicked me and my girlfriend out in February, saying it would take “just two weeks, but we’ll say three to be safe”.
I asked if I had to move out my furniture, and he said, “No, they’ll just work around it”. I then spent SEVEN weeks living in my buddy’s basement 30 minutes away, paying rent there, and commuting to work. Finally, in April, the landlord said the place looks great and gave me the OK to move back in. I was in for a major shock.
The entire apartment was filthy. Thick drywall dust covered every surface. There were paint cans, tools, and garbage in every corner, and paint was splattered on the floor, windows, and all of my furniture, including the mattress. My wooden furniture had been scratched up and my shoe rack and shower curtain were destroyed.
I argued with the landlord for days. He finally gave me $150 for cleaning and damages, but then he upped the rent by $100/month because the “apartment is so much better now”.
37. Someone Needs Boundaries
When I was 19, I lived with two of my friends. One day our landlord, who lived next door, decided she wanted to come check out how we were living. But instead of knocking, she broke the lock on the front door and started walking around our apartment. My roommate was asleep in her room and woke up when the landlord came in. She screamed, and my landlord ran out.
About two weeks later it happened again, except this time 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 New Jersey tenants’ rights and taped them to every window on the front of the house. I guess she wanted to see if we were doing substances in there, which, I mean, yeah, we were, but…come on lady.
38. The Afterparty
I found another veteran Marine on Craigslist named Brayden who 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! I realized my mistake almost immediately. It turned out his dog has severe separation anxiety and it barked and scratched constantly until Brayden came back.
Except Brayden is a bartender and he would be out of the house for upwards of 12 hours. He would just leave the dog in the house going #1 and #2 everywhere. Eventually, 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 4:45 am to go to work, meaning I expect quiet hours to start at 10 pm.
Well, Brayden would come home from bartending at 2 am, sometimes completely hammered, and with several friends. They would blast music and argue politics. On more than one occasion, I had to pick up broken glass bottles out of my grass. The moment I lost it was when he threw a party on a Monday night—he left the door open to my house and both my cats escaped.
My wallet was also rifled through, and he got intimate with someone on my ottoman. I broke up the party with an (unloaded) rifle. I comped him his rent if he just moved out and he didn't make me go to court to get eviction papers drafted. By the way, the stains he left on my ottoman never came out.
39. Glitter Overboard
My landlords told me that they used to allow tenants to paint the walls but not anymore. This restriction can all be blamed on one girl who decided she wanted to paint the entire room (walls and ceiling) in dark midnight blue and then, while the paint was still wet, throw handfuls of glitter in it. My landlady said it was the biggest pain in the neck to get rid of because if you tried to paint over, the glitter would still show through.
They had to scrape every surface. Now the whole house is the plainest of plain taupes.
40. "Open" Concept
My 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 studying for exams, so they asked if he could stay until he was finished and my uncle said yes. Eventually, he left and my uncle went to see what damage was done to the flat. He found it immaculate.
Everything seemed clean and tidy. But something was...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, they exited a room and went to close the door. That's when he realized what was wrong. There were no doors, anywhere. They had stolen every single interior door.
41. How Could He Be So Heartless?
We spent some time in South America, and one day our landlord attempted to raise our rent. We kicked up a bit of a fuss, so he backed down. But then he tried again under the guise of having someone in every week “to clean cobwebs off the outside of the windows”. He wanted an extra $150 a month for this—the same amount he was trying to increase the rent by.
Of course, the windows didn’t have cobwebs on them in the first place. Anyway, in that house we used to get stray dogs coming by to say hello. We are dog lovers and we would feed them if they looked skinny and give them belly rubs. The landlord didn’t like this, but we couldn’t stop the dogs from coming into the garden through the many holes in the fence.
One dog started coming every day, and then she just stopped leaving. She would stay outside our front door all the time, waiting for food or to be stroked. She was such a sweet little thing. The landlord noticed her and started complaining. We told him she never came inside and she wasn’t doing any harm. We also pointed out the holes in the fence.
One night, when my husband was out at his regular gym class, I heard the landlord’s car pulling up. I was already in bed, so I assumed he’d knock on the door and realize I wasn’t going to answer, but he didn’t. I heard him open the gate, scuffle around a bit, and then leave. In the morning the dog was gone. We never saw her again.
42. You Can’t Have Your Cake And Eat It Too
My landlord charged me and my girlfriend $1,100/month to rent a room in his house. Over the next little while, he started saying things like, “I’d like it if you spent more time downstairs” and “It’d be nice if you were out of the house more, so I could have the place to myself”. Basically, he wanted to charge us rent, but he didn’t want us around. But he didn’t stop there.
He also downgraded his Internet package, so it was extremely slow. The last straw, however, was when he decided to rent out his spare room as an Airbnb. This made the Internet slower than ever, and now there were all kinds of strange people in the house. Thankfully, we have found a new place and are in the process of moving out.
43. Night Shift Problems
I worked nights for a while, so if someone knocked on my apartment door, I never answered. I had a white noise machine and blackout curtains to help me sleep. One day when I got up to pee and get some water, I came face-to-face with someone in the kitchen. I was groggy and confused, so I panicked and grabbed the nearest thing I could.
I gave the guy a good, hard jab with a broom before I realized that it was my landlord sneaking around without permission. This happened in the early 2000s, so webcams were not that common yet, but I wish I could have known how many times he had been in the house while I slept. It was so creepy! We ended up moving because of it.
44. Mrs. Clean
She brought with her 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 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. She didn't expect me to appear in the building.
She 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. Instead, I just brushed it off—and I regret it. 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 the cleaning of the house. She rejected any proposals that did not explicitly set aside an hour for cleaning and include 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, it got ten times worse. 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.
