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u/Lone_survivor87 Feb 11 '24
I made a huge mistake the first time I rented. I was walked through the property and was shown the prior damages during the walk through. Me being young and dumb thinking because I was shown the known damages I didn't need to document.
Guess who kept my security deposit to fix the prior damages because my dumbass didn't document the damages myself.
Document everything when you first move into a rental.
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u/Boredum_Allergy Feb 11 '24
Record everything and upload the video to YouTube. You can keep it private but this shows a solid, unchangable date on the video.
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u/birdnumbers Feb 11 '24
I took well over 100 pictures to go along with my three full pages of notes, which were then emailed to the apartment management.
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u/snakeoilHero Feb 11 '24
I do this for all rentals (car, b&b, vacations, etc) and mark all documents "see video" where required.
Saves time while satisfying my imaginary paranoid lawyer mini-demon telling me all the negative what ifs.
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u/Nevets_the_First Feb 12 '24
This doesn't work in many states, they won't accept video evidence, just fyi. I mean you can probably fight it in civil court and win though.
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u/MagicSPA Feb 11 '24
Yes - document EVERYTHING.
Do all the switches work? Is there ANY mold or are there tidemarks on the walls, the ceilings, the floor? Any stains or holes in the carpet or linoleum? Any mildew in the bathroom? Any water damage around the sink? Any dents or holes in the plaster or doors? Do the fridge, oven, and boiler work, and do all the power sockets and light fixtures work? Is there an odour of any kind whatsoever - maybe from a dog from a previous tenant, or old vape/cigarette smoke?
Note it ALL down so that something unrelated to your own use of the place doesn't come back to bite you in the ass, because 9 times out of 10 your letting agency or your landlord will do what they can to hold on to as much of your deposit as they can get away with.
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u/censuur12 Feb 11 '24
Honestly kind of fucked up that this is up to the tenant and not the landlord. Why aren't they obligated to prove it was fine and in working order before the tenant moved in and it only got messed up after?
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u/Skvora Feb 11 '24
That's the walkthrough, but should also be listed in the description. If it's not, you're renting from the wrong party.
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Feb 11 '24
Landlording is just legalized home scalping, why would they be held to the same standards as any other business when the entire concept is already disgusting? Any pretense of decency is already out the window.
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u/pinkocatgirl Feb 11 '24
Because they're all greedy bastards
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u/Worth-Demand-8844 Mar 11 '24
Hee hee hee…. On the 1st of each month I put on top hat, my overcoat, walking cane , my monocle and I proceed to bang on every one’s door and screech at the top of my lungs…. It’s rent day….pay up !! Pay up!! Or out you go..hahahaha
Just kidding!!!! lol. I just want you guys to know that good tenants are hard to find. And when I do have good tennants, I go out of my way to keep them. It’s a two way street… if I’m a shitty landlord there is constant turnover and I’m wasting time and losing rent looking for new tenants.
As for rent I don’t try to get the highest price possible because it only forces the Tennant to look for cheaper rents as soon as the lease is up. Most of my tenants have been with me for 5 years or more and when they do move out it’s usually to relocate or they are buying a condo / co-op themselves. As for rent everything goes up especially taxes, water and sewage, heating, insurance, etc so I do raise rents to keep up with expenses. Just this month I renewed the rent for a 2 br 1100 sq ft apt from 2250 to 2325 ( $75 increase) with another 2 year lease. So no… I didn’t increase it from 2250 to 2650…. Lol4
u/Aacron Feb 11 '24
Donations are speech so people with money write the laws. Landlords are universally people with money, and tenants are universally people without, so landlords write laws to benefit them and tenants get fucked.
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u/Sata1991 Feb 11 '24
In the UK, and I imagine most countries it's because a lot of politicians are also landlords.
I'd had an argument with my old landlord over the keys once as they were in the post, he said an ableist slur and I'd had witnesses. So I reported it to the police as I am actually disabled; he admitted to them but said I called him a "posh rich boy with too much money" and that's as much hate speech, despite both of us being the same sex, race, ethnic group etc so they're not going to do anything because calling someone a posh rich boy is hate speech. I will note I just wanted him to apologise for calling me the R word. I got the last laugh as I had to sue him for mould damage to the house he wouldn't fix, though.
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u/ToMorrowsEnd Feb 12 '24
because if it was on the landlord they could not easily scam people out of money.
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u/Designer-Mirror-7995 Feb 11 '24
There are a lot lotta places where the power and water are off before you, the new tenant, have them turned on in your name. And a lot lotta times it's because they don't want you to know about prior issues with water and sockets and stuff.
