From experience, having a lame landlord is a pain in the behind. But, to be fair it's got to be a pretty bad deal on both sides of the coin. I mean imagine having a bad tenant and having to rely on their (late) rent to keep the building running or getting complaints from other tenants weekly because of one bad seed. All bad.
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Concrete Down The Drains
“I had a tenant pour concrete down the drains. There was no repair possible. It was literally more cost-effective to demolish, salvage what we could and rebuild. It even got into the septic system and we had to settle with the city for damaging their infrastructure. Biggest nightmare ever. We sued the former tenants, but when you’re suing a scumbag, best case scenario, you might get a 1990 Toyota Tercel.
Tenants are pretty decent as a whole, but if you have to evict, it’s worth it to just offer them a couple hundred dollars cash to move out while you’re there and can watch the whole process.”
‘My Worse Tenant Was My Niece’
“Not me but my dad’s tenant. To make the situation worst she was his niece, who he helped out so much over the years. She was even driving one of his cars. To start out, he said there were no pets allowed, knowing she wasn’t the most responsible. So she gets a cat and goes on to ignore it, not cleaning up after it. She basically just feeding and letting it pee and crap all over the house. My father was paying for utilities and she was still too lazy to take the trash out so she would just let it pile up in the house and garage. I could rant on and on, but to cut it short, she quit paying rent when my father demanded she clean up and get rid of the cat. It ended up costing him a few thousand dollars to replace the carpet and have the house deep cleaned because it was so dirty.
The tenant’s dad was a deadbeat who left before she was born. Her mom is no better and abandoned her with my grandmother and would only show up occasionally and ask my grandmother for money and such. My dad was just trying to help her out, he even gave her a break on rent and charged her less than half of what the house would have been rented out for.”
‘They Flooded The Kitchen’
“This one guy came in with his family. They decided to overload the dishwasher till it broke. Then, we had a guy come into check it and he deduced that he needed to replace a part that they broke. It was only online so he told them to wait and not use the dishwasher. He gets a call later that night and the kitchen is flooded (they were hardwood floors) and he asks the wife why she used the dishwasher, to which she replied, ‘How am I supposed to wash the dishes? With a hose?’
There was a deep sink two feet away from the dishwasher.”
They Moved Out So Quickly, The Landlords Got Suspicious
“This was at my parent’s place, maybe 12 years ago:
They rented out the house to what seemed like a nice family with both parents, kids, and stable jobs. They paid their rent on time and never caused any issues. After a year or so, my mom wanted to drop by to see how things were going. You need to give notice before an inspection, and we couldn’t get them on the phone, so we left a note on the door.
The next day, the guy showed up at our house and handed me a cheque for next month’s rent. He told me they were leaving, so long, goodbye. Apparently, they bought a new house in a much nicer neighborhood. My parents thought this was a little odd, so they went to see the rented house, thinking that there was going to be a lot of damage.
The place was empty and clean. The only sign that anything was wrong was that there were some weird seven inch wide circular burns on the carpet downstairs, some steel tubing left against the wall, and a teeny little devil’s grass sapling, forgotten in the corner.”
They Gutted The Place
“My brother rented out one of his three houses. It was a three-story house with a small single unattached garage. Well, we heard through the grapevine that the police kicked in their door to arrest the tenants over the weekend, but they weren’t home. After contacting the sheriff’s department, he learned that said tenants had skipped the state, fleeing prosecution. My brother served an eviction notice to the residence and posted it on the door for thirty days. He got a call one week later from the tenants. They were asking him to put their stuff in a storage. He went over to the house to check it out and discovered they’d gutted the house. They called back and said they’d send him a money gram to pay for the storage. He asked about the twenty thousand dollars worth the damage. They argued back and forth and the tenants said forget it, keep the crap. He never heard from them again. He talked to the city and they told him that he needed to wait one more month before he could take their stuff out on the curb.
