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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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."

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".

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.

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.

When I was a kid, our slumlord refused to fix anything that broke in our house or do any preventative maintenance. The house had already had an electrical fire from a leaky upstairs bathroom, but he refused to fix any further leaks.

When I was about 13, a family of squirrels moved in to the space between the ceiling & roof in my room. I could hear them scratching and running all the time. They eventually scratched through the ceiling and left a few areas with small holes. I was always afraid they would drop into my room and attack.

Then, my ceiling started leaking when it rained, first in just one area and then gradually across the entire beam that ran across the ceiling. We set up buckets and I would fall asleep to the music of raindrops hitting different containers. The sound of water hitting carpet would wake me up in a panic and I'd have to find another bucket to catch the new drips.

One night while I was staying with a friend, the entire ceiling collapsed directly over my bed. All of the soaking wet sheetrock (?drywall?) Landed on my bed, desk, etc. And the entire family of squirrels was released into my room. They hid in my closet, under the bed, everywhere, and it took three days to get them all out.

That landlord took another week before sending someone in to "fix" it, and even then, it was only his son, who had zero experience/skill fixing anything.

Had termites. They refused to believe me. Didn't send someone out for a month to check it. 3 months later it was fixed. I never had termites, so I didn't know how fast they worked, and my upstairs neighbors were, judging by the vibrations in my apartment and thuds everywhere, colossal giants chucking bowling balls across their apartment all day, I was worried they would come crashing down thanks to those termites. Hated that place.

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.

After five years of renting I discovered my place didn't exist on paper. The city only knew it as a pigeon coop. No building permit, no renting permit, nothing... All the money I paid in these years went directly to the guy without the government knowing he was renting something out. Oh right... of course the fact that there is no way to get insurance for something that doesn't exist. (He always reassured me insurance was totally fine).

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.

* They straight-up lied to me about the place being cable-ready, and that was one of the reasons I signed the lease. Apparently by "cable-ready" they meant the area was serviced by AT&T U-verse. Now, I wound up liking U-verse better than cable, but there was a while when I was preparing a lawsuit against them for tricking me into signing a lease under false pretenses.

* The air conditioning was out all summer. It took them two months to repair it because their unit was so ancient it took that long to order the proper part. This was in Texas.

* One of my neighbors was an old man who had to move into a hotel because the lack of air con was causing health problems. The complex promised him they'd pay for his hotel costs. After he checked in, they went back on their promise.

* I got to I know my next-door neighbor well. She'd lived there for 20 years, but she decided to move out because the new landlord "turned this place into a ghetto" and actively tried to bully and harass her into leaving because she'd been living month-to-month for 20 years. She moved out around the same time I signed the lease at the place I moved to after that shithole.

I'm thankful I only had a six-month lease with that piece of trash complex. It's been ten years since I lived there, and I still feel utter rage when I think of them. Oh, and despite only being there six months, I outlasted the property manager, and then the landlord sold the complex to another company right after I left. The landlord only bought the place and hired the property manager a month before I signed the lease.

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.

My girlfriend and I rent a house and we've lived in there for a little over a year now. Last summer the landlord came to visit for 10 days, in the house, in some blocked off section right next to our kitchen. I get that it's her house and everything but if you rent it to people you can't use it as your vacation house!

Also, she's quite the hoarder. Loads of useless stuff in the basement so we essentially have no storage space. She has had a bathroom installed in the basement by some shady contractor during the summer we moved in. A few days into this bathroom installation, we have an electrical fire in the basement at like 2am, the water pump ceases up and the breaker never trips. Filled the entire house with smoke and the smoke alarms don't go off since the batteries were in backwards from the last guy who lived there(granted, I should have checked those but we had only been moved in for a few weeks). Luckily our dog woke us up. So anyway, the fire department finds scorched wires near a soldered pipe and say that's probably what caused everything. So I text the landlord to let her know what happened and she calls back asking if fire department had to spray anything and if her stuff in the basement was okay. She NEVER asked if we were okay!

She's coming up this weekend to stay another 10 days and we're dreading it. She also tried to raise our rent by $150 a month out of nowhere. Now we're in the process of buying a house, so I've got my fingers crossed for all that.

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.

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