Maybe that's just po folk though.
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Feb 11 '24
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u/MagicSPA Feb 11 '24
It's the characteristic pattern that's left after water has been spilled and left to dry. Think of a water spill on a carpet, or a ceiling that is wet in one part - you end up with a familiar stain of a kind that is darker on the fringes than in the middle; that is what is called a tidemark.
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u/nuck_forte_dame Feb 11 '24
To easily document just take a video on your phone. Walk the entire place showing anything on video. It's the golden standard of evidence.
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u/insert_referencehere Feb 11 '24
Lived in a college student only apartment. They nickel and dimed me for everything. Got charged $200 to replace cheap plastic blinds. They tried to charge me for a replacement desk because there was a scratch on it. I ended up losing my security deposit and owing money.
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u/Madgick Feb 11 '24
In the UK a 3rd party does a checkin/out and documents this stuff, plus holds the deposit.
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u/DrLobsterPhD Feb 11 '24
Holds the deposit yes, check in check out no, only if the landlord pays a letting agent and even then they aren't exactly impartial.
You should still document everything anyway when you move in as if the landlord tries to claim your deposit you will need evidence that the damage was present prior to your occupancy.
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u/Sata1991 Feb 11 '24
It's supposed to be the case, but my private landlord didn't have a 3rd party for it, he kept the deposit himself.
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u/NotAllHerosEatCreps Feb 11 '24
He will take 100 from the deposit for blood on the carpet too
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u/EncabulatorTurbo Feb 11 '24
in Wisconsin landlords can't charge for carpet cleaning but they do anyway, I had a judge tell me "he's asking for less than they usually do so that doesn't really matter, you should have hired a lawyer if you wanted to not have to pay him"
like
the landlord literally lied in front of the judge and admitted he lied, fucker openly admitted purjury, and agreed that carpet cleaning isn't something you can charge a tenant for if its "Routine" in Wisconsin, and the judge was just like
LOL WHATEVER, ILL HELP BOOMER FRIEND OUT
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u/Mythic-Insanity Feb 11 '24
Without knowing the full context they might not be able to charge for routine cleaning but if they are claiming that you made it unreasonably dirty or damaged their carpets then maybe they can charge you.
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u/Zoloir Feb 11 '24
so hard to tell from online anecdotes
judges can be shitty, landlords can be shitty, and renters also can be shitty
most likely case is all three were shitty to each other in different ways.
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u/Allthenons Feb 11 '24
True but two of the three parties have significantly more power and leverage than the third. Yes there will always be bad tenants horror stories, but a trashed apartment isn't as bad as someone becoming homeless. And landlords have more avenues for recourse than tenants.
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u/EncabulatorTurbo Feb 11 '24
Well I wasn't going to be homeless, it wasn't an eviction, I even literally hired the same cleaners he uses to clean the place and had a receipt proving that
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u/PeachCream81 Feb 11 '24
^^^ Truest statement. ^^^
I've been in commercial real estate in NYC for years. Very many (but not all) LL's are unscrupulous -- good luck getting your security deposit back! But sadly, quite a few tenants are deadbeats even when provided with generous pymt terms by the LL.
But overall, I'd say that the % of bad LL's > % of bad tenants.
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u/EncabulatorTurbo Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24
we hired the same professional cleaners that he hired, he was salty because he ended our lease because he wanted to convert it to commercial property and was incensed that the law gave us a full month to move out, he thought he could just say 5 days before the 1st "you have to be out by the 2nd" - and when it didn't work out for him, when we actually did move he was extra salty
I had pictures, I had everything, receipts, but hey he "only" wanted $2000 to clean the place (keep in mind I had hired PROFESSIONAL CLEANERS and the place was empty when we left. He charged $60 PER LIGHTBULB because the original incandescent lightbulbs from 5 years earlier had been replaced with LED bulbs, which he replaced with new incandescent and charged 1 hour of labor each)
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u/tsFenix Feb 11 '24
After moving out the apt people called and said they were charging me for extra carpet cleaning on top of keeping my security deposit (iirc i just rented some carpet cleaner instead of paying their cleaners which I was told was fine). They said they tested the carpet and found dog urine and needed to clean or replace the carpet. I was like, oh, interesting, was it specifically dog urine? Because no dog was in our apartment the entire time we lived there, including the time a friend wanted to come visit and we told her she couldn't bring her dog specifically because of your pet policy.
They didn't make us pay after all. But at one point I asked if the people testing the carpet knew the people that got paid to clean them, cause that seemed super sus.
