61 People Recall The Worst Landlords That Deserve A Special Place In Hell

Seemed like the nicest couple in the world when we first rented the place, they even invited us to dinner and we had a great time.

3 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 that was on our kitchen floor (we didn't own any blue glasses).

I remembered that dinner, they had blue glasses on the table. I setup a camera in the living room and over the next week caught this guy in our apartment when we weren't home.

Jerk was going through our dressers and playing with my wife's underwear, caught him red handed and gave him a nice beating and called the cops.

He tried playing it off like he smelt smoke and wanted to investigate, then I played back the previous weeks video's of him visiting on 3 separate occasions.

They locked him up, we found a new place really fast and never looked back.

While deployed, my wife remained at our home in Texas. The A/C broke in the middle of summer. They told her that the temperature wasn't hot enough to constitute a repair. When she showed them pictures of the thermostat reading over 100 degrees indoor they finally said that they would send a repairman but that I needed to be there because I was the primary name on the lease although she had power of attorney. I threatened to sue. A/C was eventually Jerry-rigged (the repair guy told her that he was paid to do the bare minimum fix) near the end of summer.

Fast forward. I'm home, it's getting hot again, and the A/C breaks again. Same story as before claiming it wasn't hot enough. This dragged on for awhile and I finally had orders to move to a new duty station. Gave them 30 days notice and moved out. They tried to tell me that I couldn't leave the home with a broken air conditioner and wouldn't honor my military orders, I had to pay to fix the A/C, and wouldn't get my deposit back. I once again threatened to sue and contacted the actual owner of the house. 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 see me in Texas, fired the property managers, sued them himself, said I was actually the cleanest/most respectable tenant he's had, and eventually paid me double my deposit for my troubles. Nice guy.

Land lord found out I was a renovation specialist. With a long background in historic renovation and water/fire/storm damage. Asked if I would do little odds and ends around the place to fix it up. Took it off the rent or paid for materials to do the work. I did a lot for her. Refinished the concrete floor in the laundry room, replace ALL door knobs with new style knobs. (They were the old slide in glass knobs, so each door took about 6 hours to complete. Because of wood filling, sanding, and painting then resetting the new knobs.) Replaced the front door. Repaired walls all over and repainted the whole place. Hung new cabinets and installed a new dish washer after somewhat redesigning the kitchen to accommodate the dishwasher. Refinished the ancient front entry door. Rewired a few problem outlets/lights and switches.

When I moved in the place sat for a year empty. It was in rough shape. When I moved out the place was awesome. So nice on fact it rented out for 300$ more a month then I had rented it for. It also rented out 4 days after I moved out. She did not have to do anything to move a new family in.

So few weeks go by and I'm starting to wonder where my deposit is. Clearly I should be getting that back. Nope. Got a letter in the mail say she was keeping it because of a [nonsensical] list of stuff. So I took her to court and won. Her argument was basically that this is how she makes money. It's her only income. Judge looked like her was holding back laughter before he ruled in my favor.

Downstairs toilet backed up. Totally horrible. The plumber said it was backed up with tampons and baby wipes. I'm a single male. She insisted I pay the plumber's bill because it was my fault. Two women occupied the apartment before I did

My mom moved out of a house and after she moved out, the landlord sued her for $15,000 for damages to the house. It was all just regular wear and tear, roof was leaking, water heater needed to be replaced, that kind of stuff. My mom lawyered up and wound up not only winning the case but the judge ordered the landlord to pay her legal fees.

The reason he was doing that was it was 2009, he bought that house as an investment around 2005 and was therefore mega broke and couldn't afford to fix any of that stuff himself.

I never actually met him, but we nearly ended up taking him to court. We complained about a ton of broken things that he would never fix. When they did get fixed, it was by the unqualified worker that he hired from the Home Depot parking lot (no offense to those guys, but they didn't fix our roof correctly).

Being college kids, we go to the free legal council out university offered, hoping we had some options to get things fixed. The lawyer found out that the house we were renting had been foreclosed on 2 months prior and the bank owned it now. Extremely pissed off, we decided to stop paying rent to this guy while we got our things in order (we never did get our two months rent back from when he didn't own the house).