45. Extended Visit
My wife and I help manage her dad's rental properties. Once, I had a tenant let her sister move into her house "for a weekend visit". That Monday, the tenant moved out to live with her estranged husband and her sister stayed. After a month of normal payments, the tenant missed a payment, so I messaged the tenant, only to be told: "I don't live here anymore. My sister has a key and won't leave. Sorry".
Where I live, squatters cannot be kicked out of a house—it must go through a judge after three billing periods of non-payment, and the landlord must pay the court costs. The squatters also have a minimum of one billing period to get their items out of the house. Luckily, we have a billing cycle of one week, so we were able to get them out rather quickly.
46. A Literal Pig
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 it out, 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.
I stressed that the room needed to be otherwise cleared out and that he had to hand over the keys. He agreed that he would be able to do so 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. 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. To my disbelief, the room was not cleared out. Only, it was so much worse than that. At first, I only noticed about eight plastic shopping bags on the ground, a lot of garbage, and dirty dishes all over the place, especially on the table. A lot of personal items were still around. It seemed that 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 them...was urine. There were about 30 or 40 of them, each containing about one or two liters.
Upon opening the wardrobe, it was clear that he had stored wet clothes in it. The whole thing was already falling apart and the solid wooden boards were wet and just bending from their own weight. The wall behind the wardrobe was also full of mold. Then, I checked under the table and there was some spilled food on the carpet, which was moldy as well.
The same was for under the bed, on 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 two other people about four hours to superficially clean the room out. It took another few days to renew the room to its former state.
We never saw anything of the rent that was still due and that guy even had the audacity to threaten to sue us. I 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 with choosing tenants after that.
47. Best Gift Ever
A week before Christmas, our heater broke down during one of the coldest winters on record. The landlord said, “Nope. I’m not fixing that now. You can wait until the New Year. Oh, and don’t call me again, it’s Christmas”. Well, we paid rent through an estate agent, so I called her first to find out what my options were.
The shocked agent said that she’d take care of it, and that very afternoon, a worker showed up. He took a look around and asked if we were aware that our bathroom was not up to code. We weren’t, but the next day he got us a new toilet, bath, and shower. That was nice, but so was hearing the landlord freak out when the agent told him about the costs that he was 100% liable for. Merry Christmas to me!
48. Appetite For Destruction
Growing up we didn’t have much money, so we lived in an old trailer out in the country. Our landlord was a horrible person all around. There were a million different times that he did terrible things, including neglecting his animals and taking our mail, but the last straw beyond anything I thought would happen. He broke into our trailer.
We had been at a wedding all day and when we got home, the door wasn’t closed right. I remember seeing overturned chairs and a basket of laundry that had been scattered all across the living room. The landlord had put holes in our TV, and he had broken my dad’s guitar into three pieces and smashed my grandpa’s upright bass.
As soon as my parents saw the inside of our place, they made us get back in the car and wait there. I remember sitting in the back seat of our Blazer with my sister as my dad stood on the front porch crying and screaming, “You animal!” It was terrifying. We stayed at a friend’s house that night and then at a motel for the next few weeks.
When I was in high school, I would see our landlord around town from time to time, and he would always give me this creepy smile. It would never fail to make my heart start pounding and I’d get an overwhelming urge to run away. Thankfully, I no longer have to see him because I moved away and rarely visit my hometown, but sometimes I still have nightmares about everything that happened.
49. Just Another Monday
I 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 6 am and started screaming that he wanted to detonate an explosive at a large nearby tech company that the 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 9-1-1. We had SWAT onsite for about four hours evacuating the other residents, and setting up snipers; the usual. Basically just another Monday.
50. Cause And Effect
One day, all of a sudden, I found some small black things that looked like burnt rice on the living room floor. At first, I wasn’t sure what they were and just swept them up with a broom. Not long after that, I found more of the same in my desk in the living room. At that point, my roommate realized they were rodent droppings.
We called the landlord and asked him to find an exterminator, but he said, “I’ll be there in a moment”. About 15 minutes later he came down with a small box of fruit that he had filled with rat poison. Apparently, we were supposed to put the poisoned fruit around the apartment. All I could do was stare at him in disbelief. But then it got even more ridiculous.
He proceeded to tell us that his pet snake had recently gone to snake heaven, so he just released the live rodents that were to be fed to the snake. He idiotically said that he thought they would just go and live peacefully in the woods. Still in shock, I asked him to leave and dealt with the issue myself. I did not accept his offer to renew the lease and got out of there as soon as possible.
51. The Evil Stepmother
This is about my ex-stepmother. I was at work and a client came in, so I introduced myself. She recognized my last name, then asked about my ex-stepmother. Turns out, after my father's second marriage fell apart (surprise, surprise), my ex-stepmother had been essentially hopping around rental homes and she wouldn't leave them in the nicest of conditions.
I didn't dig for any details, but I learned that she took her horrible little dog demon with her and never let it outside (because she was lazy). So this woman's property was covered in her dog's mess. I honestly don't know why people kept letting her rent without payment upfront.
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52. Don't Trust Him
I began my landlord career pretty young. I took out a master lease on a house and rented out the rooms individually. My first tenant in one of the rooms was apparently in town for a construction project. He said he just needed me to fill out a form and his company would send the rent cheques. I had a vacancy already, so I had him move in right away without paying a deposit. I just trusted what he said.
On the first day, I was cleaning a glass shelf in the kitchen and it shattered when I dropped it. He was in the middle of moving his stuff in at the time and he said to me, "Hey, my company is a glass-cutting company. Let me get the measurements, and I'll have them cut you a new one". I replied, "Sure, how much does it cost?"
So now, I had someone in my house who hadn't given me any money yet, and I was giving him $40. A month went by, and I still hadn't got any rent yet, plus this glass shelf was not going to happen. But it gets even worse. My other tenants began to notice that their belongings were missing. They kept coming to me asking what the heck was up.
