These people got more than they bargained for after they signed their lease.
She Was Lying To Everyone
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“My landlord had a maid she used for 40 years who came to our house once a month and cleaned. My roommates and I split the bill of $120 bucks and paid it directly to our landlord.
My roommate told the maid one day, ‘You are well worth the $120 we pay each month.’ It turns out the maid gave the landlord a considerable discount of $80 to clean our house and the landlord was pocketing the other $40 for about eight months. This led to the maid quitting on the spot.
The landlord still stops by our house once a week to blame us for the maid quitting. She has also refused to honor any of the maintenance requests we put in. My roommates and I are very ready to move out come the summer.”
He Had No Sense Of Boundaries… Or Cleanliness
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“My husband and I moved into a house with our then-1-year-old son which we didn’t see in person as he had taken a new job in a different state. First day we get there and the house is a trailer…not a house.
I can deal with that, but the trailer was still full of the landlord’s stuff, including a fridge full of food that had been sitting there for who knows how long. There were bugs. The trailer was decorated in a less-than-pleasing fashion (trashy, it looked trashy) and the water smelled like rotten eggs and stained the sinks and tubs brown. Luckily, my parents drove up with us to help us move. The landlord tells my 53-year-old mother that it’s a DYPAD house. My mother asks what DYPAD is. Landlord says it means Drop Your Panties at the Door house. The dude says this to my MOTHER (who, I admit, is somewhat of a prude).
The landlord tells us stories of having a tanning business set up in the house and having spy cameras, then takes us to the master bedroom (still full of clothing and furniture) and shows us his bathtub adult toys and tells us we can use them if we’d like.
At this point, I’m sick to my stomach. I cry. I quit unpacking. I freak out. I don’t want to live here. My mother-in-law calls and asks me how I like it (my father-in-law is the one who found us the house and met with the landlord). I tell her I won’t stay and how awful it is. She tells me to snap out of it and basically that I need to get myself together and unpack. We had nowhere else to go and a U-Haul full of stuff, so we moved in.
Within the first week there, we realize this guy is going to be a problem. He has no plans of moving his stuff out anytime soon and he still has a key and thinks he can let himself in whenever he wants. I come home from the store and here is the landlord hanging out in the yard. He tells me he forgot his key so he had to poop in the backyard. What. For one, why are you coming to the home you rented out to me, to poop??!! And for two, who poops in their tenants’ yard??
That incident finally persuaded my husband to get the heck out of this place. We lucked out on a rental the next town over. We moved out as soon as we possibly could. The new rental was amazing and the landlord was awesome.”
“That Day, I Just Lost It”
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“I was moving across the country for a few months and wanted to sublet my room (it was kind of a surprise event). My landlord said that it would be OK, as long as he met them and gave the OK. I brought a few people over, but every single time they were supposed to meet my landlord, he conveniently had some excuse to not be there.
I ended up moving with my apartment empty, but with all my furniture still in my bedroom. I was still paying rent each and every month on time for nearly five months. I was supposed to return in May, but I ended up coming back in mid-April for some family stuff. I was staying with my family (about an hour away) and contacted my roommate who still lived there to see how things were going.
My roommate asks me when I plan on moving back in because the subtenants in my room have been leaving the house a mess. I was very confused, I had never agreed to anyone staying in my room. I booked it to the house and found a family (father, mother and two very young kids) living in my bedroom. They were sleeping in my bed/sheets, using all my furniture, my TV, computer, and had moved all my clothing and personal items into a closet. I found out the landlord had got this family to rent out my room while I was gone, while still collecting rent from me.
I lost it. I canceled all my checks and moved out three days later. I moved back to my parents’ house until I could find something else. I demanded my money back for the months I was gone, but he refused and threatened to sue me for not paying the remaining months on the lease. In the end, I never paid the remaining months and never got the money back from him.
I’m one of the most chill guys you will ever meet, but that day, I just lost it – nearly $4,000 in rent GONE.”
Her Landlord Is Such A Terrible Person
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“My last landlord was such a corrupt JERK. Before we moved in, he lied about how much we’d have to pay by $400. We shouldn’t have stayed after that, but I was about to have a baby and I was desperate. He ran a business where he only employed immigrants so he could pay everyone under the table, avoiding overtime (60 hour work weeks were the norm), raises, and health insurance. He would subtly threaten people with ICE if they tried to ask for better working conditions.
