Renting is never an ideal situation but in most cases, landlords are decent people who work hard to make life good for their tenants.
Unfortunately, in some cases, they don't. These landlords appear to have gone in the opposite direction, actively working to make their tenants as miserable as possible.
Oh, and one of them turns out to be a murderer. Seriously. Content has been edited for clarity.
If It Ain’t Broke, Break It
“We had a new management company take over the complex after we’d lived there for three years. They fired all the staff that had been there for years and replaced them with people that didn’t know what they were doing.
When we first moved in, if something broke, the first company would come right over to fix it either the same day or the next and they’d call to confirm it was okay to enter the apartment. They’d leave a note to say what they were in the apartment for and exactly when.
The new company wouldn’t fix anything in a timely manner. Our air conditioner broke during summer when the average temperature outside was 105 F. It took four phone calls and threatening legal action to get them to do anything. A week later, we came home to our door unlocked, all the lights on (even in the bedrooms) and an absolutely freezing apartment. So cold, in fact, the air conditioner froze and it burned out. It took another week to ‘order parts’ to fix it. They left all the lights on and the door unlocked again when they finally fixed it the second time.
A month later, the bathtub broke. The hot water wouldn’t turn off; it was on full blast. They said it wasn’t urgent since the water was draining down the tub. They waited three days to come and fix it. The hot water made our room super humid and it was loud, so we closed the door. They got mad because the door split from the moisture.
One day, I stayed home from work because I was sick. I was taking a nap on the couch and when I woke up, there was a man standing in my doorway. I screamed, ‘Who on earth are you? Get out!’
He said, ‘Umm…maintenance.’ I stepped out and called my husband and he was really angry. The guy was gone when I got back but he propped my front door open. I closed and locked the door and called the leasing office and they acted like I was being unreasonable. They gave no notice they were entering the apartment and the guy was standing there, watching me sleep. They said, ‘We didn’t think it was necessary since he wouldn’t be actually entering the apartment; he’s just painting your front door.’
The last straw was we were required to give 60 days notice if we were moving out but they waited to give us the new lease terms until 29 days before the current lease expired. When we got it, they raised the rent $500 per month. We didn’t renew the lease, gave them notice, and moved out. They decided to file for eviction instead.”
He Was Convinced To Move Cross-Country Based On Lies
“I was moving across the country to move in with a friend from college who was already leasing a house with a few other people. He got me in touch with the property management company’s employee who was in charge of that house.
I spoke with him and filled out the application, my mom filled out the cosigner’s app, and he gave me the approval to move in. Everything was great, except the property management guy stopped responding to me about halfway through my 3,000-mile road trip.
I get to the house and less than a month later, my friend’s original roommates tell us that they’re moving out. I call the property management company to figure out what our options are and get this lovely surprise:
I was never put on the lease. I was never approved to move in. My dog, who I was told was allowed on the property, was not. The guy I spoke with and got approval from had given his two week’s notice and just ‘yepped’ me into moving 3,000 miles away from home because he couldn’t give a fig about his job anymore.
We ‘rectified’ the situation and they moved my friend and me into another one of their rental properties.
Three months later, the house is covered in mold and we’re being told that we need to leave for our ‘health and safety’ but that we’re still responsible for paying rent, and because we didn’t keep the house at a certain temp (there was no thermostat in the house!!) the mold was our fault and we were responsible for repairs.
We sued them real fast and got a couple grand out of it.”
What A Pest!
“My first apartment when I was 18 had a rat and roach problem. My landlord refused to fumigate or call an exterminator. Instead, he just showed up one day and started opening up the walls looking for the pests.
I remember sleeping at night and I could hear the rats in the walls. I’d wake up in the morning and there would be drywall in the kitchen because the rats chewed through and got into the pantry.
I refused to pay rent until he called an exterminator. After six weeks or so, he told me to move out and just up and changed the locks, holding all my possessions hostage.
Fortunately, I took him to small claims court and won.”
At Least Knock, Fred!
“When I was living with an ex up in Massachusetts, my landlord was this 90-year-old man named Fred who didn’t care much about tenant laws. Massachusetts is one of those states that has some pretty strong laws, like one where you have to give a certain amount of notice to the tenants before showing their apartment to potential buyers.
Fred didn’t give a crap, and would bring people over with no notice, and expect me to let them into my apartment when I was chilling on a Saturday afternoon. Once he came by, opened the door to my apartment and brought some people by, while my girlfriend and I were going at it in the living room.
Not cool, Fred.”
When Your Landlord Ends Up Getting Arrested
“The house I lived in last year was in a constant state of disrepair, partly from the strain of having eleven people in, and partly because of the mismanagement of the property owners.
When a shower stopped working, I walked into my room one day to find a very tiny elderly Chinese man who spoke absolutely no English (and I speak no Chinese) attempting to patch a two-by-three-foot, irregular hole in the drywall. He had apparently cut it open to access some plumbing but didn’t find what he wanted. I ended up covering it with a poster and hoping they wouldn’t come back.
When the roof started leaking over the winter causing water damage in my closet, the solution was to have a crew (including the same man that cut the hole in my wall) nail plywood over the top of a section of the roof and shingle it. It took them three weeks.
Our heater also stopped working in November. It was an oil furnace that ran out of fuel despite being purportedly filled in September (which we paid for). It never actually started working properly again, so it was a rough winter.
The landlord also refused to get a plumber to fix our kitchen sink, which was completely unusable for three months because of some fault that was never explained to us. I suspect one of my roommates clogged it with his nasty cooking.
Midway through the lease, our actual property manager (effectively the landlord, the company’s ‘liaison’) was arrested for fraud and fired. We went through two temporary agents before getting a new one, who immediately ignored us and every request we submitted. At least the fraud guy was nice.”
When The Library Becomes Your Home
“Moving internationally, I took a red-eye flight. I was exhausted, edgy from a very turbulent flight and going through customs, and carrying all my worldly possessions in two of those giant duffel bags. I had paid my first and last months’ rent two weeks before, and my landlord assured me the apartment would be ready. He knew exactly when I was arriving.
It wasn’t ready. He wouldn’t even let me crash there while they finished working. I had to go hang out at the local public library for 10 hours while he got his act together. I also managed to lose my cell phone that day and had to take a cab to the mall to get a new one.
That was on April Fool’s Day 2014. I’m not terribly superstitious, but I’m unlikely to try any international moves on April Fool’s Day again any time soon.”