The Tenants From Hell: 72 Landlords Share Stories They Still Can't Believe

Brother rented his basement apartment to this couple who suddenly broke up. That's when he found out they disobeyed him and had not just 1 cat but 3 and they left one behind because while moving out it freaked out and got into the walls. Instead of alerting my brother, they left the cat.

Happy ending, he was able to put out a live trap and capture it.

My grandma owns several rental properties. Three stories stick out in my mind:

1: They built a chicken coop on the front porch with a chicken door into the house

2: Old house dating back to the 1890s, still had the original door with the original lead crystal glass... they broke it and told us the baby, who was 2, hit his head on it.

3: This is the most disgusting. We had to go in to clean up after evicting one of the renters.. the walls were moving with roaches. You had to open the door, step back, wait for the roaches to stop falling before entering.

My parents moved us across the county and decided to rent out our previous home. When we the spawn found out who they were considering as tenants, we warned the parentals.

They didn't listen, and the tenants trashed the house so thoroughly that my folks gave it to the volunteer fire department for practice. It was an old farmhouse, and burned most impressively.

My parents bought a two-family to convert into a one-family for them to live in. The lady upstairs took her sweet-a*s time moving all her junk out and begged my parents to let her stay on a week or two while she did so (which they did, reluctantly). When she finally did the upstairs reeked of cat p**s. She had a few old cats and would let them just run around and p**s where they pleased. The old man she cared for (father-in-law?) would s**t wherever, adding to the smell. It took so much bleach, rubber gloves, and masks to get the smell out.

One day, while helping out by stripping off old wallpaper in the bathroom, I found an item the lady had left behind sitting up on a high shelf.

It was a cat's litterbox. It must have been sitting there for years.

It was as good as the day it was bought.

It had never been used.

My mom had some tenants in a rental property who apparently were serial c**p sacks and would live in a place until they got evicted, then move on to the next place. They'd do things like not pay rent while claiming AC was broken or some other property related issue then avoid actually letting it be examined or fixed. Long story short, after getting evicted they waited until the very last minute to move out, left a bunch of their stuff behind, and filled a microwave with hot dogs which they left to rot.

While my mom was in the process of getting a court order the TV show "Hot Bench" (a Judge Judy spinoff) called and asked them to come on. Everyone got flown out to LA and my mom got her money and the c**p sacks got berated on national daytime TV, so I suppose it worked out in the end.

Edit: Removed link due to personal information rule. Sorry, wasn't thinking.

Edit 2: Re: Credit Checks. My mom and step dad have full time jobs and started buying rental properties a few years back. Being inexperienced they thought they were good judges of character and didn't do background checks. It mostly worked out for them, but they got burned and they've since learned their lesson and do a little more digging rather than assuming a signature on a lease and "I'll really pay I promise" will be good enough. Moral of the story for prospective future landlords: Save yourself a lot of hassle at the end by going through a minor hassle at the beginning and check applicants backgrounds.

Tenant rented an apartment that does not come with a parking space. an apartment in the building that did come with a parking space came available. he asked if he could have it. i told him it would be $XXX.00 extra per month. he then started posting propaganda all over the property about the injustices that i supposedly committed for not giving him a parking space for free. he tried to get other tenants to sign a petition that would make me give up my parking space on the property. he then took us to court. he lost, but not without just a f*****g nightmare of his little s**t of a personality and sociopathic tendencies.


the most annoying aspect of it all was the fact that he was this b******t hippy dude who was all about peace and positive vibes and teaching yoga and s**t. "wrong" him though, and he was the most toxic human being you'd ever meet.

When I was a teenager, my family rented our downstairs unit to a small family. Nothing crazy happened, but the mom annoyed the c**p out of me. My bedroom was right above theirs and she was constantly calling my parents to complain about "noise." And when I say noise, I mean the faint sounds of someone walking down a hallway or some other BS. My parents decided to accommodate them by purchasing a rug to line our hallway and making it a rule for me to not be on the phone or up and about after 10 pm. But even after all that she still found something to call about. Like how the f**k are you going to complain about someone walking normally down a carpeted hall way? Keep in mind that we've had several tenants in that unit before they moved in and none had ever complained about noise. Once, I was up late in my room watching TV and the remote rolled off my bed, hitting our hardwood floor. I immediately grabbed it to mute my TV. But moments later, what do you know. Our home phone starts ringing at 1 in the f*****g morning. The mother called about the loud noise she just heard and felt compelled to complain about it, even though it lasted less than a second. This type of scenario happened all the time and at the end of their lease they moved out. We then rented the unit to another family and never heard any more noise complaints. Good f*****g riddance.

Edit: Added details I remembered.

Brought bedbugs into the apartment building (4 apartments total) then called the health department to complain about bedbugs. Another person walked through the grass to go for a smoke while dragging the oxygen tank, tripped, fell and sued. Another person vacated her apartment, left the window open in the middle of winter, water pipe in the ceiling froze and cracked by the time we got to the apartment 1 hour later; whole ceiling collapsed.

My family has had rentals all throughout my life. By far the worst renters have been family and friends. My moms worst was her long term boyfriends daughter, her apartment caught fire and my mom let her rent an old mobile home. Not long after moving in she almost burned that house down too. She ended up evicting her for non payment. That same house was rented afterwards by my older sister and she neglected to notify us of any needed repairs. Had to replace the carpet, subfloor in the whole place.

The last renters in my moms nicest unit ruined brand new laminate with spills, broke a pedestal sink in half and left pretty much every appliance in non working order. They even changed the locks without telling us. I vacuumed three rooms for 10 hours and the dirt was still coming up. I don't think they ever vacuumed.