I kept thinking they probably just misplaced their things, and I shrugged it off. Eventually, I talked to the guy, and he was not coming clean, so I really didn't know what to do at that point. I just did nothing and hoped the problem would go away on its own. Thankfully, one of the tenants just took the initiative and called the authorities.
Turns out, the guy had a warrant out, so they had no problem paying him a visit and evicting him without the standard landlord-tenant board stuff. After he was gone, the three of us went into his room while his stuff was still there to see if we could recover any stolen goods. I wasn't prepared for what I found inside. There were a ton of substances, including prescriptions obtained with all of the stolen IDs he had hidden in a box
A bunch of door and window hardware pieces and tools clearly used for break-and-enters was found, as well as the keys to my tenant's Lexus. He had basically demoed the walls of his room and installed all kinds of wire shelving everywhere to store all his junk. He had those super strong stickers that are a pain to remove plastered everywhere.
His laptop was on when we came in and it was listening to the scanner stuff to pick up on law enforcement calls. So basically, I housed a pathological liar who took a bunch of stuff from innocent people, wrecked the place, and never paid rent. It was the worst experience ever.
53. Just Pretend I’m Not Here
My girlfriend and I have been renting the house we live in for a little over a year now. Last summer, the landlord came to our place and stayed in a blocked-off area next to our kitchen for 10 days! I get that it’s her house and everything, but that doesn’t mean she can use it as her vacation property while we are living here.
To make matters worse, she’s quite the hoarder. She keeps loads of useless stuff in the basement, so we essentially have zero storage space. Also, during the summer that we moved in, she had a bathroom installed in the basement by some shady contractor. A few days into this bathroom installation, there was an electrical fire in the basement at 2:00 am.
The water pump seized up and the breaker never tripped, which filled the entire house with smoke. On top of that, the smoke alarms didn’t go off because the batteries had been put in backward by the last guy who lived there. Granted, I should have checked those, but we had only been living there for a few weeks. Luckily, our dog woke us up.
Anyway, the fire department found scorched wires near a soldered pipe and said that was probably what caused everything. So, I texted the landlord to let her know what happened, and she called me asking if her stuff in the basement was damaged. She never even asked if we were OK. This weekend she’s coming to stay for another 10 days—we’re dreading it.
54. Frat Mentality
When I moved into my apartment last year, my landlord told me about the worst tenant to ever live there. He told us that there was this kid subletting an apartment over the summer for his rather shy sister. Upon meeting her, she seemed normal and he came with good recommendations. It didn't take long to realize he'd made a huge mistake. On the first night there, the kid threw an absolute rager.
They played loud music, there were too many people, and it didn't end until the authorities needed to be called for noise violations. The next morning, my landlord came up to the apartment and told him that get-togethers were fine, but parties of that scale were not allowed. It was in the lease that he signed, and he was willing to give the kid a second chance.
Bad decision. The next time, the party he threw was even more violent, with property damage to boot. The landlord stormed up there and told him to have his stuff out of the apartment by the next day at noon. The kid was ticked off, so he decided to throw a "getting evicted" party and got about five of his friends went over to trash the place.
They punched holes in the walls, broke the lights, and smashed the windows. But he got what was coming to him in the end. It all came to a grinding halt when the kid decided to headbutt a hole in the wall—he ended up hitting a supporting metal beam and he broke his neck. The kid got charged with absolutely everything, and the girls who lived there previously were politely told to not return the next year.
The kid missed his freshman year of university and lost thousands of dollars worth of scholarships because he couldn't leave the hospital or move independently. My landlord pretty much told me that as long as I don't do anything that stupid, we will probably get along.
55. My Worst Frenemy
I own a few houses and all of them have tenants. For the most part, everyone has been fine....except for this one tenant. Important details—I pay for everything in the rent because I don't want to deal with tenants who get behind on utilities etc. It's just easier that way, all-in-one price. Each suite has a basement suite and the main floor suite.
Okay. Well, the first thing she did was get a duck. Yes. A live duck. It left its mess everywhere and squawked constantly. Due to a loophole in the lease caused by my own naivete (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 there was blood everywhere.
She also seemed to think old takeaway containers were a great home decoration. She managed to set the stove on fire at least once every week, and she frequently had "family" stay for longer than what was allowed (including inebriated people who sometimes passed out on the lawn). 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 eight months and thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to get her out, and then another thousand for professional cleaning. The worst part of this was...she was my friend at the start.
56. Secret Side Hustle
My friend rented a flat. One day, he was chilling with his girlfriend and a couple of his mates when his front door just opened. Some guy started going mental asking what the HECK people are doing in his flat. Turns out, this guy had rented the flat out to someone years ago. He spent nearly a decade out of the country and the person he rented it out to just decided to sublet it to my friend without him knowing for a tidy profit.
No happy ending to that one. My friend had to pretty much pack up and leave.
57. Worst Cat Mom Ever
I rented one side of a duplex and my landlady lived in the other half. She was a cat hoarder who had turned three of her bedrooms into giant litter boxes. She even covered the beautiful hardwood with garbage bags and dumped several hundred pounds of cat litter onto the floor. She would go weeks without cleaning these “litter boxes”.
She would also put cans of wet cat food and tuna in the backyard for the feral cats. The food would go bad and the smell of rancid cat food and festering cat pee was too much to handle—but the final straw was yet to come. That happened when she took in a cat that had the extremely contagious feline parvovirus. It spread like wildfire and took the lives of 23 of her 78 (!) cats.
Unbeknownst to me, several sick cats had puked, peed, pooped, and died on our shared porch. Because we were unaware that there was a Parvo outbreak next door, we tracked the virus into our house and it killed our favorite cat. My then-fiancé was incensed at our landlady. We ended up moving out a few weeks later. RIP Max.
