There are plenty of stories about horrible, horrible landlords, but tenants aren't innocent fuzzy creatures either. In fact, far from it. They can be filthy, deceiving, and very expensive to clean up after.
We at Bored Panda discovered two Reddit posts by u/Bubble6325 and u/The_Chuckie where property owners described the worst people who stayed at their rentals and let's just say that it's a very colorful bunch.
Continue scrolling to meet them. You'll hate it!
#1
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. He got Annie sorted with a new house to rent as well. Grief can make people do very strange things.TL;DR The husband of a tenant died in the bed, the wife slept in the bed with him until my dad came to collect the rent.
Image credits: Quail_eater
#2
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.
Image credits: Cheesejeeze_
#3
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". Oh, and the place she was staying at had a sex offender next door so they needed out ASAP. And of course they didn't have any pets and they happily signed a year lease with me not requiring a security deposit (they were supposed to paint in lieu).Well, I found out they are chronic deadbeats. Their pill head adult daughter also lives with them and the 3 grandkids and they hoarde animals. They were only there 3 months, but kept complaining about repairs and asking to deduct.
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.
I closely follow our local Facebook rental groups and i make sure to go behind her back to contact every home she expresses an interest in.
Also I should mention: South Louisiana. You can't even go 2 weeks without your yard looking like crap if you don't mow. And we have "super fleas" locally (according to my vet) that can get out of control pretty fast as well. I think using my personal carpet cleaner is probably where I went wrong there.
However, the area they're scamming in has become extremely scarce for rentals--when mine is available, we only leave the ad up for a few hours because we can't handle the call volume. It won't be long before they truly are homeless and will be driven out of the area as we are also in a very landlord friendly state.
Image credits: ChemPossible
#4
Not me, but my aunt rented her place to an old lady who never showered, never washed her clothes and kept everithing 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).
Image credits: lucywonder
#5
We had to evict this lady.
Image credits: chu248
#6
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.
Image credits: sushkunes
#7
The person I was renting my spare room to left this mess, on top of 3 months of non payment and theft
Image credits: BrooklynKnight
#8
My super told me this story about a guy who was getting evicted in our building a few years back. Apparently he was a real piece of work and hadn't paid rent in months. Anyway, he put off packing until the day before his eviction and left a bunch of trash and had slashed all his leather furniture and left it behind, and glued tinfoil on all the windows for some reason.The unit was in a real state so they completely renovated it; new tile, new hardwood, new bathroom, the works...but they couldn't get rid of "the smell". A pungent fishy trash odor, made worse by it being summertime, which just permeated the entire unit. Even though it had been cleaned top to bottom, it wouldn't go away.
You know that spot under your kitchen sink cabinet, that flat baseboard-like piece that covers the empty space from the base of the cabinet to the floor? You guessed it, the evicted guy had apparently pried it open, stuffed it with raw fish-garbage and sealed that baby back up as his last 'fuck you' for being evicted. I don't know what sparked them to check, but it had been a couple weeks before they found it.
Image credits: expiredfruit
#9
One of my clients had the tenants from hell: things were going great for a year until they burned the house pretty severely from attempting to make hemp oil. Obviously, after this happened they attempted to kick them out. They refused to leave and even wouldn’t let the contractors in to work on the property damages. Finally, MONTHS pass and they get approval to have law enforcement force them out after not paying rent. Then they could finally work on getting the house fixed up again to rent out again. Once the house was fixed up, the old tenants broke into the home in revenge, poured cement down the drains, and turned on the faucets, thus flooding the entire house. So then comes the second property damage claim on their hands. They do have new (and great) tenants now, and I know they have gotten the law involved at this point, but it’s crazy how some people are so inconsiderate and entitled these days.
Image credits: katiebug0313
#10
A family of hippies. And I mean full-on, flowers-in-their-hair, guitar-playing, kumbaya-singing, smelled-like-a*s hippies. I used to manage a complex of town houses, and they moved into one of our houses.After four days, they threw a huge fit about how they'd had to take their daughter to the ER due to "radiation" from a nearby cell tower. They told us they were moving out immediately and demanded an on-the-spot refund of their deposit.
Of course, I said no and went to check the town house. It was completely destroyed. There were black marks and baseball-sized holes all over the walls. The carpet had been torn up and the entire place smelled of urine and feces (we later found animal feces under the carpet). It was just absolutely disgusting. Quite frankly, I was astonished that anyone could do that much damage in just 4 days.
