My ex-landlord did a number of awful things:

He was supposed to fix our droopy ceiling while we were on our honeymoon. While he (kinda) did, he also sawed through our back door lock to gain entry and charged his jeep with our electricity for days on end. He neglected to fix a toilet that functioned but "ran" for 3 months. Then he got a shocker of a water bill. Heh.

We escrowed-escrowed-escrowed until we were ready to move and then we settled nearly a year later.

Worst thing a landlord did was shoot fireworks at my family from the neighboring lot.(which they also owned)

And we called the housing inspector and had them cited for every possible infraction. They did not have a C/O and they did not register us as tenants and that screwed them even more.

Now, we wait the arrival of our deposit and anticipate the small claims court case it's going to take to get it back.

When I lived in NJ, one of my ex-landlords was caught red-handed burglarizing a tenant's apartment. He was arrested but then released; the prosecutor wouldn't prosecute him for burglary because he didn't have any of the tenant's stuff by the time the cops got there. But two days after he got out of jail, he vanished and hasn't been seen since.

When I was getting ready to move out, my ex-landlord sent us a "final statement" that had no charges on it, with a note asking us to call their "community relations department" to get the final bill if we were moving.

I called, and called, and called, and they never answered the phone or responded to the voicemails I left. On the 7th day of the month, I received a summons that they were taking me to court to evict me. I showed up in their office and proceeded to rip them a new one for it, and in the end, they had to eat all of the late fees and lawyers fees and I paid the amount of rent I was supposed to for that month.

On top of that, they took over 3 weeks to fix my back door. I attempted to invoke their "maintenance guarantee" (If we don't fix or update you on it after 24 hours, each day we don't do it you don't pay rent) and they ignored it, I called their corporate office and they ignored it as well.

The worst was when the central A/C broke down in the middle of summer, the apartment was 85-90F for nearly 5 days before their tech showed up to fix it. If I had known more about tenants rights I would have had the health dept on come in to measure the temperature.

Never again will I rent from AIMCO

I had a landlord leave a hand written note on my door telling me I was evicted and must leave in two weeks. I was only 19 and I really didn't know how illegal this was and so on the last day of the "two weeks" I showed up with some friends and a truck to move out. When I arrived I noticed the door had a dead bold on it. I called the landlord and they said they were glad I was there they would have the police come by. They showed up minutes before the police and would not let me into the apartment until the cops got there. You must first know that I was never late on my rent and that I am a neat freak, so the pace was in great shape. The landlord asked the police to enter the property first without me. They went in (which is completely illegal. It amazes me how out of line the cops were. When they returned to the door where I was waiting the cops presented me with a small amount of low grade, dried up marijuana seeds and stems they had found in my roomates closet. The landlords had found the marijuana when they were there without me knowing packing all my stuff up for me. They had packed open shampoo bottles and food on top of hand made quilts my gradmother had made ect ect. The cops yelled at me until I was sobbing I was scared to death. The cops told me I had two hours to get out. I have never been in trouble with the law and did as they said. Now years later and much more informed I am appauled that a young woman like myself could be trreated like this, especially with the police there. The landlords excuse was that I had a loud party. The party they spoke of was a family dinner in which one of the guests was my roomates father who is a HWY Patrolman. Their claims were completely false and there was no police report to back it up. As I am sure you suspected I never saw a penny of the $1000.00 deposit. Oh if I knew then what I know now. Know your rights!

In college we rented our fraternity house. The proeprty was not zoned to be a fraternity house, but the landlonrd knew what was going on and didn't seem to care as long as he got paid and no attention was called to it.

Eventually, we drew the attention (and subsequent ire) of the university, which pressured the landlord to make things "difficult" for us (among other things, he refused to make repairs or fill the heating oil tank in a timely manner.) We withheld rent...he sued us. Both sides were at fault for various things...the house he rented us was a dump and we treated it as one.

In the end, our lease was up and we were not renewed. Before patching up all the holes in the walls, we made a trip to the supermarket and bought a few boxes of frozen hamburger patties, which we dropped in the walls.

I bet that place smelled great that summer.

my landlord is dragging his feet on repairing our cracked shower that is leaking into the walls and the laundry room. :shrug: it's his wall. his water damage.