58. A Silver Lining
I had a Section 8 rental property (government-subsidized housing for low-income individuals). This lady I rented to was taken in by the authorities for shoplifting. It was her sixth arrest, so she had to serve mandatory time behind bars. When she left, she canceled her natural gas service. The gas company never called me. A week later, I visited the unit and found a waterfall in the kitchen.
Multiple pipes froze, so 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!
59. One Hot, Hot Mess
For some reason, our former landlord would rent to wealthy foreign exchange students attending the local community college, and he would let them do whatever they wanted. We had a group of five of them living below us and it was total chaos. They would blast music nonstop and would have insane parties that lasted until 6:00 am on weekdays.
During these crazy parties, they would puke and pee off the front porch. Expensive vehicles from out of state would pull in and park for 10 minutes while one of the passengers would run into the house. It is my guess that they were definitely doing something shady. It also gets way grosser. They would often leave several bags of trash on their porch in the hot sun for days.
Whenever we would try to talk to the students about our issues with their behavior, they would just shrug and say, “I don't care!” in broken English. We even filed several complaints with the landlord, citing the specific lease clauses as well as the local laws that they were breaking—with evidence—and he would do nothing.
In desperation, we did some searching and found the name of the regional manager who worked for the property company. We filed a formal complaint and turned over everything we had. The property company eventually evicted them, but it took about nine months from when they moved in until the sweet day I saw the sheriff serving them.
60. Elderly Disrespect
My grandfather was a doctor at a Children's Hospital. He decided to rent this house to some young nurses he worked with. Well, at some point, they stopped paying rent. Now, my grandfather is the best man I have ever known—intelligent, kind, giving...I mean, he 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 did these young nurses do? They trashed the house and went #2 in the sinks. They tore the house apart! He had to do a lot of work afterward to fix everything. They worked with him, too... 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.
61. The Ol’ Bait And Switch
After I had been living in my apartment for a year and a half, out of the blue, my landlord decided to remove the new appliances that had come with the apartment, so that she could put them in a house that she was working on refurbishing. One day she just said, “Hey, I’m going to be taking your appliances on Thursday”.
I was surprised when she told me, but I was shocked when she actually replaced my nice appliances with some old and beat-up ones from her storage unit. They were missing parts and she hadn’t even cleaned them! She even had the nerve to say that they’d been sitting in her storage unit for years, so she didn’t know how well they worked.
62. Indoor Pool
My father 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—he seemed to have a few issues. He covered his entire floor in garbage bags and essentially tried to create an indoor swimming pool. He was on the ground floor. However, things got messy real quick.
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.
63. To Flea Or Not To Flea
Even though I live in an urban area, a family of possums started living under my back porch. My landlord kept going back and forth about whether she should leave them alone or call animal control. I didn’t care too much either way—at least until they brought a flea explosion. My dog ended up crawling with fleas. You could sit on my couch and watch fleas jumping on your arms!
The landlord told me that she’d get her exterminator in, but then she didn’t do it. Then it got even more infuriating. She finally had me contact him to set it up, which I did, but then she vetoed it. She backtracked and said she didn’t tell me to do that, and she wouldn’t pay for it—especially while the possums were still there. But then she wouldn’t do anything about the possums! This catch-22 lasted for one very long month.
64. How Merlot Can You Go?
Our landlady, who lived in the duplex below us, decided to sell the place and move out of state. So for three months, she would knock on my door every day and ask me to help her prepare. I pulled weeds, cleaned the basement and garage, and washed the windows, but she never really acknowledged it—just asked me to do more.
On her last day, she asked me to help load the moving van. Just before she left, she gave me a bottle of wine as a thank-you for all of my work. There was a picture of a frog playing the banjo on the label, but, hey, it’s the thought that counts. An hour later, the realtor showed up and gave me the exact same bottle! It was just like the one he gave her…that she obviously re-gifted to me.
65. House Of Horrors
I purchased a property last year that had seen 20+ years of deferred maintenance. Mandatory repairs were done as cheaply as possible, usually by the tenant who was given a discount on their rent to do so. Two sets of questionable tenants there. One was an elderly man with multiple issues living in a basement that flooded. He was taken advantage of quite a bit and had a number of people living with him.
The week I purchased it, he passed, and by some stroke of luck, everyone mooching off him decided to just leave. It still took me nearly a month to get rid of all of his stuff that wasn't picked through and stolen. The other tenants were an absolute nightmare. They rented a small house on the back of the property, and I had to call the authorities on them three times in the first two weeks I owned the place due to theft or possession of stolen goods.
They were well-known thieves in the neighborhood, having multiple arrests, and they single-handedly caused at least half the 9-1-1 calls in the neighborhood. On top of that, they were dumb; always getting caught on video. They caused the previous owners a huge number of issues, and the city often slapped fines on the property for various nuisances they caused, which included running bike chop shops in the backyard as well as noise violations.
They had a large number of associates visiting the place. The main house is a Victorian-era house split into multiple units. They tore down the house's original garage after "accidentally" setting it on fire, but that apparently wasn't a problem because they built this "really cool two-story shed" that they rented out to the homeless. There was only one thing we could do.
Upon purchase, we gave them a 90-day notice of eviction. They immediately stopped paying rent. During that time, they broke into another vacant unit that we were remodeling and they took all my power tools plus a ton of building materials. They went to court and played all the laws they could, getting two 15-day extensions and various other tricks so it was 150 days before they were finally evicted by the Sheriffs' department.
I also had to keep all of their stuff in a storage unit for 45 days after that point since they never came to take it away, and they never made arrangements to get it. Upon entering the unit, I found a large number of illicit substances, plus all the stuff they had stolen over the years. During the 45 days, they broke into the house three times to pull their stuff out, or just to spend the night, attempting to burn it down at least once.
