20+ Homeowners Who Turned Their Tenants’ Lives Into a Horror Story

Leasing a property is a big change since we have to discover a new place that will be our refuge and our home for some years. The excitement to make the place cozy and start creating moments of happiness is at its peak. But after moving in, things can get complicated as you discover that all may not be what it seems in your new home. Sometimes our landlords can really surprise us with their responses to our requests. We compiled some anecdotes shared by users about the most unfortunate and ridiculous experiences they had while renting.

• When I rented, the landlady made me bring her the water and electricity bill with the “paid” stamp. I used to pay by mobile banking and apps, and it was a constant struggle to bring the stamped receipts. © Alo’o Lopez / Facebook
• I’ve been living in a house for a year and the owner started to fix it up while I was in it. At the beginning, I didn’t mind, as it suited me. First, he changed all the doors (there are about 8 of them), and then he painted them completely. For another 15 days, they worked on raising a lot of dust by sanding, then he knocked down the laundry room completely and moved it, and again, it was almost a month of repairs. Not satisfied with that, he tore down the entire bathroom and built it from scratch, leaving us for a week without a place to bathe and without water service for several days because he changed the pipes. To top it off, all the materials he removed and left over he left here in storage until we see what he can do with them, and they are 4 doors, a toilet, adobe bricks, sand, cement, pipes, rebar, and a window. © Diana Amariles / Facebook
• When I rented with my husband, the landlady went every day to see who was coming in and out. One day, we were sleeping and we heard a noise, she was in the dining room standing there snooping around. She didn’t know what to say to me when I opened the bedroom door and saw her. That was the last day I was there. The next day, we left, we didn’t trust her anymore because she was always coming in and out. © Verito Bustamante / Facebook
• Not mine, but my friend used to live in a house where the landlord painted over the black mold. © mcp613 / Reddit

• It was a company in Spokane, WA; it was right after a good harvest. I wanted to rent a place that was good and on the cheaper end. The agent for the landlord told me I need to pay the first month, the last month, and a security deposit of at least a month, in addition to a $75 non-refundable application fee. I cut them a check for the entire year and the application fee. The agent took my check, cashed it, and still wouldn’t rent to me. The office told me that they could not verify my income from my employer. It took them 3 months to give me back my deposits, and only after a strongly worded letter from a lawyer. When I picked the check up from them, they had the nerve to ask why I wasn’t staying with them. © DukeBeekeepersKid / Reddit
• The lady who rented me a half-furnished room told me that it was forbidden to bring in food and that I had everything dirty. She came in to check on me when I was working, told me that it was forbidden to stay awake at night and that I had to take a bath before 6 o’clock because she could not turn on the water boiler several times a day. I had to bathe with cold water in winter. © Marina Hernandez Gomez / Facebook
• I lived with my ex-partner for almost 2 years in a rented cottage. The landlady, who was the neighbor, moved out and left her cats on the land, so out of pity I took care of them as if they were my own. When it was time to leave the house, she decided that the walls had become worn (which is normal wear and tear if you paint with poor quality paint) and that she had to calculate the price of the paint and labor to deduct it from the deposit. It was obvious that she did the calculations and wasn’t pleased with what she had to deduct because she invented more things to not give me back the deposit at all. © Paula Pérezz Rodríguez / Facebook

• I once found a very nice apartment. When I was waiting to sign the contract, I discovered that there was a door that looked like a wall panel leading to the neighboring apartment, where the owner lived. He had the key and could come in at any time, and he told me so. In my face! I got out as fast as possible. © Pa Su / Facebook
• We rented an apartment and the owners lived next door. They had a camera at the entrance and they were aware of when we were leaving or arriving. And when someone visited us, the owners always asked who that person was and why they had come, and they also entered without asking permission. © Abby Zavala / Facebook
• I rented a studio apartment with my partner but we were almost never at home because of work and I only came home to bathe and sleep. The owner always came to charge us for the utilities and showed us the bills, but it seemed to us that we were paying a lot for water and electricity when we had no refrigerator, washing machine, or TV. Until the sixth month, my partner realized that on the bill it said the address of the main residence, where the owner lived. We were paying for the services of her house, which was 10 blocks away. © Anthonietta Dávila / Facebook
• When I went to live alone in another state, they told me to go to a kind of pension, so I went to check it out. It was only for women and they charged $150 dollars for rent (this was about 18 years ago). It was a super small room with a cot, the shower was a tube, and you could only take a shower for 5 minutes. You couldn’t cook or bring food, and at 10 o’clock at night, the doors were locked. Also, for an extra fee, the owner gave you food and breakfast, and the shower was blocked by the toilet bowl. By the way, there were about 10 small rooms, I thanked her and she said, “Look, this is your chance, I have many people that are interested, but I am giving you priority.” I said, “Thank you, ma’am, I still don’t want to live in jail, let alone pay for that.” © Alejandra Gilibert / Facebook