...somehow I don't think the cell tower was what made their daughter sick. And needless to say, they didn't get their deposit back.
Image credits: sixcount
#11
My mother owns a house on the coast she inherited from her aunt and rents it out to people now that she's moved. Makes great money considering it's a decent sized town and the house is close to the beach.She doesn't allow animals due to the old wool carpets that are not easily replaceable. But she legally can not keep children out.
I didn't see it for myself, but after several attempts to contact the tenants, she drove down there herself and let herself in. Place was f*cking pigsty. Diapers, vomit, baby food everywhere, literal sh*t smeared on the wall and flung onto the ceilings; carpets were soaked and stained with piss. Tenants were no where to be found. She talked to the neighbor and they'd apparently been gone for a month. Had to get the police to track them down.
Image credits: strangersIknow
#12
I had a tenant lock a dog and her puppies in a bathroom until there was a couple inches of poop covering the whole floor and bathtub. We obviously evicted him and called the spca, but that didn't help with the mess.
Image credits: Berniethedog
#13
Our hoarder tenant.
Image credits: particle409
#14
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.
Image credits: il18yog
#15
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.
Image credits: Jaci_D
#16
My uncle rented his house when he went to Nepal to get married. My parents and I took the responsibility of collecting tent.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.
My mom was so scared to collect rent by hersel, she made me go with her as I am a larger fellow.
Image credits: bigsue1994
#17
Upstairs carpet ruined with fertilizer because they grew weed in there, wallpaper ruined by pouring ashes from the stove behind the bed, downstairs wooden floor ruined and needed to be sanded, window smashed, one door had a hole in it made with an axe, rent unpaid and loud parties in the yard. Needless to say, we went to court.One truck driver's family on the other hand managed to turn white bathroom sink and tiles almost black, an accomplishment in itself. Not to mention not paying the rent.
Multiple tenants over the years, from the past 15 years I can count exactly one who paid rent on time and kept the place in good condition. One.
I would sell the damn place tomorrow and quit being a landlord, but I'm not the only owner so it's not exactly up to me.
Image credits: AboutThisAccount
#18
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 thing on her dining room table, he eat one when they were discussing rent and she got all mad.
Image credits: IS0__Metric
#19
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.
They had given him a substantial break in the rent, and he abused their kindness. Dad simply said, "No good deed goes unpunished."
Image credits: Back2Bach
#20
Had a druggie dig a hole through the wood floors with a pick-axe and then attempt to flood the hole by dragging a hose through the window. Got complaints about water everywhere, went and inspected. Water running flooding the entire room, all over the walls were what looked like satanic drawing, but on further inspection turned out to be Neon Genesis Evangelion fan art. That was a lot of money.#21
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". It was also supposed to be a suicide attempt but according to him, "It got too hot" so he left. The tenant got sued, but plead insanity so I don't know what happened to him but I remember my dad had to pay all of the repair costs because the tenant apparently couldn't.#22
Son of a landlord. I was sent to clean out a garage unit for a few extra bucks. brought a guy with me because it was a lot. Turns out the lady who'd been renting the unit had been secretly living in the garage for months. We threw out used needles, family photos, one particularly odd couch that we had to break into pieces just to lift it out of there, and the piece de resistence.... four five gallon buckets full of human waste. We didn't know it was human waste until the last bucket was on the truck and the lid popped off and splashed a little bit. I have never smelled anything so foul.
Image credits: Tackysackjones
#23
Water was included in the rent, so she decided to run a carpet washing company in the house. Ruined the laminate flooring by drying the carpets over it and accumulated a massive water bill.
Image credits: Markus_H
#24
I do not have a tenant but my friend here, who doesn't have reddit, is telling me about a current tenant.This couple, nicknamed dumb and dumber, are helpless. She overloaded the bathroom outlet and flipped the outlet switch. She didn't know all she had to do what push the button back in and she would have electricity again, so she calls an electrictian who warns her it will be a minimum of $150 for him to drive out there and fix this. He walks in and spends less than a second pushing the button in. She then sends the landlord the bill, which the landlord refused to pay. Calls asking who will clean their bathroom, mow their grass, can they come out to flip the breaker box for them, I don't like this fridge...buy us a new one, why is it a big deal if we are late with rent, our washing machine we moved in with isn't working well isn't it your job to buy us a new one, what is an air filter and why do I have to change it, I need someone to hold our mail while we go on vacation can you contact the post office? Two absolutely helpless adults with kids.