His wife had no sense of privacy. I think she was trying to come off as nice, but she would routinely come into our place without being invited. If she knocked and we didn’t answer, she would let herself in. This happened once while I was topless and breastfeeding.
Also, they invited themselves to the hospital right after I gave birth. People who don’t have kids may not realize how horrible this is. In general, you’re exhausted, really banged up, trying to bond with your new baby, and the last thing you want is random visitors. My baby had feeding and sleep issues and I got so sleep deprived dealing with it that I began to hallucinate voices. They came over right before I finally, FINALLY, got a chance for a nap, and stayed for two hours, until my window of opportunity was gone. I told them not to come in the room right away because I was breastfeeding; the wife came in anyways.
They tried to pretend like they were our friends, but if we did anything even slightly wrong they would immediately explode. My fiancé forgot to lock the front gate one time, for instance, and the landlord immediately threatened to kick us out. This was the only time my fiancé had made this mistake the entire time we lived there, so it wasn’t a recurring problem or anything like that. The landlord would do things like this at the same time he bragged about how cordial and friendly he was.
The landlord lied about everything in order to make himself seem nicer. He claimed to pay his employees significantly more than he did. He made up horrible and hurtful stories about his eldest son just because his son had gotten fed up with his behavior and essentially cut him out of his life. He would tell even casual acquaintances that his son was a deadbeat father who never saw his children, unemployed, and an addict; over time I saw more and more evidence that none of this was true.
He also had an old-school view of women and was really critical of my housekeeping skills. Two weeks after I gave birth, when I was still exhausted, torn apart, struggling to breastfeed, and mentally shattered from my newborn’s constant crying (she still had feeding issues at this point), he told my fiancé that he needed to have a ‘serious talk’ with me because I wasn’t cooking dinner every night, or keeping the house as clean as I did pre-baby. All in all, he probably gets my ire up more than any other person I know.”
His Landlord Was A Criminal
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“My buddy rented a room in a four-bedroom house with a guy living in the basement. I needed a place to live, so he introduced me to the landlord. He was pretty easy going, but pretty shady.
Over the span of about two years, he had pot growing in the backyard, and no one knew, because no one went back there. I didn’t even know until his cousins’ broke into the house one night at 2 am to harvest it.
Our laundry was in the garage, but there was no door from inside. You had to walk out and open the overhead door. So one day, he tells me not to open the door higher than about three feet cause he had a stolen car inside and thought the house was being watched. Awesome, I had to Indiana Jones into there for about four months every time I had to do laundry.
I worked in a kitchen during the nights and once came home about 3 am with my dinner to find a guy sleeping, naked, on the couch. By this time, this kinda weird stuff is the norm, so I just put my Subway I bought into the fridge and go shower. Come back down to find the guy in shorts, sitting there and mumbling. As usual, I ignore it and go to get my Subway to eat in my room.
Long story short, naked guy had eaten my Subway then told me to bugger off when I confronted him about it. I chased that jerk down the street with a samurai sword and he never came back. He even left all his clothes and bags in the living room. The landlord calls me the next day all angry that I chased his buddy out of the house.
I ended up leaving in February because the landlord called and informed me he used all our rent money to pay for illegal substances and there probably wouldn’t be water or heat, as it was being shut-off cause he didn’t pay. Good times.”
She Tried To Control Her Tenants To The Extreme
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“I lived in a house with, among other flatmates, a lovely young gay man whose mother owned the house and was a crazy evangelical Christian jerk. She didn’t live there, but came round whenever she wanted in the guise of visiting her son, even when he wasn’t around. She pressured him and put her son down constantly because of his sexuality. She would leave incredibly offensive and homophobic ‘reading material’ on the hallway table mixed in with his mail and threatened to disown him if he went to a real, accredited university instead of a crappy indoctrination center disguised as a tertiary institute.
She insisted on decorating the house herself, complete with Christian platitudes implying that only Christians are worthwhile people (I am an Atheist – she knew this from the beginning, so I think she may have dreamed of converting the poor ignorant Atheist). She also had an entire bookshelf filled with such gems as guides on how to be a good Christian wife. To be fair, these had solid entertainment value.