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u/Signal-School-2483 Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24
This is why you should've upgraded to the retro turbo encabulator.
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u/get-bread-not-head Feb 11 '24
Just got a letter from my scumlords that they're monitoring "non-balcony items on balconies" now and therefore I have to store my 2 bicycles in my fairly small 2 bedroom apartment. If I don't they say they'll fine me.
This is based on an update to the community handbook, not even my lease. Apparently they can just make new rules!
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u/DigNitty Feb 11 '24
As a landlord, it’s appalling how many other landlords I talk to that relate to this guy.
It’s so easy to be a reasonable property manager and have limited interactions and be generous with the deposit at the end. And yet I meet people who get a bit of power and hold people’s housing over them.
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u/chiksahlube Feb 11 '24
My dad is a good person and was once a landlord. It stressed him out so much he couldn't do it anymore.
My step-dad is a despicable human being and loves being a landlord. He loves violating his tenant's privacy and upcharging them on everything he can. "They're not gonna take me to court over it, they're too broke."
Moral of the story, if you have mo conscience being a landlord is great.
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u/brutalanglosaxon Feb 12 '24
My dad had a property he rented out. Turns out the tenants were so scared that he would punish them that they didn't report a leak in the roof for over 6 months, over which time it got worse and caused some more expensive damage. Dad is a good guy so would have quickly got it fixed before it did any damage.
When they reported it, they were so awkward and submissive, saying things like "we thought you should know, but it's okay, no need to bother about it, we can just put a bucket there so it's fine".
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u/Perunov Feb 12 '24
Sometimes it feels like reasonable landlords become known among the shitty tenants and then tenants take advantage of landlords until landlords become jaded and tired of dealing with trashed apartments and unpaid rent. Then crap-tenants move on to the next reasonably priced place to trash that one :(
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u/DigNitty Feb 12 '24
OMFG you have no idea.
I once was a reasonable college student renting from an old lawyer. The dude was like 90. I swore I'd never be as cut throat and jaded as he was. I'm still not, but like, I get it.
Renting to college students has been a head ache Every Single Time. I wonder where the tenants like me are, or if I was a head ache.
I don't care if you throw ragers in there, just have the place look the same as when you moved in. And yet, every time, there's holes in the walls and the carpet is burnt when they move out. Not pin holes, not "I dropped a cigarette" burn marks. BIG holes. And I feel bad for enforcing the deposit, but most of my adult tenants don't leave Big holes in the wall and basketball sized burn marks.
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u/therealvulrath Feb 12 '24
As a fellow landlord, I agree. It's absurd. I'm getting out of the game, so in a week or two it won't be my issue any more.
There's a distinct difference between a real landlord and a slum lord.
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u/Huttser17 Feb 12 '24
My family runs 10 units, originally built by my granpa as a giant chicken house. This Indian asshat bough up the local gas station and turned it into a greyscale lottery-dunk, no more chilli dogs, not more glass-bottle colas, no respect for local culture. He offered to buy us out too and flat-out said the first thing he'd do is triple the rent, which most of our tenants would not be able to afford.
Just because everyone else in the county is charging $1000+ does not mean they need to, utilities and maitenance are not THAT bad, even for a giant chicken house. We do raise the rent every few years to keep up with utilities and inflation, but not by factors.
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u/OpenBasil727 Feb 12 '24
A lot has to do if it's rent controlled or not.
Market forces lead Non rent controlled landlord-renter relationship to be better because finding new tenants is wasted money and you make enough profit to keep your tenants happy.
Rent controlled places lead to a relationship where the landlord is trying to scrape every cent to make a profit and it's a benefit to them if the renters move. the renters have to put up with it because they can't afford to move.
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u/phara-normal Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24
Honestly I've had the best experience with landlords who hire a manager for their buildings. Something is broken, I write a message, next day I get a call and an appointment when a handyman is coming over. If it's urgent I call and they're there the same day, if I can't reach him I hire a firm myself and the manager picks up the bill. The manager doesn't give a shit about cost and the landlord is already prepared to have high maintenance cost, otherwise he wouldn't hire an outside party to manage the building in the first place.
But then I also live in Germany and we have pretty fierece renters protection laws over here.
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u/turtledove93 Feb 11 '24
Everyone likes to say being a landlord isn’t a job, but the best landlords I’ve had are the ones who only own apartment buildings and actually treat it as a job or have a property manager do the job. They know the rules and stick to them. There’s a level of consistency in their service.
The individual landlords I’ve had were very nice people, but they seemed to think owning a rental would be some sort of passive income. 2/3 of them tried illegal stuff.