Oh, and I had to add this in. The air conditioner fails. She lets them know at maybe 9pm at night. They contact an HVAC repair company who will be out there in the AM. Instead of waiting less than 12 hours, she goes to the store in the middle of the night and buys multiple window units to install at 2am. Which she cannot do, because outlets are too hard for her. She then tells the landlord theyre responsible for repaying her for the multiple window AC units. HVAC guy had the AC repaired in less than an hour that morning. The tenant is still out $400 because legally the landlord doesn't have to pay her for that.
#25
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.
Image credits: CurtainJerker83
#26
My friend works in real estate, neighbors complain of foul smell coming from one of the apartments her company manages. The tenant is a man in his 30's, nice and proper. Nothing weird about him but the complaints keep coming and they are left with no choice but to take action.When they finally get in, the place is deserted but there is poop everywhere. Like piles of feces in the bathtub, in corners of the room.... The guy just shat everywhere and apparently enjoyed collecting it or something. It was really bad, and it traumatized all the people involved. The feces had been sitting there for a while too. They had a company clean up the mess and couldn't find the guy if I remember correctly. Weird story...
Image credits: blackmumb
#27
I had a tenant that turned out to be my realestate agent (using someone else’s credentials), and then stole my identity, bought an Audi and a Yamaha motorcycle and left me with the bill.... oh, and he put holes in all the walls and didn’t pay rent. It’s a longer story than that, but he was caught, and now he is housed in prison.#28
Tenant paid deposit and first month's rent. I'm guessing somebody got laid off real soon after, because they didn't move much in. After not paying second month, and not answering phone calls, it was time for eviction (which goes on record). Tenant makes up a story about police saying they couldn't come back after the shooting. I have no idea what shooting they're talking about, but if they can produce a police report, we can cancel the eviction. Tenant goes to perfectly decent house and shoots up the back door. Eviction process continued and I had to get a new door installed.#29
The hoarders. I can’t sort them from worst to...less worse, but I’ll tell you I’ve seen 5 that have used their bathroom as storage to the point that they can no longer use that bathroom. The thing about toilets is that wax rings will eventually dry out and crack if you don’t keep them moist with occasional flushes. Once they crack, they leak into the unit below and I have to be an asshole and barge into your unit, empty the bathroom, and stop the leak. It was always super gross and I always took a shower once I got home because plumbers refuse to do the empty-crap-out-of-the-bathroom job. Understandably.Flush the toilet you don’t use regularly, people!
#30
Same as many others. Rented out my house to folk on benefits gave them a chance. Never paid. I had also stipulated no cats as I’m allergic and if I ever wanted to live there again needed it to be cat hair free.Didn’t pay. Got a cat.
Took months to evict them ended up selling the property they just didn’t give a f*ck
#31
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.
Image credits: lowlatitude
#32
Not mine but my Mother’s. She rented an apartment unit to a guy who wanted us to replace the normal toilet with a bidet. As the toilet worked perfectly fine and to rip it out and replace it with a bidet was unnecessarily expensive, she refused. The guy didn’t contest it so we thought everything was fine. Fast forward to a year later and the downstairs neighbour complains of leakage. We check the unit and it turns out the guy replaced the toilet with a bidet himself, only he did a bad job of installing it properly so it constantly leaked. Instead of fixing it, he had let the water accumulate and never bothered to mop it up so the bathroom was filled with stale water, had mold growing in patches, and the water had leaked through the tiles and ruined the floor. He didn’t get his deposit back.#33
obligatory not a landlord but I did work at a property management company for about a year.There was a couple that seemed super nice. they were polite and young, literally no red flags. we helped them fill out the application, the landlord told them all the rules (no pets without deposit, don’t break stuff, the usual)
after 4 months of their year long lease, they just left. when one of my coworkers went to check up on them, she found that the house was TRASHED. there was shit covering the walls, duct tape over all the windows, needles scattered. there was even a bunch of blood stains in one of the bedrooms. oh and they punched a few holes in the walls and ceilings, and clogged all 3 toilets.