• It was the mid-2000s. My wife and I had just bought a house and were able to schedule our closing date to be shortly before the end of our lease. We notified our landlords, an elderly couple, that we would not be renewing, and agreed we’d be out by the last day of the lease.
  We had gotten all of our things moved to the house. My wife got a call from one of the landlords that they had stopped by the rental and had concerns about the amount of cleaning that we had done. We hadn’t really done any deep cleaning yet, as we planned to do that on a different day. The fact the landlords had stopped by without notice, even if the rental was unoccupied, should have been a red flag to us.
  We go do our deep cleaning, expecting to get our security deposit back. When we get our letter from the landlords, it states that since we didn’t use a carpet cleaner to deep clean the carpets, we wouldn’t be getting all our deposit back.
  I mentioned this to a coworker. I was able to learn that it was very illegal for them to force us to use a carpet cleaner as well as enter the rental without any notice, as local laws required at least 24 hours, which was stricter than the state law of at least 12 hours. I drafted a polite but stern letter noting the multiple laws they had broken and requesting the remainder of the security deposit, or we would contact the appropriate authorities. We received the rest of our deposit and were glad to be rid of them. © balthazar_blue / Reddit

• I am a homeowner now, but when I was renting it was near impossible to get hold of my landlord when I needed anything. I had mold on my walls in the main bedroom (to the point I actually got an infection), my shower broke after one week and didn’t work again for 6 months when I finally just had it fixed myself, the window in the living room wouldn’t shut properly so I had perma-draft, the hob had 2 rings that didn’t work, and my downstairs neighbor, who was also his tenant, would stay up until 3 a.m. every single night playing hardcore rave music at max volume and refused to stop when I asked politely, again not so politely, once more with feeling, and finally told him to stop. I called dozens of times (literally dozens), sent texts and emails, and even wrote a letter. Didn’t fix any of the issues. But I missed one rent payment (deliberately, to get his attention), and he was hammering on my door the very next day. © MagnificentColossus / Reddit
• I rented a condo and they sold it from under me. They gave me 60 days to move out. I moved out in 30 and they charged me for the full 2 months. © DarrenEdwards / Reddit

• Many years ago, because of my husband’s job, we moved to another city, which was very hot by the way. We didn’t know anyone, much less the city, and my husband’s co-worker kindly offered to help us find a house for rent. He recommended the house of a friend of his and without hesitation, we rented it without seeing it. It was the longest and most tormenting 6 months of my life.
  The house was located in a gated community of 10 houses. Geographically, it was the highest, and the little water that was available every third day did not always get all the way there. I had to wash at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning because that was the time when some water came. Sometimes we had to bathe with a jug of water because there was no other option. We could never bathe in the shower. In addition, the house was infested with ants, you could see black ant trails everywhere. It was the only house that did not have mosquito nets and suddenly we could see huge cockroaches coming through the windows. The whole house, in general, was ugly, unpainted, greasy, and dirty for years.
  We fled as soon as we could, and they still came to ask us if we wanted to buy it. Later, we found out that the people who rented to us had left days before our arrival and had gone to rent somewhere else. They preferred to rent their house and go somewhere else rather than fix up their own. © Isabel Estrella / Facebook
• My wife just moved out of an apartment that poured water from the living room to the bedroom whenever the snow started melting, a three-month window in SD. We repeatedly asked [the landlord] to do something about it. His response was to give her a fan and tell her to use buckets. Then this guy kept $325 because of “pet smell.” © Unknown author / Reddit
• We had flooding at my house about five months ago and our landlord lives in Hawaii. We wanted a mold inspector over but we needed our landlord’s help. All she said was: “Mold is normal.” It’s right to the place where you’re from, but not here in the desert! © FNAF_WrittenYT / Reddit

What is the most surreal story you’ve ever had or heard about homeowners? What is one thing you couldn’t tolerate about your landlord?