When I finally got to the point that I could get rid of their stuff, it took a 40-yard dumpster and three days of work to fill it. Not to mention all the stuff that I gave away on free-cycle and let neighbors and employees of nearby businesses just take. Then came the biggest hit. It cost me over $5,000 just to get rid of them and their stuff.
Making the house habitable again will be another $15k and it still needs a lot of work, most of which I'm doing myself. I still have stolen bikes appear in the backyard occasionally, along with addicts looking for a supply and homeless people looking for a place to sleep.
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66. Repairs With A Side Of Insults
One time my landlord just walked right in on my girlfriend and me when we were getting ready for the day without warning us. She didn’t have anything on and I was in a bathrobe. He then spent 20 minutes fixing our door while making loud tutting noises. He told us the doorknob was loose because we didn’t know how to pick up a screwdriver.
He then left without fixing the giant crack in the wood that we had originally complained about.
67. Urban Farm
This is a story from my uncle. An Asian family moved into his building, and they owned a restaurant. Sometime after they moved in, the apartment directly below them was complaining about water damage in their ceiling. My uncle went to check it out and sure enough, much of the ceiling had water damage. He couldn't find any broken pipes, so he went upstairs.
He explained the situation to the Asian family upstairs and said he just needed to investigate the water problem. At first, they wouldn't let him in. He realized why the second he walked in the door. They had built a FARM in the living room. They literally boarded up the living room, filled it with dirt, and were growing crops. The water damage was basically from them having to water the plants.
68. Hole-y Moly!
One Friday, I came home from work, walked into my only bathroom, and found the roof of the building more or less filling the room. Workers had been re-roofing the complex, and either someone fell through my ceiling or the roof just collapsed. I never did get a straight answer as to which. The bathroom was unusable, and NO ONE THOUGHT TO INFORM ME OF THIS FACT or make arrangements.
A gaping one-meter-wide (three-foot-wide) hole was open to the sky, making me very uncomfortable about leaving my possessions in the apartment while I went elsewhere. Also, the person who fell in must have walked around looking at things, or someone else came in later to assess the damage and dragged the dusty, nasty contents of the attic through my apartment on their shoes.
The rental office didn’t normally open till 1:00 pm on Saturdays and, as was often the case, it didn’t open at all this weekend because the manager was “out of town". I left multiple messages on the answering machine and with the service, but they were ignored. I ended up loading my valuables into my car and driving to a relative’s place for the weekend.
The final straw happened that Monday when the manager eventually got around to returning my calls—and it was pretty frustrating. He just said, “Oh right, we’ll try and get that fixed this week". He had no sense of urgency, no apology, no explanation, and no offer of recompense. Obviously, I moved out of that dump shortly thereafter.
69. That Escalated Quickly
I was a bit behind with the rent one time due to some health problems with a family member. So, when I wasn’t home, my landlord came into my apartment and ripped everything out, and put it on the street. Did I mention that I was only six days late with the rent? I was in college at the time and lived on a road bordering the campus.
That night, my peers, neighbors, and random people driving down that road got free access to all of my possessions. But I got my revenge. Long story short, I sued the landlord and won. He tried to keep it a secret from his wife early in the litigation process but in the end, the check my lawyer got from their lawyer was signed by his wife. Screw you, Dale.
70. Crazy Cat Lady
Our landlady had a shrine to all her former animals in the backyard. She also had a sickly cat who was covered in matted fur. The poor thing would use the whole basement as a litter box. This litter box situation was so bad that it was the main reason my dad’s girlfriend couldn’t live with us—it triggered her allergies.
71. What's Yours Is Mine
My grandparents owned 68 rental houses at their peak, and while they're too old for that now, they have plenty of stories. This one is my favorite. Dateline, mid-80s: 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 was a little bothersome, but they paid their rent on time and never caused significant trouble.
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. He couldn't believe his eyes. They. Took. Everything. The usual suspects like the fridge, oven, stove, washing machine...but also the kitchen and laundry sinks and taps. All the lightbulbs, all the curtains...they even pulled up and removed the carpet.
They took the light switch fittings on the walls, and not just the doorknobs, but also the doors. They even managed to dismount and remove the freaking 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 dang toilet in their new place. The court battle effectively resulted in #5 being completely refurbished at the ex-tenants expense.
72. Makeshift Grow-Op
My grandparents rent out some extremely nice houses on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. A very young couple moved into one of their homes. They didn't have a lot of furnishings, but oddly enough, they could afford the extremely high month-to-month rent. Long story short, they had a huge dope farm in just about the entire house. My grandparents found out from a landscaper who cut their grass. Yeah.
73. She’s A Real Piece Of Work
My significant other and I were renting a room from a 72-year-old woman. She was very passive-aggressive and made terrible life decisions (e.g., she married a 32-year-old man and cashed in her entire 401K to buy him a Corvette, only to get divorced six months later). Despite all of that, her home was beautiful and the rent was a bargain.
She ended up kicking us out because I would not sign a legally binding document that would allow her to treat my significant other as a literal housekeeper for zero pay. I told her that we would only clean up after ourselves and that we would be seeking a new apartment immediately. She did not like this plot twist. Our landlady went absolutely insane with rage, called law enforcement, and faked a heart attack—but that’s not the craziest part.
Some of the best quotes from this incident came from the first responders. The EMT who was checking her for a heart attack said, “Ma’am, your vitals are perfectly fine. There’s no sign that you’re having a heart attack”. And the officer said to her, “Ma’am we can’t arrest them for hurting your feelings”.
74. Sk8er Boi
I'm a landlord, but this was something my crazy cousin did. He built a full-on skate half-pipe ramp in his fourth-floor Manhattan walk-up. It was insane and it 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.
75. Snip, Snip, Snip
My aunt owns a huge house that she turned into an Airbnb. There was this Aussie guy who rented the place for about a week and then left without a word. He left all the doors locked which took us a couple of days to get sorted (we didn't 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.