I and my brother went over there to clean out the apartment and believe me when I tell you – they gutted it. I mean they literally gutted it. They’d knocked out interior walls on each floor except the top. They’d pulled all the copper wiring out of the walls, to sell I guess. They had extension cords running up the stairs from the several outlets they’d wired into the breaker box. The ceiling fans were gone. I assume they sold them. The bathroom sink was gone. The copper water lines were gone. Their furniture was O’Sullivan brand particle board furniture and was all bubbled and from drinks being spilt on them. The mattresses were all stained, no frames, and no sheets. They just had a blanket thrown over them. The only thing we found that was halfway interesting was an old television in the third-floor bedroom. When I picked it up to carry it out to the dumpster, it was super light and shouldn’t have been. I tapped the screen and discovered they’d slipped a curved piece of plastic in where the screen was supposed to be and removed the guts. After removing the back, we found their ‘pharmacy’ and about a hundred dollars in singles. I pocketed the money and discarded the substances.
They even pulled down the kitchen cabinets that had been newly installed before renting to them and according to one of the guys across the street, (who came to pick through the trash we set out) they’d sold the kitchen cabinets three months after moving in. Everyone on the block was told that they’d bought the house and were slowly remodeling.
My brother was so ticked, he just put the house up for sale and sold it as is because he couldn’t afford to fix all the damage they had done.”
Her Excuse For The Carpet Burn Didn’t Hold Water
“I have a couple of good ones:
I got a call from my tenants saying there was a water leak, I arrived to find that the tap on the back of the house was pulled off the wall and leaking water everywhere, I asked the tenant what happened and she told me that it was just like that when she went outside. I turned the water off and while fixing the pipe I heard banging and saw the garden shed shaking like it was about to fall down.
I went over and had a look to find a pony ‘hidden’ in the shed. When I asked the tenant about it said, ‘Well, when I had it tied to the house, water started coming out’.
I had to take the bond of the same tenant as when I went in for final inspection, I found that the lounge room floor was covered in burns from a clothes iron. When she was told that she would lose her bond, her excuse was, ‘because you are kicking me out, I got stressed, and when I’m stressed, I drink. I just wanted to get back at you for kicking me out’.
So very classy…”
When His Mom Cheated Him Out Of His Properties, He Used The Law To Get Back At Her
“My dad was a landlord who allowed his mother (who he wasn’t very close with, she had a lot of husbands and abandoned him) to rent because she had nowhere to go. She had a wonderful way with words and she managed to convince my father to let her own two of the houses in the apartment.
Four years later, she filed a case claiming ownership of the entire apartment. She won the case because my dad’s father (deceased) who owned the apartment was still legally married to her. A few months later, our father managed to claim the apartment back because apparently, his mother was legally dead (which was twisted, she filed her name in as officially dead so that she could receive the death pension). Since she’s dead, ownership was given back to my father.”
The Garbage Disposal Had Been Turned Into A Deadly Weapon
“I was a tenant, not a landlord, and heard this story from the apartment complex’s handyman.
A new tenant who had just moved in complained that her garbage disposal was making a god-awful noise. Using his arm to prop himself against the wall over the sink, the handyman turned on the disposal. The noise the tenant described was present, but the handyman also felt a strong prickling along his arm; when he looked he saw a number of small nails sticking out of his arm. Apparently, a disgruntled former tenant had poured some carpet nails into the disposal.
Imagine if the handyman had been looking into the disposal when he switched it on…”
‘My Tenants Just Stopped Paying Rent’
“I own a few properties in Sydney.
My tenants stopped paying rent almost right away after only three months. I had the locks changed and went to the property two weeks later only to find the place an absolute mess.
The was feces on most of the walls and holes in all the walls. And a whole toilet was missing. There was a hot water system that had a dead cat in it. The bathtub was full of cat crap. The kitchen was covered in dirty plates from the last 3 months. There was old KFC in the fridge, the carpet was completely munted and there were smoke butts EVERYWHERE.