@davebg5: Next time don't let yourself get caught up in Double Secret Probation. :)

not me but a friend. After giving 30 days notice he was informed that the lease called for 60. He checked the fine print and they were right. He ate the extra month and decided to move his stuff gradually, leaving the lame duck location as a glorified storage unit. Once the initial 30 days passed -- on day 31 -- the landlord opened up his place and emptied the apartment and threw out all his stuff. It took quite a while to get any money out of them and of course his stuff was long gone....

ugh! landlords! I have never had one that was decent & held up their end. All they seemingly want to do is collect rent & grudgingly provide any upkeep/repairs to the property (if you are lucky) ...and when you move out... they "find" a reason to keep your deposit.

My current landlord has yet to repair a porch light fixture that hasnt worked since I moved in.

Funny story, I told my landlord that I once worked in residential alarm installation & that I would be installing a security system with cameras etc. etc..(I even let it go off once so that he knew I wasnt just bsing him). Never had him once sneak in to snoop. And all I have are two $10 motion-detecting alarm modules,a locked decoy alarm box and a cheap single camera module recording every minute I am gone from my apartment.

wow i hope these 'landlords' rot in hell. that is terrible. im getting mad just reading this story!

Stories like these are the main reason why the house I bought was a single family and not a multi. I agree that many landlords are complete a'holes, I have also heard of some pretty idiot tenants. Best thing to do on my part was to just get a single family and not have to risk dealing with people not related to me living in my own propery.

As for my experience with bad landlords? Really: none. I guess I was lucky. My mother, however, had to eat like 5 months of no rent for her very expensive 3 family home in Boston because a section 8 tennant decided to use the rent money for her drugs. My mother had to pay to start the process to evict the junkie. Meanwhile she couldn't just kick her out. After losing 5 months of rent, the a'hole tennant decided to simply leave, thereby avoiding losing her posetions from the apartment. And, of course she never paid back the late rent. The law was that the landlord had to wait 6 months of no rent from the tenant before the landlord could finally take their own apartment back, as well as whatever personal property was in it that belonged to the tenant, but that property had to go into storage which the landlord would have to pay. The landlord then had to wait an additional amount of time before they could claim the personal property left by the tenant. Yes, it was that f'd up. I don't know if that's still the case though as my mother did the best thing she could do and got rid of that house.

I agree that there are a lot of nut case landlords but sometimes the good landlords get shit upon by both the law and bad tenants.

@davebg5: You are why I won't ever rent to college students, especially Greeks.

Funny thing is, one of these landlords is kind of a notable FreeBSD developer.

Omg, read the whole story...

"When Hernandez came home and confronted Kip Macy as the landlord was ransacking his apartment, Macy kicked him in the chest, the suit says."

Holy shit!

Oh... I forgot one story told to me by an old friend (no longer a friend anymore) who's friend was a cop. The cop was renting out a house he bought in a bad neighborhood. Granted the people he rented to were scumbags & werent paying the rent, but the cop brought my friend over to go "shopping" in the apartment when they werent there. Basically said to take anything he wanted.

Best advice... NEVER have a landlord that is ALSO a cop.

I was moving out after a lease was up, and the house was a complete mess due to some crazy roommates who just didn't care. I wanted my deposit back, and the landlord lady said no one was moving in until June. (it was april) and she said I couldnt live there in may, but she would leave it to me to clean it all up, and what not, and if it was good enough, give my deposit back.

Well, day after the lease was up, I went there to start cleaning and stuff. I had left a couple personal items. She had a huge metal dump truck bin parked in the front yard, walkd inside, and the place was gutted. She through away my laptop (likely stole it), half my clothes, shoes, computer parts, my personal 'box' with all love letters and gay crap from HS and college from chicks.

It was my fault for leaving it. I trusted her. I had good intentions. She screwed me on purpose, and I hope she rotts in hell for taking advantage of a college kid. Of course I had no proof of our agreement, so legally, I was screwed.

Rent from an owner who lives in the property (two or three family home). The added frustration of having to behave is worth living in a home that someone actually cares about. Just make sure they're not too crazy by asking the current tenants (if possible). Avoid large property management groups like the plague, unless you know your rights and enjoy small claims court. They are investors interested in the one thing investors usually care about - money. And they know most tenants are too lazy to understand their rights. You can make decent money, depending on where you live if you get screwed by a landlord.