She would come round at 6 am and mow the lawns in her bra. I’d get up to make a coffee and she’d yell about how I left a book or a jersey or whatever in MY living room – I’m talking a single personal item, not a big mess. If I came home in the morning after a night out and she was around, she would make snarky comments implying I was a loose woman.
When she decided the kitchen wasn’t clean enough (again, she didn’t live there), she wrote an angry note in ALL CAPS in permanent marker on the wall. It was so big, she must have stood on a chair to write the top couple of lines.
She decided me and my friends drank too much, so posted an AA pamphlet on the toilet door and circled every reference to God or religion.
She was generally a nasty, toxic person to be around who felt the need to control everyone around her. She just made everyone around her miserable.
When I moved out, she started only letting rooms to Christian international students, which was probably better for everyone involved.”
This Is Pure Evil
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“My landlord was sneaking into my apartment and stealing stuff. I threatened to call the housing authority on her and she filed for an eviction with the courts. Then she stole the court notice out of my mailbox so I would never know that I had court.
So naturally, I didn’t show up to court because I never knew I was being evicted. So my right to 30 days was waived and the sheriff’s office put a seven-day notice on my door. What’s worse is, they put the seven-day notice on my door, three days after the effective date on the paper, leaving me four days to get out.
How do I know this? Because the evil woman sat there laughing on the porch while she explained every single step of her plan to me. I tried calling the courts and they didn’t wanna hear it. They wouldn’t allow me an audience with the judge. Yeah so, I lived in my car for three months while I saved for a new apartment.”
Something About Him Wasn’t Right
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“My boyfriend and I were looking at apartments and toured a small one bedroom, one bathroom that was in a converted house. The owner showed us around and I got a real skeevy vibe off him, like maybe someone’s tied up in his basement or shed. He made numerous comments about our work schedules and when we (mostly I) would be home alone. It was really uncomfortable. We had already filled out an application but decided against the space after we left. He was so creepy. I imagined he had cameras everywhere.
Fast forward a week or so, and there is a knock on our front door. It’s the apartment’s owner. What the heck? We never agreed or even hinted that we would take the space. Why was he here?
This guy wants to know if we want the place. He’ll reduce the rent. He kept saying we owe him. He starts yelling and I finally had to call my boyfriend to deal with it because I was so freaked out. Thankfully we didn’t have to get the cops involved, but that was ridiculous.”
He Would Just Barge Right In
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“My landlord would drop by without notice and let himself in with his key. One time I was asleep on the couch with no pants on. A grown man was in my house and saw me unconscious and in my panties. I was not calm or nice when I woke up to that situation. In some very colorful language, I told him I was uncomfortable and he has to knock and give me warning. He became a defensive jerk and told me to deal with it, so I moved and he refused to give me my deposit money back.
I’m a student. That $400 deposit is something I think about it once a month at LEAST, and it’s been two years. Screw that guy.
For the record, I was too broke to take him to small claims court, and he lied to my college’s investigators (they have an organization of people who make sure landlords aren’t taking advantage of students) and just said I wrecked the place. Screw that guy so much.”
She Couldn’t Believe What Her Landlord Had Done
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“I was renting a house with my husband. I came home from work one day to a foreclosure notice on the door.
I called the landlord (she lived in a different state) and she tells me that she had been out of work and she had been using our rent to pay the mortgage on the house she lived in. She said she knew we were going to have to move but we could stay there until they locked us out and just pay her $800 a month instead of the $1100 we had been paying. I told her we wouldn’t be paying anything and would be moving soon. We found a place within two weeks.”
They Ignored The Problem, But It Got Worse And Worse
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“About a month after my partner and I moved in together for the first time, it started raining in our bedroom – of a one bedroom apartment. Water was dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls. I got out of bed and stepped into a puddle on the carpet. I should note, this wasn’t the first time it rained, so the problem had developed after we moved in.
We contacted the landlord immediately. Long story short, it was six months before we could use our bedroom again. It was ‘too expensive’ to properly get the water out of the carpet, and they tried to get a steam cleaner instead (who showed up, saw the floor and went, ‘what the heck, I can’t use a steamer on a flooded carpet’). So instead of taking action right away, they did nothing for a month – then took two months to fix all the leaks. They found multiple sources, and they didn’t remove the carpet until after they were convinced all the leaks were fixed. Mold grew all over the walls & ceiling, then they had to replace the drywall, repaint the whole room, and replace the carpet, all while we paid discounted rent because the only bedroom was unlivable.”