About 6 weeks later, he comes by the house furious that we hadn't paid rent in over a month. My roommate simply said, "We aren't paying you anymore, get the hell off this property." This pissed him off even more and he started threatening my roommate until my roommate said, "We know you don't own this place anymore and we are going to sue you for the money you stole from us." He shut up at this point and left, never to be heard from again. We didn't sue him because each of us were only out like $600 dollars (rent was stupid cheap for 4 college kids in a big city).

We made a deal with the bank to pay them the same rent we had been paying in order to stay until graduation in May. We were also responsible for cleaning up the yard and they would get someone out there to fix a few big issues (roof and plumbing) since they were going to sell the house anyway. We held up our end and enjoyed our last few months of college without a [bad] landlord.

Last November I get a knock on the door of my "newly renovated" basement appartment from the fire department saying I'm living in an illegal apartment and will be evicted in 3 months if the landlord doesn't get the place up to code. Landlord kicks me and my girlfriend out in february for "just two weeks, but we'll say three just to be safe". I ask if i have to move out ny furniture, and he says "no, theyll just work around it."

I then spent 7 weeks living illegally in my buddy's basement 30 mins away, paying rent, and commuting to work. Finally, in April, landlord gives me the ok to move back in, saying the place looks great.

When I got back, the entire place was filthy. There was thick drywall dust on every surface, paintcans, tools, and garbage in every nook, and paint splattered on the floor, windows, and all of my furniture including the matress. Some of my wooden furniture had scratches in it, and the shoe rack and shower curtain were destroyed.

I argued with him for days. He gave me $150 for cleaning and damages, then upped rent by $100/month because the "apartment is so much better now".

We spent some time in South America, and our landlord there decided he'd been charging us too little rent, so he attempted to up it. We kicked up a bit of a fuss so he backed down, only to try again under the guise of having someone in every week 'to clean cobwebs off the outside of the windows'. He wanted an extra $150 a month for this - the same amount he was trying to increase the rent in the first place by. The windows didn't have cobwebs on them.

In that house, we used to get stray dogs coming by to say hello. We are dog lovers and used to feed them if they looked skinny, give them belly rubs and so on. Landlord didn't like this, but as there were holes in the fence we couldn't stop them coming in the garden.

One dog started coming every day, and then one day stopped leaving. She stayed outside our front door all the time, waiting for food or to be stroked. She was such a sweet little thing. Landlord noticed her and started complaining. We told him she never came inside, and wasn't doing any harm. We also mentioned the holes in the fence. One night when my husband was out at his regular gym class, I heard the landlord's car pulling up. I was already in bed so I assumed he'd knock on the door and realise I wasn't going to answer... but he didn't. I heard him open the gate, mooch around a bit, and then he started his car up again and left. In the morning the dog was gone. We never saw her again.

I rented a room from a guy who, a month after i moved in, got approval to sell the house. i found out when someone came in and told me to tell him the city council approved it.

The best part? he never even mentioned it was up for sale.

I was renting a studio apartment with seperate kitchen in a decent building in an "up and coming" neighborhood. Rent was $500/month, rent stabilizes. Dot Com happened, population grew, a wine bar opened close by... my neighbor, who also had a studio, same size but imo not as good layout, passed away. They refinished his floors, painted, and rented his place out for $1300/month. Then I started getting letters from the owner, whom I had never met. Accusing me of mistreating the apartment, living in filth, causing roaches and mold, threatening to evict me. Ok my apartment was not filthy, you'll just have to trust me on that one. I responded to each of the letters, refuting the claims, offering to speak by phone and got no response other than yet more threatening letters. I finally offered to move out at the end of the month if they gave me my deposit back, which they did. I moved across the country, which I had been planning to do anyway. I get so angry when I think about that person.