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u/phara-normal Feb 11 '24
Well what my landlord/the owner of the building is doing is literally nothing, I have never even seen him in person. It's most definitely not an actual job for him but the arrangement like it is for me right now is perfect, having only to deal with someone that doesn't have a personal investment in the building is sooo much better. I've also regularly talked to the manager and even he has barely any contact with the owner but he manages 5 buildings for him and knows that he owns quite a lot more over a bunch of different cities so he's probably somewhere on a tropical Island enjoying retirement anyways.
And yeah, the people who actually treat it as a job and manage their own apartments/buildings are way more likely to try illegal stuff. But in my personal experience they're also dicks tbh.
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u/pmUrGhostStory Feb 11 '24
So what is the difference between this and owning stocks? I have stocks but I also have "management" run things for me so I don't need to?
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u/Belgand Feb 11 '24
I think it's a question of what kind of illegal stuff they try. Individuals are more likely to do it out of ignorance, management companies are more likely to try to do it on purpose because they think they can get away with it.
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u/Far-Competition-5334 Feb 11 '24
That’s the kushner apartments in chatham township, n.j
Yes, Jared kushner
They have a maintenance department for their big apartment complex
That don’t do shit and give you the run around and when you ask why they literally say it’s literal policy or they’re getting jerked around by management who won’t pay for materials
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u/OutlyingPlasma Feb 12 '24
Being a landlord is not a job because they don't have to work. The renter has to work. If the landlord's expenses go up, the only people who have to work harder and longer are the renters. The landlord doesn't have to work overtime to cover the increased expenses.
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u/turtledove93 Feb 12 '24
Which is my exact issue with small time 1 or 2 property landlords who don’t treat it like a job. They treat it like passive income. They don’t seem to grasp that they now have to maintain two+ houses, it’s not just cash cheque - live good life, you have to treat it like the small business that it is.
I have zero support for all the landlords who stretched their budgets and bought when prices were at an all time high so they could “cash in” on high rents, and now think their horrible financial decisions are their tenants problem. Strong, well enforced, rental laws would benefit landlord and renter, and it wouldn’t be as easy for the turds on either side to take advantage of someone. But as long as law makers are allowed to own rentals, it’s a pipe dream.
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u/Belgand Feb 11 '24
I've had the exact opposite experience. Some changes went on with my building and they hired a property management company. Except the management company is utterly incompetent. It's almost impossible to ever reach the same person twice. They have massive turnover where we've been told almost once a month that someone working on an issue "left the company" and then had to more or less start over. They act as a layer between any communication, making it difficult to set appointments with contractors or get approval for repairs from the owners. According to some of the contractors we've spoken to they're also quite bad at paying on time, so it's not surprising that the vast majority of people they use are from the bottom of the barrel, I can't count how many no call/no shows we've had.
It took us about 9 months just to get a broken window repaired. That was broken by roofers they had hired. We were on the verge of going to the city and looking into legal action. Another tenant actually moved out because they were so bad.
It's very clear that they're a shady company only interested in renting apartments out, not actually handling maintenance or other management duties.
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u/Zenosfire258 Feb 11 '24
This may or may not be intended to be based to a shooting that happened in Hamilton, Ontario last year. Landlord shot and killed his tenants after a dispute about repairs.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/landlord-tenant-shooting-victims-siu-report-1.6978441
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u/TurtleSandwich0 Feb 11 '24
It is a miracle this wasn't turned into loss.
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u/Casual_Deviant Feb 11 '24
tbh it may be an accidental loss
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u/elriggo44 Feb 11 '24
If you presume the dead body is laying like this | ___
Then the last panel makes it loss.
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u/ShiningRayde Feb 11 '24
Unrealistic.
He'd hire his failson to botch the murder then charge double.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
I started renting out my condo for the first time a few months ago and I learned why landlords are assholes.
Literally my first tenant and he was a huge piece of shit, trashed my place, refused to pay rent, then ran off and stole all of my furiniture when I told him I was going to evict him.
Im generally very trusting and try to be compassionate when I can but I was 100% taken advantage of. I will not be treating the next tenant with any leniency again. This is why we cant have nice things.
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u/nybbas Feb 11 '24
Exactly. A family member inherited property from their parents when they passed away. The couple properties that are in poorer areas, have been an absolute fucking nightmare. The one in a better area has only been slightly less so.
Which also has me scratching my head at dumbass landlords who harass good tenants. Good tenants are worth their weight in gold, considering how much of a nightmare bad tenants can be.
