Let’s spare a thought for the landlords out there.
No, seriously, stop laughing. While landlords can be frustrating to deal with as a renter, their line of work entails a world of horrors that the rest of us can hardly fathom.
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The r/AskReddit thread , “Landlords of Reddit, what is the the weirdest or most disturbing tenant you have ever had?” was full of some incredible stories.
When you’re the free labor.
“Parents had rental houses growing up. One tenant got evicted and, before leaving, poured wax down the drains and used cat litter in the vents. Luckily, they had free child labor to help clean up houses like that.”
They sound nice.
“My older sister and her boyfriend rented out their house when they moved out west for work. After several months of non-payment, the young adult male and female tenants were told to move out.
“Right before leaving, the smeared feces on the floors and walls, removed every light switch and electrical outlet cover, destroyed the bathroom, and removed the locks on the doors, and left the doors wide open.”
The betrayal!
“Our parents rented a floor of their 2-family home to a guy who was an electrician. In return for lower rent, he did electrical improvements and minor repairs to the house.
“All of a sudden, our parents’ electric bill nearly doubled. So they called the power company for an inspection and discovered that the tenant had illegally re-wired his connection so that it was drawing most of the current for his apartment from their electric meter instead of his.”
“Wasn’t her first glue rodeo.”
“Glue huffer. I was putting veneer on cabinets with a respirator. She walked into the unit asking where ‘it’ was. I thought the odor was too strong and apologized.
“She went right for the bucket and started taking deep breaths. My buddy and I both said nooooo in what seemed to be in slow motion. It wasn’t her first glue rodeo, so you can imagine how fried her brain already was/is.”
So many questions.
“I had a female tenant who lived in a basement apartment. We regularly heard a dog barking in her unit. Funny thing though, she didn’t own a dog. She had every light in the unit on, 24/7, until she called complaining about not having any power. Went in to check it and she had power.
“Every light bulb was burned out though. All she had in the place was a futon and Bibles. Bibles in every room, open to different pages. When we finally got her out for nonpayment (of course), she hired a moving company to move her belongings. The futon and a garbage bag full of clothes.”
That’s one way to live.
“Not me, but my aunt rented her place to an old lady who never showered, never washed her clothes and kept everithing [ sic ] she owned in large cardboard boxes. She would open a box, use something, put It back in and tape the box shut .
“We talked to her sister and she told us that the poor old lady had became like that after her husband ‘died’ (he ran away ).”
You learn something new every day.
“I own a commercial building which rents mostly to small businesses. One tenant was a ‘consulting firm’ run by two Scandinavian girls.
“Every day, men (and only men) would be coming in and out of their space. Other tenants complained that some kind of weird vapor or steam would regularly escape from their unit.
“As I recall, it turned out they were running an unregistered sperm bank and the vapor was coming from a big container of liquid nitrogen used to store the sperm donations.”
RIP, Frank.
“My dad rents a few houses out and about 10 years ago he was going to collect rent from an older couple in one of his houses. Lets call her Annie, answered the door and made my dad a cuppa.
“He was surprised her husband, lets call him Frank, was not sitting in his normal arm chair, he was quite a big man and was always there when my dad came round. So dad asked Annie where he was and she said ‘He’s in bed, he died last Tuesday, I’m not really sure what to do.’
“This was Saturday and dad asked where she had been sleeping, ‘In beside Frank.’ she said. So dad was able to help Annie with the undertakers and had to help them get big Frank down the narrow stairs.”
A rather unique clause.
“My last landlord had in our agreement a ‘mold clause’ Basically he explained that he rented a unit to a guy and he lined the walls of the apartment with what I can assume was plastic wrap. and got the humidity in the house so high and was growing mold and mushrooms on the walls of the place. So when the guy eventually was evicted they had to gut the entire unit.”
– u/Jaci_D
What’s with the cat litter in the vents?