$16,000 later, my investment property was back on track. I never did manage to recover my stove or toilet from the old tenants but the insurance covered most of it.”
He Only Had The One Cat When He First Moved In
“I’ve had two tenants.
Tenant 1: He moved in with one cat. When I evicted him, there were 24 cats. The fleas were out of control in the house when he left. Thank goodness for fumigation.
Tenant 2: Lovely lady moved in and then she found a boyfriend. He had a couple birds. The lady died about a year later, boyfriend rented out parts of my teeny house to 11 other people and began breeding budgies. He bragged to the neighbors that he had 54 budgies. He was evicted. It took me three dumpsters to clean out his garbage.
My house has been empty for a year. I plan on moving back in this May.”
No One Is That Good In Bed!
“We rented out a room in our house for a few years to varying people. Our first two renters were great, there were no problems at all and as a result, we got cocky.
The next one interviewed well and seemed like a good guy. When he arrived with his stuff to move in, he smelt. We were a bit concerned but he stayed primarily in his room and didn’t bother us. Then he got a girlfriend who turned out to be a screamer. No one is that good in bed to justify the level of moaning this girl produced. We were very glad when he moved out. It took two bottles of Febreeze to get rid of the smell, too.
The second girl also seemed fine and all was well for six months. Then we went overseas on holiday and she turned our house into a hotel for her relations we had never met (who she also let stay in our house while she was back home visiting her parents). My parents alerted us to what was going on as they live nearby and once we contacted her via text to see what was going on, she announced she would move out. We got home to a house that stunk of smoke as they had used the fireplace incorrectly, wax was everywhere from candles they had burnt, and there a massive stain on our bedspread. That stain would not come out and those sheets had to be chucked. My husband still can’t talk about it without a vein bulging out of his neck.
I can laugh now, looking back on it.”
She Disappeared In The Middle Of The Night, But He Wished It Had Happened Sooner
“She freaked, absolutely freaked, when I asked her to repair a hole in the wall and a door that was pulled off the hinges. She lied about the damage being pre-existing in spite of a signed condition inspection form and threatened me with ‘real’ damage if I even tried to evict her. She repeatedly came to my house to deliver verbal abuse at the top of her lungs.
Around that time, she stopped cleaning and taking out the garbage, but continued to pay rent. Non-payment of rent is about the only easy grounds for eviction in British Columbia. I figured that out, but she illegally refused me access to the house to inspect, and as I was trying to get the paperwork together to evict on that basis, she disappeared in the middle of the night.
The cleanup bill was $2,000, and about another $1,000 went to repair the damage. Her damage deposit covered $500 of it and It is illegal to discriminate against welfare tenants in B.C, so that was that.”
‘He Was Just Dirty’
“When we were moving out of a previous apartment (house style apartment, separate entrances, but with a house type layout), our landlord told us during the walk-through inspection that the tenant who lived below us had absolutely destroyed the place. When the crew went in to inspect and clean, they found piles of feces and vomit all over the apartment and molding food everywhere. He had let off bug bombs at a point that made the apartment stink, plus he smoked indoors, so the smell was unbearable. My landlord said after they cleaned the place, she had to give them all the week off because every single one of them got violently ill from whatever was in his apartment.
For a little side story on this guy…it was not unusual for us to come home at night and he would be smoking while standing on the roof of his jeep. Also, he once asked to come into our apartment (before we knew the extent of his madness) to use our phone. He had been driving while in the clouds on Lord knows what and his car broke down, so he walked home. He then realized he didn’t have a key inside and needed to call his dad to come help him. While standing in our living room, he suddenly dropped down on all fours, panicking, trying to kill the ‘bugs’ that were running all over our wood floors.
He wasn’t welcome after that.”
The Mother Was So Sweet At First…
“My brother had a family as a tenant in one of his houses. It was a recently renovated old Victorian home in a great area right on a river. It had a massive yard and was the perfect place to raise a family.