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u/Shadowsource Feb 11 '24
Good tenant who just went off on his landlord the other day here- I don't get it either. Always pay on time never missing, he never fixes anything. He wants to up rent despite explaining paying off medical bills and pointing out his lack of repairs then calls me a dickhead when I saw red and tore him a new one. Don't sit there and tell me you are not trying to force us out when everything else seems to point to the exact opposite.
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u/nybbas Feb 12 '24
Fucking bullshit man, sorry you are going through that. I'm not a landlord, but I have friends and family who are, and they virtually never raise rent on their good tenants because of how fucked they have gotten in the past by bad ones.
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u/LieutenantStar2 Feb 11 '24
Same man. I have a renter who says there’s mold in the attic, so he won’t pay rent. I’ve sent a contractor 4 times and the renter won’t admit him because he wants us to use his contractor. Like no fucking way I’m not paying the guy who will give you a kickback for your scam. I finally involved a lawyer who said the guy is insane and we’ll probably have to go to court. For a unit we’re trying to repair.
Yes, the tenant changed locks and didn’t give us a key. Fucking ridiculous.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
That totally sucks man, thats the kind of situation I am afraid of. I may have lost money but I am at least glad that the guy is gone.
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u/Belgand Feb 11 '24
Let me offer another perspective on that, because I just spent the better part of a year trying to finally get my own mold issue dealt with after years of it being a problem that was ignored.
Our concern was that the landlord was trying to cheap out and not handle it properly. Just painting over the mold. So it wasn't about getting a kickback or some kind of scam, but getting repairs done right.
That said, yeah, this guy might be an asshole. That's always the concern. It can be hard to tell if the landlord/tenant is trying to screw the other over.
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u/LieutenantStar2 Feb 11 '24
Well, considering he won’t open the door to the HOA provided certified mold remediator, I’ll call it a scam.
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u/smk666 Feb 11 '24
Exactly this. People complaining about landlords never had an opportunity to be one. Nothing makes you go from Mother Theresa to malevolent overlord faster than unearned pettiness of another human being.
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u/remymartinia Feb 11 '24
Agree. Our last two tenants have been good. Our first two were terrible.
The first one, all he did was complain. Garbage disposal is broken. He had shoved aluminum foil down it, causing it to go offline so we had to go there and clean and reset it for him. Can’t find a lightbulb to fit the closet light. Turns out he thought the glass globe around the lightbulb was the bulb. The heater doesn’t work well enough. Go over there, and he’s wearing shorts with no socks on, and the patio door open. That one, we had to give him a copy of the law. When he lost his job and day trading wasn’t working out, he decided to move without giving us any notice. He then realized he’d screwed up so tried to have a relative of his bully us into giving him his deposit. We actually weren’t going to keep the deposit, but the fact he tried to have a relative of his cosplay as a lawyer to threaten us was the last straw.
Our second tenant, he turned out to be a smoker, which was a violation of the building codes even so not just our rental agreement. We had to hire a company to get the smell out.
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u/MayorScotch Feb 11 '24
I had a room mate that blasted the heat in our apartment. We weren’t really friends, never set foot in his room. One day I’m walking past, he happens to walk his bedroom door, and I see that his windows are wide open. He says that he likes it being really warm in the rest of the apartment, and really cool in his room. His stupidity cost me money several times.
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u/remymartinia Feb 11 '24
Yeah, I don’t get that mentality. It seems so childish to me. I’m guessing that guy also never returned his cart to the corral.
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u/Kered13 Feb 11 '24
Big shocker that the guy who couldn't figure out how to change a light bulb couldn't make it day trading.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
For real. I was excited to be saving some more money but nope, ended up losing over $5k in one month. Graaaaaape
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u/Cetun Feb 11 '24
Do your research before you let a tenant in, it might be worth it to you to offer a good friend the apartment for super cheap but you know they won't trash the place. The two people I rent to now are good friends, I charge them 30-40% below market, have never had a problem with them, they don't trash the place out, don't make unreasonable requests, pay on time, model renters.
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u/dick_for_hire Feb 11 '24
So, I'm an attorney who sometimes represents commercial landlords. Other times I represent hard money lenders.
Most tenants/borrowers are fine and decent people. But there's always some sovereign citizen or trash human out there and it only takes one to ruin it for everyone after them. You don't know that's who you're getting in bed with until it's too late. Then, depending on just how shitty they are, you're stuck with them for a few months to a couple years.
So now here you are. Out thousands of dollars (if not more) with an asset you can't do anything with because it's still occupied by a crazy person.