My wife and I help manage my father in-laws rental properties. Once I had a tenant let her sister move into her house "for a weekend visit". That Monday the tenant moved back in with her estranged husband and the sister stayed. After a month of normal payments the tenant mised a payment so I messaged the tenant and was told "I don't live here anymore. My sister has a key and won't leave. Sorry."

Where I live squatters can not be kicked out of a house, it must go through a judge after 3 billing periods of non-payment, the land lord must pay the court costs, and the squatters still have a minimum of 1 billing period to get their items out of the house. Luckily we have a billing cycle of 1 week so we were able to get them out rather quickly considering.

Tldr: tenant left property after giving permission to other people to stay without being a part of the lease. Took 4 billing periods to get them out of the house.

My husband manages a 4-plex, and the new single girl in the downstairs apartment asks him to hang her TV off the wall. He figures why not. Two weeks later he gets an email...she wants him to put together a kitchen cart she got at IKEA. I laugh and tell him he'd better shut her down before she has him coming over to open peanut butter jars. He tells her no and life goes on, only a month later she complains about an "infestation" of spiders (pest guy came out and saw one spider), then shortly after he gets a message about BED BUGS, and she's blaming us even though there's never been a problem. Pest guy comes out again, looks at the building and her bed. Nary a bed bug in sight.

She got a boyfriend, and things quieted down after that. I suppose he's taking care of her imaginary bugs now, and assembling her wooden furniture with care.

I own a one bedroom condo in Florida. I got a job in St. Louis making a b**t load more, and a friend of mine down there was at the end of the lease. We came to an agreement that she'd do some minor fixing up around the place and pay me a nice, low rent while my girlfriend and I make the move up.


She started falling behind on the rent and I'd decided that the condo wasn't worth holding on to, so I gave her 3 months notice that she needed to leave.


She ended up taking longer than that.


It's been a few months since and I finally had a (different) friend of mine swing by to change the locks out. They sent pictures... I'm on mobile otherwise I'd post them. A cat box with s**t still in it, c**p all over the floor, moldy laundry in the washer, food in the fridge and the power cut... It's basically trashed. The "friend" has disappeared to somewhere in one of the Carolinas.


Don't rent to friends.

My tenants have s**t in front of my front door on multiple occasions.

They leave food everywhere, including on the rug, under the furniture and under the couch.

Sometimes they drag d**d animal parts into my bed and leave it there because they think it's cute/funny. It's not. Gives an entirely new meaning to getting "boned".

It's ruff living with dogs.

I run a successful incubator in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of my incubatees figured out he could live with me rent free for a year because squatters rights prevent me from kicking him out, and the process of getting him removed legally can take a very long time in court. He smoked in the house, left his fish guts in the sink, ate my Fage Yogurt, and makes prank phone calls at inappropriate times.

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.

If the handyman had been looking into the disposal when he switched it on...

Not me but my dads 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 no pets knowing she wasn't the most responsible. So she gets a cat and goes on to ignore it not cleaning after it basically just feeding and letting it p**s and c**p all over the house. He was paying for utilities and she was still to lazy to take the trash out just letting it pile up in the house and garage. I could rant on and on, but to cut it short she quit paying rent when he demanded she clean up get rid of the cat. Ended up costing him a few thousand dollars to replace the carpet and have the house deep cleaned because it was so dirty.

This happened to my friend's rental. Guy gets evicted. Instead of trashing the place. This f*****g guy cut off chunks of drywall, put d**d fish in the walls, and sealed it back up. Tenant was a carpenter.

The owners couldn't figure out the smell for weeks. They repainted, got it professionally cleaned a few times, searched endlessly. Eventually, they figured something d**d in the walls, and started knocking holes in the wall. Turned out to be that piece of s**t move by the tenant.

I had a Section 8 rental property (government subsidized housing for low/no income/welfare people). This lady I rented to was arrested for shoplifting. Sixth arrest so now it's mandatory jail time. When she left she cancelled her natural gas service. The gas company never called me. A week later I visited and found a waterfall in the kitchen. Multiple pipes froze and I had a water bill of about $3,000 plus $20,000 worth of damages. Insurance paid for all except my $1,000 deductible.

I sold the house immediately after, with the torn up kitchen, bathroom and basement. And I sold it for about $10,000 more than what I bought it for. Even in the condition it was in! The new owners realized that after the contractor is finished, the house will be in a lot better shape than what it was beforehand. In a way, that lady did me a huge favor!

This is my s**t. I had a tenant burn my f*****g house down.

We bought some duplexes already rented. The tenant was on HUD assistance and her share of the rent was $14, which she never paid. When her HUD was not extended we received no rent whatsoever so we served her with an eviction notice. The county requires a court hearing which takes days. In that time she trashed the unit then she and her boyfriend broke in and burglarized the unit next door. She also was renting furniture an appliances. When the furniture company came to repossess the furniture she had hidden it in a storage unit. She had plead a sob story to the local Mormon church who helped her move the furniture to the storage unit. The police contacted the church to find out where the storage unit was and allowed the furniture rental company to get their stuff back. As far as the unit goes, I had to remove the doorknob and screwed a bold into the door jamb so I could thread a chain through the hole and lock the door with a padlock. When we finally took possession it was a complete repaint and carpet replacement. We filed a claim with HUD and got some of our expenses back but only up to their maximum. While I was painting the place a parole officer came by asking if we knew where the tenant's son was, apparently he had skipped supervision and a warrant was out for his arrest.

Another tenant in another property we had to evict after 2 months; we had new carpeting in when she moved in. Her kid had s**t and urinated on the carpet and there was a purple stain on the carpet we couldn't get out. We tried cleaning but we had to replace the less than year old carpet and seal the underlayment due to the urine stench.

That's the horror stories, mostly our tenants are upper and middle class and leave the places pristine. Aside from the few (and rare) bad experiences having rentals is a great investment.