Software engineers have SUCH great social skills. I guess this is the Libertarian Paradise which they yammer on about so much.

Here's Kip Macy's email address. Anyone have his picture?

kmacy@FreeBSD.org

I have to say, I've never really had too much of a horror story with any landlords that I've known. I was thrown out of one apartment building that the landlord wanted to renovate and rent at a higher rate, but I had plenty of notice and was on a month-to-month arrangement by then.

My current landlord is a gem. No increases in rent since I moved in more than two years ago, repairs done in a reasonable time and he even buys me a drink or two at the bar he owns when I drop off the check.

I have seen some truly awful tenants. My SO used to own a house in Florida that he was renting out to some bona fide North Carolina trailer trash, who thought they could take advantage of the fact that he lived out of state.

Rent was never on time, they had to have eviction papers served on them multiple times to get them to pay up (Florida law bends over backwards to preserve the rights of tenants). The one time I was present when he served papers, she called the police and accused him of trying to give her AIDS.

When he finally got rid of them, we had to clean up the place. It was a complete disaster. I doubt they even cleaned the place once the whole time they were there. Nasty black mold growing everywhere...cabinets and trim destroyed by their dogs...the yard was a mess...ugh! It took a whole week of going over that place with industrial strength bleach to render it fit for habitation.

all through college I had scummy landlords that would attempt to keep the entire rental deposit for various things. (Apparently dust on top of a shelf in the hall closet is a $85 deduction of deposit); somehow it all magically added up to just about the exact amount of the deposit.

Anyway, in Iowa a landlord is required to give you explanation of all withholding from your deposit within 30 days of vacating the property or they are required to give you your entire deposit back. 3 out 4 years they were late and through some coercion i ended up getting my deposit back in full.

i've had good landlords luckily. My parents owned an apt building and we saw the worst of the worst. It really is amazing how some people will "move out" yet leave all their trash and stuff they don't want in the apt. These weren't even bad tenants who got evicted. They just figured they aren't taking it with them so why bother.

I had one who refused to remove the feral cats that were living in the crawl space underneath my house. Yowling at all hours of the night, making kittens right and left. Finally, my friends and I put out a bunch of cat food and a bunch of traps and trapped about 15 cats one night, and I left them on my landlord's doorstep.

I wish I'd known that "Florida law bends over backwards to preserve the rights of tenants"... I might have had fewer problems.

No hot water for 6 days in March 2008...
Wanted us to pay for a new water heater if we wanted it fixed or she would pay the $17 part if we would wait for 6 days.
hmmm.. I dont think so...

Not trying to start anything but, fire is a very useful tool.

Just saying.

In college I had a landlord who rented us his house near the University (he had a permanent residence in Princeton, NJ). Nice enough guy when we met him, but he turned into a horror. He would drive to the house which was 90 minutes from him in the middle of the night and mow the lawn. A week after we moved in we found roaches, which he blamed on us because some of us came from New York City and they must have jumped in our boxes and moved with us. He would call in the middle of the night, he would randomly appear in the house during the day. The last straw was when we had a puffback in the furnace which forced us to call the fire department (the only people in the house at the time were two 19 year old girls, we didn't know any better). The fire department came with the Fire Marshal (who's name was Bill, true story) who called the landlord and forced him to drive from Princeton to the rental house so he could personally cite him for the numerous fire hazards in the house. We decided in the end to break the lease because of the fire hazards he wouldn't fix, which involved all 5 of us loading our cars in the middle of the night and moving to our new location. He held our security deposits for the longest time until my father (again, 19 and stupid in worldly matters)called him and threatened to take him to court.

Every landlord has been a peach ever since, even the one who would randomly show up to plant flowers in the yard.

I once rented a place that had a LEAKING half full fuel tank on the backside of the house. Property manager had no intention of fixing. I've heard the place has since burned down.

@Trai_Dep: Generalizing like that makes you sound extra smart. I'm a software engineer, not because I was an outcast, but because computers just come easy to me.

You don't have to be one of the guys from columbine to be a software engineer.