The TV, sound system, kitchen appliances...The jerk just cut them all off and probably took them with him. We never found it.
76. Witchcraft Materials
As a tenant, I once found a human jawbone in an old plastic margarine cup up on a ledge in the cellar. It looked very old; no teeth in it. I just put it back and forgot about it until now, 35 years later.
77. Definitely Too Good To Be True
I was in dire need of a place to live, and I found this old couple who had two rooms for rent in a really nice house. It even had a big pool, and I could walk to work in five minutes. Everything seemed fine at first. But after two months I discovered something disturbing. Apparently, they love to swim sans clothing and would lock me out whenever they were skinny dipping.
They basically treated me like I was a guest in their house—and not in a good way—even though I paid rent. Eventually, it got even worse when they started making up a whole bunch of insane rules, so I decided it was time to move out. I ended up crashing at a buddy’s house for a week while I started to make my escape.
During that time, I slowly and quietly moved almost everything out of my old place. One night, I finally told the couple that I would be moving out the next day. We got into a huge fight. The next morning, I got my officer friend, who was on duty, to go to the house with me so that we could retrieve my bed and a box of stuff because they had locked my room.
78. What’s The Scoop?
Our landlord threatened to evict us because there were always endless piles of Tootsie-Roll-sized dog poop on our lawn. To clear our dog’s name, I filmed dozens of people letting their tiny dogs poop all over the grass. Did I mention that we had a Great Dane and we cleaned up her Everest-sized piles every time? There’s no way we could have gotten away with leaving them—they were massive.
79. Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions
Our last landlord was a gem. He threatened to sue the raccoons that kept getting into the dumpster. He even put up a big sign on the dumpster that said it was “protected by cameras”. I don’t think the raccoons can read.
80. Dangerously Pragmatic
I had a landlord who took his pants off to fix our toilet because he was going to a wedding later and didn’t want them to get dirty. The thing was, I was the only one in the house at the time, which means the dude basically took off his pants in front of a minor.
81. She’s All Ears
Since I’ve only ever had one landlord, I can only complain about her (AKA the ol’ bat downstairs). This landlady was a wino and we would call her “The Bobblehead” because when she was inebriated, which was 24/7, her head would bobble all over the place. To make matters worse, we had to talk very quietly because she could hear EVERYTHING.
If we talked about anything having to do with traveling, she would come up mid-conversation and ask when we were planning on telling her.
82. A True Sleaze-Bucket
Our landlord was an old dude who refused to pay anyone else to fix things. One time, when our toilet broke, he wrote us—a family of four—a note telling us that we would have to poop in a bucket until he was able to fix the toilet—a week later.
83. Lethal Popcorn
My uncle used to clean out low rent (Section 8) apartments when the tenants either moved elsewhere or were kicked out. Aside from all the nasty and petty stuff one might expect a ticked-off ex-tenant to do to an apartment, he encountered one unit that was a doozy. He had no idea what he was getting into when he took them on.
Apparently, these people hid—wait for it—live rounds inside the heating elements on the stove. If he hadn't spotted them while cleaning underneath the coils, those bullets could have seriously hurt the next poor folks who moved in and fired up the stove for the first time.
84. So Many Levels Of Wrong
When we moved in, there were bats in the house. I informed the landlord, and the next day there was a bass fishing net leaning against my door. Even better, there was a note taped to the net, telling me to take care of it. A bass fishing net. The holes in the net were bigger than the bat—by a lot.
85. Petty Much?
I couldn’t believe it when my landlord threatened litigious action over a $15 lampshade that I accidentally broke—and replaced. He even went so far as to demand a bank statement, so that he could take the money I’d already spent on replacing it out of my deposit. Lord, am I glad we’re done with him.
86. Thanks, But No Thanks
I lived in my landlord’s basement and it was always freezing. I finally complained about the cold, and instead of turning up the heat, she gave me a bunch of old sweaters that her son had left behind. They smelled like mold.
87. Waste Mismanagement
Boy, do I have a story. The apartment we lived in had a sewer issue that caused the apartments on the first floor to flood with sewer water. This happened to us multiple times, some were more damaging than others. We complained, complained, and complained some more but the owner wouldn’t admit to it, so nothing was ever done.
At one point, the people across the hall from us lost everything. Then, a month ago, the sewer backed up so badly that it flooded our bedroom, living room, and kitchen with disgusting poopy water. There was poop all over the floor, and one apartment even had ham bones come up into their toilet! We were losing our minds.
At this point, we demanded to have everything professionally cleaned. The owner said, “Nope” and told us he was going to have his usual cleaner wash it with bleach. Then we had a brilliant idea. My boyfriend decided to call the health inspector who condemned our apartment and another one on our floor, and then he demanded that the owner get an actual cleaning service in there.
The owner ordered us to move out immediately, and when we said we had until the end of the month, he proceeded to convince everyone who worked at our building to try to kick us out. When we were leaving, we were shocked to find out that the people across the hall from us were still sleeping on their sewer-drenched mattress.
My boyfriend and I gave them our clean mattress.
88. Uprooted Plans
My landlord had a very short and restrictive list of plants you were allowed in the house. Most of them weren't appropriate for our climate and would not survive the heat of summer where we were. You were also not allowed to deviate from the approved plant list at all.
89. This Is Just Not Working Out
After we moved in, a gym opened up directly below our apartment. The TV at said gym was located right under our bedroom. Throw in the total lack of any official hours, and you get people working out at 3:00 am with the television blasting so that the gym-goers could hear it over the noise of the machines. Our useless landlord didn’t even want to listen to our complaints.
90. A Waking Nightmare
This happened at my first apartment out of college. When I toured the place it was filthy, but I could tell it would be pretty sweet when cleaned up. The landlord explained that it was so messy because it had been occupied by an older man with health issues. That was understandable. The landlord assured me he’d get it cleaned up before I moved in, which sounded good to me.