I was 19 and lived with 2 girlfriends of mine. Our landlord lived nextdoor. Our landlord decided she wanted to come check out how we were living one day, by breaking the lock on the front door and walking around our apartment. My roommate was asleep in her room and heard her come in. She screamed, and my landlord ran out. About 2 weeks later, almost the same thing happened except my roommate was in the shower. I stomped over to my landlord's house and lost it on her. I went as far as to print out a copy of the NJ tenants rights laws and tape them to every window on the front of the house.

We found roaches in our apartment. I called and called and called the landlord but they wouldn't send anybody out. I called the leasing agency and they finally sent someone. The guy doesn't find anything so he thinks it's just a random one from someone else's apartment. Ok, problem solved from my end I think.

A couple weeks later, I get a thousand dollar bill for pest services to get rid of the roaches. It's from the leasing agency and the best part, it's been edited. They whited out parts of it and wrote over other parts. But the [idiot] sent me the original so if you held it up to the light, you could see through the white out.

I called them on it and they told me I had roaches, and according to the pest agreement I had to pay the whole bill. This place didn't have a pest agreement and I can see on this edited bill that most of it was for treating around their buildings for earwigs. But arguing with them is going no where so I call the pest control place and tell them if it's my bill, I should receive a copy of the findings and the unedited bill. They send it to me and I call back the leasing agency, tell them I have the original bill and that not only is it not for roaches but that it's not for the amount they wrote and if they really want to fight me about paying it, we can do it in court. Magically I didn't have to pay any more.

Tl:Dr leasing company tried to get me to pay their pest bill plus some but want smart enough to send me a believable bill.

One apartment I rented had on the lease that they paid water and sewer. 3 months in the water was cut off because they did not pay it and they insisted that it was a mistake to put it on the lease and I needed to pay it. I ended up having to pay for the water and sewer but then when I moved out they billed me $1500 for breach of contract.

Seems the clause in the contract stated "In the event of a breach of contract the renter will be liable for a $1500 breach of contract fee." When I pointed out they were the ones in breach of contract they replied "The clause has nothing to do with who breached the contract, it only states that you are responsible for the breach of contract fee."

My first landlord was the worst.

We were subleasing from another guy who moved upstairs. He moved out and didn't clean anything. We went to the landlord and he said it wasn't his problem. We found mice in the apartment, not his problem. Two windows opened in the apartment, not his problem. The toilet stopped working, not his problem. It completely backed up and was spilling all over the floor. We had to get a friend in there to snake the thing.

We had one key for two people so we had to share it. We ended up going out and getting one made. Then he got pissed because when we moved out, we gave him two keys. He didn't give us permission for two keys.

My property manager failed to put a carbon monoxide detector in my unit. Surprise, surprise: I had a major gas leak in my unit and was inhaling fumes for a little over a month and a half. my health began to dramatically decline. By the time I found the leak, I was hospitalized and blood results came back revealing that I would have had a stroke or heart attack had I not found the leak sooner...

Old dude that refused to ever pay someone else to fix anything. Once wrote us a note to [urinate] in a bucket until he could fix the toilet a week later. To family of 4. There's more, but that was the worst.

I lived in a few different apartments while I was in college and all my landlords where cool except one. I lived in the first floor of the building while he lived in the second floor.

He has many "interesting" stories but there is one that stands out.

One day, all of a sudden I found small black things that looked like burnt rice through the living room floor. At first I wasn't sure what it was and swept it up with a broom. Not long after I found the same in a desk I had in the living room. At that point my roommate realized it was rodent droppings.

We called the landlord to find an exterminator, and he just told us "I'll be there in a moment". About 15 minutes later he comes down with a small carton box full of fruits filled with rat poison to put around the apartment.

I looked at him in disbelief and he just proceeded to let us know that his pet snake had [passed away] and decided to release the rodents he had to feed it as he had no longer use for them and was sure they would just go and live in the woods peacefully.

Still in shock I asked him to leave and dealt with the issue myself.

I did not accept his offer to renew the contract and left as soon as possible.

It was an apartment complex, but this one stands out still.

They didn't pay the power.