The tenant family of seemed super cool. And my brother is such a good fellow in that he really likes to help people out. And this family seemed like interesting and trustworthy people, so he even gave them a bit of a deal on their rent.
The mother took in children from abused homes and I guess she would foster troubled youths. She got a little something-something from the government for her troubles. But she was passionate about helping these kids. Mostly, children in their early to mid-teens. I remember there was a trans girl and a couple hard done street kids mixed in with her own kids, one of which was a newborn. Despite a few of them being from broken homes, they were all friendly. All in all, there were maybe a total of 6 or 7 in the household. They helped with yard upkeep and loved their newly adopted family.
They lived there for over a year. And my brother would regularly give them things. He got a new bbq one year and just gave them his older one which was only a year old. He would sometimes get music or movie tickets from his work and he’d give them to his tenants. He was just an all-around helpful guy and would check in on his tenants every couple of months.
Anyway, my brother fell on some hard times and due to whatever problems he found himself in, he was forced to sell one of his two properties. He gave the tenants the legally required three months notice plus an extra month just because he felt so bad and even went out of his way to share the names of some other landlords he trusted.
The family said they understand and there was no harm and no foul done. Then after moving out, my brother went to the property to find the upstairs bathroom flooded and seeping to the lower floor. There was trash scattered everywhere, holes in the wall, graffiti scribbled across the walls in giant sharpies saying, ‘forget you whiteboy’ and things of that nature. Kitchen cabinets were pulled from the wall and smashed, it truly looked like a bomb went off. There was complete, and utter destruction of his recently renovated property. But the worst was yet to come.
For the past few months that this family lived there, the mother of this group of destruction decided to throw her newborn’s excrement filled diapers in the basement. There were crap filled diaper bombs piled high, spread and smeared at the bottom of the stairway and along the walls. No courtesy bag. No tight burrito spirals. Just loosey goosey butt to stairwell poopie diapers. It was like a doo-doo-doomsday down there.
All in all, I think it all cost my brother around $70,000 and another four months to get the property ready for sale. He had taken loans from my parents and grandma and generally just hated himself for a while. He spoke to a lawyer from what I recall but was told for some reason insurance or landlord law related that he’d spend another arm and a leg going after someone who doesn’t have much money, to begin with.
Needless to say, she didn’t get her damage deposit back.”
‘They Stole And Sold Everything In The House’
“A tenant had all but $25 of her rent paid for by government assistance every month and chasing that $25 was a nightmare. The day her eviction notice came due, I drove up to the house and on the front porch stood a girl, who was no more than 13-years-old. I asked the next door neighbor who she was and they said she sometimes stayed there. The power was off and the water was off. But this kid apparently stayed there. A dog was inside the house and the tenants were long gone. The house was crawling with roaches, (have you ever opened a cabinet and you see the roaches are living inside the hinges of the cabinet?). Not to mention, there was dog crap everywhere. They left mountains of clothes, mattresses, you name it. We stopped by this place on a routine basis and so did the city who funded them. They passed inspections. As we were cleaning out their mess, two large gentlemen showed up and asked why we were moving their things out. They lived there. I said, ‘Well, I own the house, who are you guys?’
‘Oh, we rent rooms here.’ OH, I SEE!
They stole and sold all the appliances and busted holes in the walls. They ruined everything in the house, every inch of carpet was soaked with bodily discharge, there were cracked floor tiles, busted toilets, broken vanities. All worth about $7,000 of repairs.
We went to file a vandalism insurance claim, but they said it was ‘normal wear and tear.’
Yet, when someone shot a firework through one of my rental house windows, I told the window company that a firework did it and I was expected to pay for it and they honored the 100% satisfaction guarantee.
You may ask why we would do all of this still, with $7,000 in write-offs, lack of rent etc. It just made for a lot of tax write-offs and we still were in the black for the year.”