There is also Government low-income housing in every city. Go checkout how nice those places are run.

My experience is not nearly as bad as some of the others that have posted but at the time it seemed awful.

I had moved to Queens from upstate NY to go to college and found this really cute apartment within walking distance of school. It looked clean when I first saw it. I signed a one year lease and moved in and that first night when I got up in the dark to go to the bathroom and I opened the light there were cockroaches everywhere and little baby ones crawling in my toothbrush. I told the landlord and she said her religion forbade killing bugs and that she could not exterminate and she said I could not exterminate either. I told her I wanted to move out and she said I could go but she would not give me my deposit back or any portion of the rent I had paid. I had only stayed that one night. I moved out anyway, letting her keep the deposit and rent. I just wanted to get out of there.

I ended up moving into this gigantic house nearby with the landlords living in the house (I was desperate). They were a young sister and brother who had very rich parents who lived in Hawaii. These two spent every day hanging around smoking pot, drinking beer and listening to music. They didn't work, go to school or do anything but smoke pot. Although I didn't smoke pot I thought it was still better than cockroaches and I needed housing so I stayed for a while.

@angrychicken: I have always been taken advantage of by land lords too, but there is strict law, and the laws on security deposits and such are very clear. Now I have a house and its too late, but should have small claims court every single one of them. They just took my deposit. Never offered any line item detail as to why.

The guy who disappeared for months after I moved out (with my security deposit), then claimed I owed him a move-out fee and that the rest of the money went to replacing the lock on the mailbox, since I never had a chance to return the mailbox key. Jerk.

I even offered to settle for deposit less the possibly-fake move-out fee, but no dice.

I had to hire a process server to hunt the guy down, but I finally took his ass to court. And won. Of course.

I probably would have won treble damages too (DC has awesome renter laws), but he lied his ass off in court and I couldn't prove malice.

I haven't had any direct experiences with landlords.

A friend of mine just moved out of a crapartment (to quote Grey's Anatomy). There was no heat during part of winter (did I mention this is in Canada). Just last week, black sludge starts coming out of her bathtub drain.

So she goes to the superintendent (who intends to go out of town that weekend). He says "Wow. I've never seen anything like this before." He just stood there, until finally she actually had to ask him what he was going to do about it. He shrugs. She had to argue with him quite a lot before he agreed to "call a plumber or something..."

Fortunately, she moved out today.

In fact, of all the places I've ever rented, it's been a pain in the ass to get the deposit back. It's always taken *at least* a threatening letter.

One suggestion for renters.... buy a hidden camera that is set up to record once the picture changes (meaning when someone moves into the room) & install/hide it in a HEAVY piece of furniture & check it often. You never know when the landlord is sneaking in to your apartment to sniff your underwear, snoop thru your things, look for drugs etc. etc.. In other words... "NEVER TRUST YOUR LANDLORD!"

I remember a video blog a while back of a man who was living in hong kong, singapore, thailand(cant remember) who's male landlord was sneaking into his apartment after the tenant left, so the tenant decided to use his laptop & cam with some special surveilliance software & caught the landlord going thru his things, hiding in a cabinet, sniffing his used underwear, jerking off with his used underwear, jerking off into/onto food items in his refridgerator & all kinds of disturbing things. If someone could post the blog (I tried to find it)... thanks.

@redqueenmeg: Seriously, IIRC, even if the landlord jumps through all of the hoops and properly serves the delinquent tenant at the proper times, you can still skate without paying any rent at all for up to three months, depending on how much you want to fight for it.

Then you just vacate and you get away scot free, unless the landlord has the resources and the inclination to hunt you down (which most small landlords don't). That will just take you into small claims court.

If anything, this article tells us that rent controls are a horrible, horrible thing. Of course landlords will hate tenants that are paying thousands of dollars less per year than they should be paying.

@Corydon: Not "scot free". Any eviction on your credit report means it's nearly impossible to get decent rental housing. Further, just like with any other bill, the landlord can employ a collection agency to ruin your credit and pursue you for seven years.

Please only tell these stories to this venue. Please, do not give my landlord any ideas.