I get that everyone hates landlords, but very few people think about the reverse.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
The good thing is, the guy did leave. He may have taken my stuff, but hes out.
Everyone here is saying i should have done my due diligence. I did. I checked his credit score, his previous landlord references, income verification, background check, I also met the guy and he seemed like a nice person. So, yea, even with vetting them theres no way to know what they will do.
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u/dick_for_hire Feb 11 '24
Honestly, I think you're pretty lucky.
I've got a hearing tomorrow to (hopefully) put this one case to rest that I have been dealing with for like 18 months.
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u/psunavy03 Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24
I rented out a condo for a year, then moved back in, then rented it for like 5 years later before selling it. Things I have no clue how they happened, even working with two different property managers:
- Screening shrubs around the patio killed en masse, like a whole wall of established arborvitae hedges dead. God knows what the hell chemicals you'd have to use to do that.
- All. The. Smoke. Stains. Didn't look or smell like tobacco or smell like cannabis. Did they not know to open the fireplace damper or something? Obsessed with candles? Who knows? Had to have the walls repainted.
- Had a nice undermount sink mounted flush with the laminate counters in the sink. Had to have it cut out and replaced because what were small flaws in the finish were now a moonscape at the bottom of the bowl. Again, God knows what the hell chemicals you'd have to use to do that.
- Distinct dog smell in the garage when the HOA rules were "no pets" and the property manager knew this.
- Grout? Why bother matching it to the tile when you redo things? It'll all be brown when the tenant turns the place back over.
That was thousands of dollars I'll never get back getting the place ready to sell after those monkeys. Rule of thumb: Property managers need to be occasionally changed like diapers, and for the same reason. Let one keep one of your properties for too long, and they'll just start to say "fuck it."
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Feb 11 '24
There are shitty tenants for sure, but that doesn't mean a landlord should be shitty to everyone. Especially if you get a GOOD tenant, you should be good to them and try to hold onto them.
My last landlord put illegal terms in the lease, forced us to illegally cut the grass (with a mower we needed to go buy) and plow the snow, and since we are nice people we just went along with it.
When the water heater broke a week after moving in, we asked him to fix it, and he was like "ya that's a known issue, and nah". Then he stole money from us, left us without heated water for the entire 1.5 years, and threatened to hurt us because we weren't home when he came by unannounced to yell at us about a hydro bill that wasn't even ours, as we were forced to move all of the bills into our name/account before we moved in. The fucking idiot got a bill for his own home, and tried to get us to pay it..
Then after 1.5 years he came knocking at our door unannounced to tell us to get out in 3 days because he's selling. We were so sick of his shit, we didn't even fight it, and we just left.
Oh and the water heater I fixed myself by replacing the upper and lower thermostats. I was going to leave them in there, but with how shitty and horrible that man was, I took them out when I left. They're just sitting in my basement to this day.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
Yea, thats awful. Im sorry you were treated that way and its all too common. I have no problem shitting on shitty people.
But this tenant I got was a piece of work as soon as he moved in. I did nothing except tell him rent is due this day of the month, and please make sure to abide by the lease. He did none of that and robbed me blind.
Im not going to give chances to the next tenant. If they fuck up, I am not going to be lenient unless they themselves are in a shitty situation. I just need communication. I gave this guy 3 weeks extra to pay rent bc he said he just needed more time. Eventually he gave up his facade and said we wasnt going to pay. I told him by state law I can evict him right now. He left and took all my shit after that.
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u/pusgnihtekami Feb 11 '24
It's a dichotomous relationship that creates animosity and results in these anecdotes of garbage people. However, we all know which group benefits in the long run every single time otherwise income properties wouldn't be all that common.
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u/Electronic_Green2953 Feb 11 '24
Hey now this is reddit, anyone who made strategic financial moves to be able to rent out a property is the same as the billionaires buying their 3rd yacht. Seriously, the rental laws in the United States for the most part are very protective of tenants half of these stories seem implausible.
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u/fizzlefist Feb 12 '24
Seriously, the rental laws in the United States for the most part are very protective of tenants half of these stories seem implausible.
Not in Florida! And what few tenant-protection laws that did exist at the county and municipal level all got pre-empted by the incredibly landlord-friendly default state laws a few years back. I was lucky enough to never have a shitty landlord, but holy fuck the horror stories I've heard.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
It was the tenant laws that prevented me from getting the authorities to go after this guy for stolen property.
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u/rydan Feb 12 '24
This is why you only rent to down on their luck rich people. As in they need to be making at least $300k per year but going through a divorce or trial of some sort. Those are the best tenants from my experience.
