Shocking Stories of Landlords Who Made Their Tenants’ Lives Dreadful
Renting a place to live is inevitable for most people, and unfortunately, finding a place to live means dealing with a landlord. Many landlords are nice, cooperative and respectful of your privacy, but the ones in these real life stories give all landlords a bad name.
From putting hidden fees in a lease to stealing their tenants initial deposits, these home owners just couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Unknown Guests
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.
Story credit: Reddit / golemsheppard2
I Caught Him Red-Handed
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.
Story credit: Reddit / MadLintElf
You’re Responsible For the Fees
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.”
Story credit: Reddit / anon_admin_1
What a Relief
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.
Story credit: Reddit