Has to be the landlord that knowingly rented us a house with a failing septic system and mold issue but didn't disclose any of this before we moved in. His drinking buddies tried to replace some windows, trashed a ton of our stuff and released some odd strain of mold all over everything making everyone sick. Then the septic system failed, we were told not to wash clothes or shower any more. The septic failed while they were still trying to sort of clean up the mold. Needless to say we withheld rent and moved the heck out asap. He tried to take us to small claims for the lease and lost.

Honorable mention number 1, goes to the landlord that rented us a house knowing it didn't pass city rental code. It was minor stuff that really didn't matter like no rail on the garage stairs. But the city told him he must fix it or be fined. So he put the house on the market and told us we had to move even though we had a year lease. Then he had a realtor friend try to get us to leave while she was going to change the locks, she promised she would give us a key when she was done. yea right.

Honorable mention number 2 goes to the landlord where the house had a collapsing sewer line and was backing up toilet and all other sewage into the finished basement. He refused to fix it, we got to clean that up ourselves three times before we bought a house and moved out.

I also gotta mention the apartment super that was going into my apartment while I was at work to go through my underwear drawer.

Needless to say I freaking hate landlords.

I lived in a two family house that was owned by a property management group. The place itself wasn't too bad, plus they let me have pets and even put a trampoline in the back yard. However, the reason we were living there was we were in the market for a home and nothing was open yet.

We moved in there knowing that we were under a lease, but this prop group had some special deal with tennants in my situation. When we found a place to buy and move into they would start advertising the place for rent again and we would only have to pay 100 dollars to transfer the lease to the new tennants.

Sounded too good to be true, and it was. They never found anyone to move in. I'd call and call and they would say they were showing the place to tons of people, but not one of them returned to move in. 6 months this went on with me paying a mortgage and rent there, as well as utilities, and being the middle of winter thats quite expensive.

Anyways, after being dead broke and putting lots of stupid purchases on credit cards that shouldn't have been (food, gas, etc...) we are finally out of the lease. And wouldn't you know it, the DAY our lease is up, moving trucks show up at the place...

Coincidence? Or some company not wanting to do jack squat until they no longer make money from a situation.

Note: about tenant's rights. SOme states have prettymuch none. Like for example... in my state.... there is no standard or law that says a landlord has to provide notice before coming in to inspect the apartment for ANY reason. So... basically he could concievably come & go as he pleases.

@trk182:
Fire worked for me! Not on purpose, but last summer in the house I was renting, I set my kitchen on fire, thanks mostly to the circa 1967 stove.
[img146.imageshack.us]

The landlord was ecstatic because he got to totally update the kitchen and insurance paid for it all. Joy all around.

How much would it cost to set up a camera to take pictures while your out? Thinking of doing that but can't find anything wireless.

@hypochondriac: It depends. If you can use a wired camera, the cost of a webcam. We have one in my hubbies office with a program that detects motion. It is to notify him if the kids go into his office.

We bought a wireless security camera for about $50 at Radio Shack. Has everything.

I had a landlord who didnt pay the mortgage after we signed the lease. We kept getting letters from the mortgage company and didnt think about it.

Then jan 7th we got a foreclosure hearing notice. when questioned the landlord said that it was a paper work mistake when the mortgage company sold the loan to another company. Knowing that she was lying i sit and wait till 5 days before the hearing date. I called the lawfirm that was doing all the work for the bank, they said that the process is still going through.

The date was moved but that was to buy them time. I heard about numerous attempts of investors trying to buy our place at fair market value but they wanted more. They owe the HOA 20,000 dollars in back fees, and never fixed anything. i have a leaking toilet, my locks are flimsy, and my dishwasher is broken.

They did eventually file bankruptcy but are not picking up their phones. I sent their mail via certified mail with repair requests last month and havent heard a thing from them. I am at a position where I am sending them another letter via certified mail stating that if they want their rent checks they need to call me to make arrangements to make the repair.

this is the worst experience, it had affected my studies at school and stressed my self out. I however will not pay the last months rent because i know i will not get my deposit back.

oh to add to my story.

on the weekend of the second hearing we had people trying to change our locks. Had i called the police then i would have my justice.

@bohemian: Thanks. do you remember which one you bought and was setup easy. connecting the camera is easy what about setting it to upload pictures automatically?