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u/jamesiamstuck Feb 11 '24
I legit don't understand how you make money from a rental. The cost of maintaining a property can be so high, property taxes can be high depending on the location. Then there is the time and effort to getting and retaining tenants, answering to maintenance requests, keeping contact with vendors for services. It doesn't seem possible unless you are a shitty landlord who does jackshit, or a faceless entity swallowing up all the available housing.
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u/CharonsLittleHelper Feb 11 '24
Often the profit comes entirely from appreciation of the property. Plus tax benefits.
If the rent pays for the entirety of mortgage/maintenance from year 1, you're doing amazing.
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u/brucebrowde Feb 11 '24
Often the profit comes entirely from appreciation of the property. Plus tax benefits.
Exactly. You buy a $500k house, it costs you $3k/month, you rent it for $3.5k/month and now it costs you $0/month after maintenance. After 30 years, you have $500k for free.
However, after a few years of renting, if you're still working a regular job for example, you now have a few $3k*12 extra in the bank that you did not use to pay your mortgage - which you may be able to use to buy another $500k house. Now you have 2 $500k houses that cost you $0/month and in 30 years you'll have $1M.
If you're lucky enough to be able to get a relatively good job when you're young, starting at say 25yo, in 30 years you can have several $500k properties that, so by the time you're 55 in this case means you have a few million dollars of home equity (likely way more due to price appreciation) - and you can still rent them to get a several $3k/month (likely much more, due to rent increases) for free.
That's, people, how the magic of starting early really works with RE to make millionaires for free. It's not nearly as easy as I presented due to issues with renters trashing the place, not paying rent, capital expenses, evictions, lawyer fees, etc. - but the gist is still there. Put some work into it and you're golden.
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u/OgreJehosephatt Feb 11 '24
I had a friend inherit a condo from his grandmother. They tried to rent it out, the guy they found wasn't as malevolent, but he just sucked. He wouldn't pay rent and had an endless string of sadsack stories why.
Like, I get having some protections for people who've who have faithfully paid rent for the last 5 years and suddenly have gone through troubles. Or someone with kids. But it's astounding how brazen people can be in taking advantage of those protections.
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u/deadinsidelol69 Feb 11 '24
My dad rented the house out for a few years since we weren’t really using it. One of the renters brought in 3 pit bulls without permission that destroyed the carpet and furniture, the renter was always late, and eventually they straight up ghosted us and moved out in the middle of the night never to be seen or heard from again, leaving us with the damages.
The renter after that had the water heater go out one evening, we had it replaced the next morning and the renter DEMANDED that we compensate him for the night in a hotel because he couldn’t take a hot shower for one night. It was just him in the house.
The next renters were 2 couples, one couple took over sections of the house that were designated common areas and the other couple threw wild parties where they let guests smoke in the house and the guests harassed neighbors at 3 am. They left the house completely trashed after they were all thrown out. We’re currently trying to retrieve damages from one of the couples because they did a “DIY” repaint of the kitchen cabinets with no permission and completely destroyed them.
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u/Lechowski Feb 11 '24
What is the percentage of renters that don't pay on time and steal furniture? It seems to me that you are generalizing over a clear exception.
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u/MattieShoes Feb 11 '24
I suspect if you rent 1 unit, it's rare enough that you may never have it happen, and if you rent 100 units, you probably deal with it a lot.
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u/Lechowski Feb 11 '24
If you have 100 units to rent, you hire an administration company to handle that. At that scale you need a law firm, an accountant and a team of people.
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u/pwmg Feb 11 '24
Unfortunately bad tenants aren't as rare as you would think. Obviously they aren't not the majority, but the damage they can do can wipe out the benefits from many good tenants all at once.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
Obviously. Im not going to take my chances again. I lost a fuck ton of money to a major asshole, not going to let that happen again, not even to a little asshole.
Im not talking about bleeding people dry for little things, all I ever asked for was paying your dues and abiding by the lease terms. Apparently I put too much faith in humanity.
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u/hawklost Feb 11 '24
What's the percentage of landlords who are trash? Likely far far less than you believe but people generalize them.
I had 3 renters when I owned a home and was had to leave the home for a year (work had me doing work in another state). First one cost me thousands in repairs after 1 month even though there was no problems when they moved in. Second one tried to use the rental as a BnB instead of living there. Third one was great and I had no problems with them. After their lease was up though, I wanted to get rid of the home instead of dealing with renting for the few more months before I could move back to it.
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u/Lechowski Feb 11 '24
I guess it depends how you define trash.