Red flag number one: On move-in day it was clear that nothing had been done with the place. It took me and my poor, sweet grandma two days of scrubbing to get everything clean. After about a week, everything was looking really good. One day, however, I was putting stuff away in a cabinet. I found items that made my heart stop.
I found some bed bug spray that had never been opened. At this point, I started to get nervous, but I had been there for a week and hadn’t felt or seen any bugs, so everything should be fine, right? Wrong. What followed was the most miserable two months of my life. I was constantly fighting with the landlord over taking care of what was an increasingly worsening bed bug issue.
First, he told me he was “fumigating,” but the next day I found the same cans from Target that I had found earlier. Every night, I would go to bed crying because I could feel the bugs all over me: crawling on me, biting me, making me feel disgusting. I was a basket case on zero sleep and the landlord was doing absolutely nothing about it.
I wish I could say I sued him. I should have, but I had nothing left in the tank. I would spend my nights at the laundromat, scratching myself raw with a crazed look in my eye. I finally moved back with my parents and spent the next two months still feeling the bugs all over me, scared sick that I had carried this nightmare to their house, too.
91. Comin’ In Hot
While I was deployed, my wife remained at our home in Texas. One day in the middle of summer, the air conditioning broke and the landlord told her that the temperature wasn’t hot enough to require the repair. When she showed him pictures of the thermostat reading over 38C (100F) indoors, he finally said that he would send someone.
What a relief right? Well, apparently I needed to be there because I was the primary name on the lease. Since that was not an option, I threatened to sue, and the A/C was eventually jerry-rigged just as summer was ending. Also, the repair guy told my wife that he was paid to do the bare minimum fix. Too bad things didn’t end there.
Fast forward to when I’m back home. It starts getting hot and the A/C breaks again. The landlord gave us the same story as before, claiming it wasn’t hot enough. This dragged on until I finally had orders to move to a new duty station. We gave our 30 days’ notice and moved out. The landlord tried to tell me that I had to pay to fix the A/C or I wouldn’t get my deposit back.
I once again threatened to sue, and this time I contacted the actual owner of the house. I couldn’t believe his reaction. 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 Texas, fired the landlords, sued them himself, and said I was actually the cleanest and most respectable tenant he’s had. He even paid me double my deposit for my troubles. Nice guy.
92. Clause For Concern
The lease for my apartment stated that the property owner paid the water and sewer bills. However, three months in, my water was cut off because he didn’t pay the bill. Instead, he insisted that the clause was put on the lease by mistake. 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.
It seems that there was a clause in the contract that 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 that they were the ones in breach of contract, their reply knocked me off my feet. They claimed, “The clause has nothing to do with who breached the contract, it only states that you are responsible for the breach of contract fee”.
93. The Camera Doesn’t Lie
When we first rented our place, the landlord and his wife seemed like the nicest couple in the world. They even invited us to dinner and we had a great time. Three months in, we found out that they argue quite loudly and curse like truckers—not that big of a deal. Then my wife stepped on a piece of blue glass on our kitchen floor, which was strange as we didn’t own any blue glasses.
Suddenly, I remembered that dinner we went to at their place, and they had blue glasses on the table. I decided to set up a camera in the living room, and over the next week, I caught this guy coming into our apartment when we weren’t home—but that’s not the worst part. That pervert was going through our dressers and playing with my wife’s underwear.
I caught him red-handed, gave him a nice beating, and called law enforcement. He tried to play it off by saying that he smelled smoke and wanted to investigate. That’s when I played back the previous week’s videos of him visiting on three separate occasions. They locked him up, and we quickly found a new place and never looked back.
94. That’s In-Laws For Ya
When we were moving out, our landlady did a walkthrough and agreed in writing that there was no damage to our property and we would be getting all of our deposit back. She took custody of our keys and then walked us out of the building. Unfortunately, two weeks later we got a letter stating that she was keeping all of the security deposit.
Apparently, someone had become inebriated, 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 our landlady used the property as a place for her in-laws to stay during Thanksgiving, and she 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 would be in our apartment without our knowledge or consent if the landlady’s position was that it was still our apartment and therefore our liability.
95. They Got Out Scot-Free
I was subletting a room to a young couple. They were really nice, considerate, devout Christians. I had to leave for two weeks and I asked them to clean the house so we could get the security deposit back (and in turn, pay them for the trouble). I ended up coming back a couple of days early. When I walked into the house, I couldn't believe my eyes. They had completely trashed the entire place.
They moved the mattress and our TV down into the living room. They went through all of our stuff and incorporated it into their own stuff. They also adopted two cats two days after we left and there was kitty litter in every square inch of carpet. But the worst part? They pawned our $800 drum set and took most of my sentimental keepsakes I had kept in a small box since I was a child.
The authorities were called but apparently, they were in the green legally. They proceeded to pack up whatever they wanted (including our stuff) and left with their parents who didn't care what their kids had done.
96. For The Birds
My friend and her husband moved into a gated community. She gardened a lot and loved having a birdbath in her backyard. Her landlord figured out that she had said birdbath in her backyard. Apparently, a birdbath was considered a lawn ornament, which was forbidden. She told them she would remove it. A week later, she got another message saying that it hadn’t been removed—it wasn't.
She and her husband put two and two together and figured out that the landlord snooping in her backyard. So she decided to set a trap to catch them. For a week, she spent her time outside sunbathing in the buff. Sure enough, the landlord opened the gate to their backyard and saw her without any clothes. She called the authorities for privacy breaches. The landlord gave up and let her have a birdbath.
97. A Disturbing Surprise
My parents had some tenants when I was around seven years old and they never paid the rent. They wound up getting evicted as a result, and my parents decided that they would save some money by cleaning the place up ourselves. That 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 lifeless, exotic fishies. In the bedroom, we found used rubbers, used feminine hygiene products, and..."sharp objects". Like, just laying around. Once we saw that bedroom, my parents gave up and hired a cleaner...and that's when the worst discovery was made.