Not, "they forgot to pay the power." Not, "they were in financial trouble." They just wanted to see if they could call the power company's bluff.

The power company locked half the breakers in every building.

I dunno if you've ever seen a riot take shape, but try cutting off the AC and refrigeration for a few dozen Alabamians in the middle of June in a heat wave.

I have two, because I live in a city dense with students so every landlord is a "slumlord".

First was an Indian family who had a little rental business and some large apartment houses. It was my first year living on my own, and in my youthful idiotic nature I did not notice some clear warning signs. After I moved into my ground floor studio it became immediately apparent the place was a dumpy shithole. I had *every* type of pest, minus bed bugs, that you could imagine. Two species of roaches, house centipedes, mice, spiders, flies, and squirrels. I lived next to a nightclub that was loud, gross, and full of drunk baboons who did coke and shot each other 12 feet from my window.

I toughed it all out for a year with minimal complaining to my landlord. Even when they broke into my apartment, or told me "no, that open hole in the foundation that lets the squirrels in *can't* be patched", I steadfastly survived it all. I did let them know how uncomfortable and pissed I was about the living situation but they gave a "meh" response.

Until move-out day happened.

The lease did not specify a required date to provide move-out notice, and they relayed zero info of when I was to let them know I would not be renewing. So, I only gave a 35-day notice after I secured another apartment. They got back to me saying, basically, that was too late and they re-signed the lease in my name and bumped the rent up by $150.

I threatened to sue. They immediately backed down, tail between their legs, whimpering about how they "were just a small family business, why was I mean?" Thieving bastards still yanked most of my security deposit. I left mouse carcasses behind for them.

Second landlord story! This was more recent when my SO and I were looking for a place together. We found a first floor one bedroom that my gut said "no" about but we had been looking for close to 3 months and just wanted the search to be over. We sign the lease, get the keys, start moving my boxes to be moved in.

Surprise! You got *roaches*" The German kind. These landlords were also family, a husband and wife with a son who acted as the liaison because the parents were not native English speakers. Yeah they could speak and understand English but not as well as their adult son. We called the son about the infestation. "Oh yeah haha, this is a city so there are roaches" he said cheerfully.

I called him out. Because this was not a roach or two, but *thousands*. Everywhere. The molding on the ceiling was caked with roach filth. You don't notice it during the walkthrough when the lights are on and people stomping about but upon our inspection it was evident that the roaches had been there for a long time. It was a couple who were there for 2 years before us and they had been living in this filth.

What occurred was 6 days of nonsense. At one point, the wife called me at 9:30pm, hysterical, because "why was I doing?" "why was I such an awful person?" For breaking the lease and moving out of their roach motel. Lots of screaming involved. I essentially told them to get lost for knowingly letting us move into their [trash hole].

We broke the lease and the landlords came over to collect the keys. Over the 6 days my boyfriend and I were there, we did not clean up a single roach after we took them out. Hundreds of roach bodies on the floors. The husband took a look-see, shrugged, and said "It's not that bad."

What disgusts me most of all is in both situations, the landlords had children. I asked both sets of landlords, "how would you feel about your daughter living in these conditions?" to which they could not answer. I despise slumlords. Most operate without a license and all their properties are gross biohazards.

My landlord appeared to be a nice, little old lady living in Alaska; in reality, shes a manipulative and unstable.

List of grievances:
- Water stain noticed in my room the day I moved in. A 6 week long saga of her coordinating the cheapest/slowest contractor to come repair the hole in the roof/ceiling above my bed.
- Threatened to kick us out because we were paying her in check instead of direct deposit and checks were bouncing cause she was sitting on close to 10k in checks she hadnt "had time" to deposit
- Tried to kick us out May 31st and had a contractor come in to start to do work, even though our lease said we did not have to move until June 30th.
- Claims she never got our security deposit even though we have multiple bank statements to prove otherwise.
- New lease at new house (we are getting far away from this lady) doesnt start til July 1st and the landlord is putting up a fight over us staying there an additional 12 hours, even though no one is moving in to the new place.