they were apparently heroin addicts, and let their friends use their place as well to do other heroin addict activities.
took a long time to get that place livable again
#34
They used my house as a heavy metal venue. Mid level nationally touring acts were playing in my basement. The next door neighbors never told me because they got in for free#35
Not a landlord, but I worked as a handyman one summer and we had to repair a house that was rented out by college students. We get inside and the place is absolutely trashed. There holes in the walls, in the doors, the windows were broken, cabinets ripped off and to top it all off, the entire place reeked of pee because the previous tenants locked their dog in a small room while they went home on vacation. We put an absurd amount of work into the house over a three-day span. I've never seen a house in that condition before.But one day we were talking to the landlord and she makes the comment "These were the second-worst tenants we've ever had." My coworker and I look at each other and ask what the worst tenants were, because, like I said, it looked like a war was fought inside this house. She tells us that one time, the house had pretty similar damage, except before the tenants left, they filled hundreds of condoms with water and pinned them to the ceiling. I don't repair houses anymore.
#36
My friend's a landlord. He once evicted tenants in January after they had failed to pay rent for several months, even though he had tried to be patient with them. He owns several properties and didn't get over to that apartment for about a week. Turns out they had turned the heat all the way up, opened all the windows, and walked out. Cost him a fortune. He tried suing and lost.#37
My dad rented out our old house. He thought he had a good tenant. Tenent even asked to repaint the interior if we deducted one months rent. Sounded good.Then when they wanted to move out we got a look at the place. When they painted they used the cheapest paint, painted door knobs and outlets and left big paint strokes. Looked way worse than what it must have looked unpainted. And there were large holes torn in the carpet. And none of the toilets worked, they just ran constantly. And they must have hung wet clothes on the bathroom facets because none of those worked and were rusted beyond repair. My childhood home looked terrible and we had to repair.
Oh, the reason we thought he'd be a good tenant? He was an executive hire to run the local hospital. Seems him and his family must have just lived like pigs in that filth.
#38
Not a landlord but was an RA (resident advisor) for dorms in college. We didn't necessarily evict but we definitely saw some stuff when we did the final inspections of rooms after the academic year was over.In any case, one year there was this girl who had a single room (most rooms were 2 to a room) and she was SUPER quiet. I'd say hi to her in the hallways and stuff but mostly she kept to herself.
When the year was up, she signed up for a room checkout inspection but when I went in, she was already gone. That's not that unusual; sometimes things happen, but usually students will let their RA know if they won't physically be there for the inspection.
I did my usual check of stuff - ok the fridge is cleaned out, nothing in the drawers, etc.- and everything was pretty normal. Then I opened her closet door.
There was an entire freakin self portrait mural covering her entire closet wall...painted in her own blood.
There was a lot of weird stuff I saw as an RA, but that was probably the weirdest.
Image credits: madamememe
#39
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. He also tore out all the duct work for the A/C and owed about $8,000 in damages.#40
There was this one guy, who had a small family as a downstairs neighbour who were constantly complaining about him making excessive noise. Many noise complaints were filed, and the police were called multiple times. Neither we nor the police actually heard him making noise though. And he kept pleading that he always kept it quiet, and that the noise wasn't him.The weeks went by, and they kept arguing, taking up most of our time with complaints and attempts to negotiate an agreement so they would stop arguing.
We later got a phone call from the mans downstairs neighbour, they were hysterical and told us to come over immediately. When we arrived, we found that he had sawed a hole in his floor, and taken a giant shit down to the neighbours living room.
#41
I had a tenet that I evicted recently. They were constantly late on rent. Never paid the water bill. But the I ig on the cake was they said they had no pets, but actually had a dog and a cat. That would have been fine if they told me and paid the additional deposit and pet rent.The dog chewed up all of the baseboards and tore up and through carpet all over the house.
I went through their Facebook to investigate when pets started living in my unit. It was literally from day 1. I asked the tenet about the pets and they said”no we don’t have any”. I asked why there was a post with a leash on it going under the back door. They had no answer. So I sent them a bill for all of the back pet rent and pet deposit along with paying all the late fees owed and water bill.
They moved out without telling me. I secured the property after they didn’t pay for 2 months. All of the damage was shocking. I’m still trying to collect, but they are doing everything they can to not pay.
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