“My uncle rented his house when he went to Nepal to get married. My parents and I took the responsibility of collecting tent. [ sic ]
“These guys were awful. Always late rent. When we finally got them evicted, they DESTROYED the house in a blind rage. Cat litter in the vents. Holes in doors and walls Smashed the oven door. Threw the microwave through a closed glass door.”
So long as he pays it, I guess.
“I rent a garage to a childhood friend who is a little ‘different’. He won’t pay his rent for awhile, then he will show up and put a bunch of $20 bills through my mail slot with my name written on them.”
That’s methed up.
“Had a renter who started doing meth. He got obsessed with Chuck Norris and fake karate stuff. He had two little dogs he started training to kill. Only the dogs were tiny and couldn’t do much.
“He got really demanding and also did not pay rent for three months. I finally told him he had to leave. He got very angry and called the city. The city told me to evict him. So I did. He destroyed the place and at age 40+ his parents came to pick him and his nunchucks and killer dogs up.”
That’s low.
“My mom bought a double wide trailer home and rented it to her friend and his gf (whom my mom hated) Well after a particularly ugly blow out between her friend, his gf, and his best friend..my mom evicted them.
“The friend moved his BFF in without her knowledge and then his BFF Stole my mothers (who’s in a wheelchair) HANDICAP VAN. So when we get the house back, it is TRASHED.”
Maybe he wasn’t CIA after all.
“I had a tenant tell me when they moved in that they worked for ‘THE Agency’ (meaning CIA I guess?) and make all these demands once they got their key. Like that they wanted new security cameras only posted at one specific neighbor’s door (because that tenant was their ‘mark’) and when I refused they hung up obviously fake ones (made out of soda cans, tinfoil & string spray painted silver) pointed at my door.
“I lived onsite and he started watching me whenever I left or even got the mail. When I tried to take down his fake security cameras, he called CPS on me. I don’t even have kids.”
Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.
“My dad was a landlord and he had to deal with lots of crazy people. I’m not sure about the privacy of most stories but there is one that will always stick out, the man that tried to smoke out his neighbors.
“A lot of my dads tenants were somewhat out there but this guy was long gone. His upstairs neighbors were annoying him where he actually set his apartment on fire to ‘smoke them out.'”
At least he left it thoroughly insulated.
“One of my residents was a paranoid schizophrenic and thought his upstairs neighbors were whispering his name through vents and gassing him out with poison.
“When he finally abandoned the apartment, he had filled every possible hole inside the place with insulation. Every outlet, vent and even windows were completely blocked off.”
Nothing like 25 grand in water damage.
“My step-mom rented her house to a guy who she later found out was having constant drug fueled parties. When she went to inspect it, she also then discovered that a water pipe had burst and had been running water all over for a good month or two and he never bothered to tell her, causing $25,000 in damages that took them months to repair.
“Since it’d gone unreported for so long insurance refused to pay for it.”
A different kind of pipe fitter.
“My parents rented out my childhood home when they downsized after I went to university, as it was just after the financial crash and no one was buying.
“It was a young couple, 2 kids and a dog. My dad actually knew the woman’s mother, so they were pretty happy with having them as tenants.
“Turns out that the guy, who said he was a pipe-fitter, was actually a drug dealer.”
Don’t eat the forbiddent fruit.
“My dad had a younger women tenant that painted the entire inside of the​ house shades of pink and always kept 3 pink cupcakes under a glass dome think on her dining room table, he eat [ sic ] one when they were discussing rent and she got all mad.”
Like it was hit with a bomb.
“The first time I rented out my house, I was approached by a sweet older lady who had custody of her grandkids (along with her husband) and had bad credit due to ‘caring for her elderly mother.’
“The house was awful and dirty when we got it back. The grass was so bad, I got a letter from the city. There was random broken furniture buried in the grass. Concrete blocks everywhere. I had to replace the carpets due to cat piss and I fought with fleas in my own home for 3 months due to catching them from there.”