They kicked us out at the end of the lease for causing drama.”
“Lots Of Scumbaggery”
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“My boyfriend and I were resident managers for an apartment complex in town. At the time, we needed more space and the gig seemed pretty good. The ad said 10-12 hours a week in exchange for free rent.
The first few months were good, but it started to go downhill from there. Everything was always our fault. If something wasn’t perfect our landlord would make comments wondering why we couldn’t do better. If tenants had issues, even if they were at fault, we were always to blame. In a way I get it, that’s customer service for you, but he honestly took their words over ours, every time.
One of the worst bits was the job itself. Rather than 10-12 hours a week it was more like a full time job (our landlord expected us to maintain the lawn, the inside of the building, any and all tenant problems, maintenance if we could, and any relevant office work). So we were essentially getting crap pay, crap attitude, and expectations we could never meet. I had never known someone so arrogant and petty before this landlord.
It had been nearly a year and we determined we can’t take anymore. We were both so depressed and drained (we also both had jobs aside from the apartment stuff, and I had classes in addition to my job) that we decided we had to get out of there. I didn’t think he could get any worse, but he did.
When we finally got the letter in the mail after we’d moved out, we discovered the landlord was trying to charge us for damages we didn’t incur. He wanted us to pay close to $3,000 for replacing the carpet (which was old and crappy already), a broken blind (also broken before we moved in), a doorknob with a lock that was installed (also before we moved in), and a few other things I can’t remember at this point. Basically, it was a lot of subtle insulting, outright lying, lots of blaming, and tons of scumbaggery!”
She Was So Nosey
“I moved out on Halloween 2016. Between October 31st and December 4th, my ex-landlord emailed me 17 times. Her emails were full of questions about my health (I’m going through cancer right now), my boyfriend, etc.
At first, I tried to only answer what I felt comfortable answering and hope she got the message. NOPE. She would click ‘reply’ and copy and paste the same freaking questions I deliberately ignored. Eventually, I wouldn’t reply to emails with no ‘business’ in it (ie: no questions directly related to the former apartment).
To force me to answer, she would email again and ask for my parents’ mailing address – she used this tactic three different times (because she knew I’d provide that, to get my mail). On December 4th I blocked her email address. I got a nice reprieve over Christmas and I thought, ‘OK, now I can move on.’
On January 20th, I got a friend request from her on Facebook. I deleted it immediately. I have not received my mail.”
How Could They Live In This Disgusting Place?
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“My sister and I rented an apartment together five years ago. We were desperate and it was clean and priced right. The landlord seemed nice, but high strung when we met her but we signed a lease that day.
Everything was fine until the summer came and then crap hit the fan. First, there was a smell. It was like a rotten corpse permeating the entire place. The landlord said it was probably a dead squirrel in the ceiling and the smell would dissipate once it finished decomposing. When I expressed displeasure with this, she had ME crawl into the ceiling to look as she didn’t fit. There were SO many spiders and I couldn’t find the dang squirrel. She gave us air freshener and called it a night.
Then a week later I was brushing my teeth when all of a sudden the ceiling light in the bathroom erupted with literally thousands of flies. Her response was fly tape. For three months we were plagued with these flies and rotten corpse smell.
As soon as the flies left, I was doing laundry in the basement and noticed that the water was murky brown in the machine. The next day the floor was covered in what looked like toilet paper. I called our landlord and told her we thought there was a septic issue, and cited the toilet paper on the floor, but she dismissed me and said it was lint.
A week later I was in the basement doing laundry while my sister was sitting on the toilet upstairs. I heard her flush and then all of a sudden, water came flying out of an open pipe onto the floor, and also through another pipe into the washing machine. At this point, the landlord realized we had a problem, but she got a huge fine when I told the city I had notified her of it months ago.
After that, there is one more incident — we could hear the water heater shaking and creaking for days and told the landlord, who, again, dismissed it. One night we went to the movies and came back to a full fire brigade who said our alarm was going off because of smoke, which caused the neighbors to call. Our furnace had run out of water and was literally about to explode.”