They found a deceased cat in the toilet of the master bathroom. It was terrible.
98. All About Lloyd
I was renting out a room in my rental house. It was a big room, but nobody seemed to want it. Then, Lloyd showed up. He instantly accepted the terms. I had a BAD feeling about Lloyd, but the rent was due, so Lloyd was in. When he got his "stuff," it consisted of a bedroll and a knapsack. This made me wonder. For the next two months, Lloyd was rarely home.
I'd see him more often at the YMCA than at the house, and when I spoke to him, he said he was in process of patching up things with his ex-girlfriend. Everyone at the Y seemed to like Lloyd, but I was suspicious of him. It was just a feeling I had deep down. He just seemed like a weasel to me. A few months later, I received a disturbing call from him.
He was calling from the local precinct and he wanted me to return his portion of the month's rent so I could bail him out. After thinking about it, I declined. Rent needed to be paid. He got upset, but I didn't give a dang. Apparently, his ex had a restraining order on him that he violated. When I discovered that, I resolved to evict him.
He was back home in a week or so. I had a sit-down talk with him and lied to him, saying that the house was being sold and we had one month to get the heck out of here. At the end of the month, he grabbed his bedroll and knapsack and left. Then, a few weeks later, I saw him on the news—apparently, he broke into his ex-girlfriend's house and took her life. He was later convicted and sentenced to 25 to life.
I felt horrible for his ex-girlfriend...but it did feel good to go back to the YMCA and explain to all those bozos why I wasn't a big fan of their pal Lloyd.
99. A Very Shady Past
This one couple decided to quit paying their rent, but they had pretty good excuses, so I didn't evict them initially. Then, after three months of not receiving a dime from them, I finally went down to the courthouse to file an unlawful detainer on them. We had our day in court. Then they showed up, and my jaw dropped. The woman, who was usually dressed nicely with fake nails and an expensive weave, showed up looking like an old hag. Her partner was using a walker, but he didn't need one.
They claimed I was a slum lord and that I never fixed anything, but I had receipts from every repair I fulfilled for them, including the new A/C unit that they asked for. After I got the judgment against them, I tried to garnish the man's wages. He told me he worked for Coca-Cola Co., but it turns out, the company had never heard of him.
After a little digging, I found out they had both been put behind bars for selling substances...you know, the other kind of Coca-Cola...The officer showed me mugshots dating back to the early '80s! I couldn't believe I had let criminals into my property.
100. An Enterprising Man
I had a cousin who was an addict and his parents were always doing stuff to bail him out and keep him from being homeless. One time they put down a deposit and paid rent for a furnished apartment for him. He ended up selling the furniture for drug money. Another time they rented a mobile home for him and couldn't figure out why the water bill was so high.
Turns out he was charging his homeless friends $1 to take a bath or shower and that was going on pretty much around the clock.
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101. Invasion Of Privacy
Not a lawyer, but I took my brother-in-law's landlord to small claims court (He's on SSI and I'm his conservator). We sued her for over $4,000 after she just decided she didn't like him and changed the locks on his apartment door. She also stuffed all of his belongings into trash bags and dragged them out to the curb. This was all done the day after she cashed his rent check.
It all started because she was letting herself into his apartment with no notice and was going through his stuff while he was gone. When I found out about this, I told him to let her know that was NOT okay. He did, and that's why she kicked him out. I'm very organized, and presented the judge with a folder containing photos, receipts, short videos on DVD and the sheriff call logs, as well as a concise timeline of events.
The landlord showed up with her son and countersued for the exact same amount we were suing them for. Claiming that the apartment was trashed, there were holes in the walls and they would have to repair everything before being able to rent again. During the hearing, the judge asked for evidence of the damage to the room.
The son whipped out his cell phone and showed a video panning and walking around the room. The video showed my BIL's apartment obviously still being lived in (his stuff was all still there) and no visible damage, but there were a lot of posters and things hung on the walls. When the judge looked at the video he asked, "Where is the damage?" The son replied, "You can't see it. It's behind all of the posters."
The judge frowned and looked at the video again, and then said, "Did you take this video when he was still living there at this time?" The son replied, "Yes." This was the clincher, the judge then asked, "Did you ask his permission to enter the apartment to take this video?" Silence. We were awarded the full amount.
102. I’ll Huff And I’ll Puff
When I was 14, we shared our house with another man who lived on the floor below us. I was home with my younger brother while our mom went out. All of a sudden, the man came screaming and banging on the door. He was yelling about how downstairs was flooding and it was coming from our bathroom. I didn't know what to do.
But because he was an adult, I trusted him and opened the door. He came in, ran into the bathroom, and did something. After I told my mom, she called management. What they told her was truly disturbing. There had never been a leak. There didn't find water marks or any other signs of flooding. So, my mom told us not to open the door for him again.
The next time my mom went out, he came banging on the door again. We told him that our mom said we shouldn't open the door for him. His reaction was terrifying. He did not appreciate that and he went absolutely crazy. "Let me in now!" He screamed over and over again all the while banging on the door. We never found out why he wanted to come in.
103. ReCraigslisted
I sublet a room from the craziest woman on the planet. One week after moving in, I’m looking on Craigslist and I happen to see my own room back up for rent. I came home to confront her about my discovery and she was setting up a showing: of my own room! I confronted her about it, and it turns out, she wasn't kicking me out.
She wanted me to move all of my stuff to her room for one month because she wants to go to Europe. Oh, and that I need to pay $200 more during that month. So basically, I couldn't keep my room; I would have to move all of my belongings to her room while someone else occupies the room I'm renting, and then move all my stuff back to my room. It made no sense.
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