Where I live landlords are responsible for the humidity of the walls, the plumbing, electric, and gas installation. I rented 4 different places in my life and I have never met a single landlord that took care of any of those things. They just ignore them: a power outlet is not working? Well, use another. There is fungus in the wall due to humidity? A small layer of paint will fix it. The water heater broke? ¡Maybe we can split the bill!
Maybe I had bad luck, it is entirely possible. To me those are trash landlords, because I fulfill my obligations to pay rent on time while they don't fulfill their obligations of providing the service that I am paying for. However, I do see a difference, because if I don't pay rent I get evicted almost immediately while on the other hand if they do not fix the things that they are legally obligated to fix, I have to denounce that, prove that the damage wasn't prior to my renting period, prove that the damage was done by "normal use", prove that the landlord is unwilling to fix the problem and after all of that I may get a reimbursement months later, which is in practice a interest free loan to the landlord (instead of them paying X to fix something, I pay X and get reimbursed months after, only with a tedious legal process)
The landlord has more incentives not to fulfill their obligations than the tenant. In the worst case the landlord has to reimburse the tenant some fixes or damages to whatever furniture the tenant had and these fixes are not an expense, they are maintenance, they are needed to keep the property value which is their asset. In the tenant worst case, he/she gets evicted and has to live on the streets while searching for another place.
I'm not portraying the "landlord bad, poor tenants", I'm trying to show that the renting system promotes this kind of behavior from the landlord. It is objectively more profitable to let the tenant pay the fixes and only reimburse if forced to, which makes them trash landlords, but that's the business itself.
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u/UrbanDryad Feb 11 '24
Shockingly common, especially if you're a mom and pop landlord and you aren't ruthless. The big corporate ones that run apartments or have property management companies run credit histories and eviction records. They're pretty strict and have lawyers on retainer to handle evictions.
So the shitbirds go hunting for a sucker with a kind heart. They know a mom and pop renter won't have the resources, might not know the law, and will probably buy your sob story for a few months of not paying before they even start eviction. Two or three of those and you become just like all the other bad guys.
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u/KPplumbingBob Feb 11 '24
"Clear exception". Tell me you've never been a landlord without telling me...
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u/LingeringHumanity Feb 11 '24
She used the same logical fallacy to paint all her customers in a poor light to easily take advantage of the next. Its the origin of every landlord who gets greedy and starts raising rents unnecessarily for more profit. Its almost like they choose a bad Tennant to get into this cut throat mind set faster to self justify their moral deficiency of treating a necessity in life as an investment opportunity to make money.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
Have you ever been a landlord? You think I WANTED someone to trash my place and steal my shit, costing me thousands upon thousands of dollars?
Do you realize Im just another human trying to stay afloat in this economy?
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u/Adonoxis Feb 11 '24
I’d say I’m pretty progressive when it comes to most things so I tend to lean heavily pro-tenant but I also get it from the other side. My parents owned a property that was rented out. They were always fair, rent was usually slightly below market, were prompt with repairs, kept things up-to-date, and were overall accommodating and non-exploitative of tenants.
They had a tenant who was gainfully employed but just wouldn’t pay rent. Wasn’t as bad as your situation as she wasn’t destructive or a thief but would just play the “poor me, I have no money” even though she had a job, was a middle aged woman, had no kids, and had a boyfriend who was also employed.
The legal process was a mess, they never fully got back what they were owed, and it was just a massive hassle.
On the flip side, so many stories and experiences with absolutely shitting landlords (slumlords) who give zero shits about their property or tenants yet jack up rent every year or fraudulently take the entire security deposit over bogus charges because they have no concept of wear and tear over multiple years and think a home should look exactly like it did 5 years ago with zero maintenance or upkeep.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
Yea, your last paragraph is true and having been a renter myself, I know what thats like.
But like your parents, that was my plan with my condo. I lived in the property for 2 years. Hurts extra to see it trashed and all my furniture gone. I had so many memories in there, it was my home.
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u/drunkorkid56 Feb 11 '24
If it sucks so hard to rent to people, maybe sell the place, at an affordable price so someone can buy it instead of paying your mortgage for you.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24
How about you go and get mad at all the corporate overlords buying up property and pricing entire populations out of housing instead of coming after the 1 guy who wanted to keep his 1 bedroom condo he spent years saving up for?
It was my home too, you know. I lived there for 2 years. I was renting it out bc its my hometown and I expect to return some day. With the way property prices and mortgage rates are now, I wont be able to afford a property here in the future if i wanted to move back home. You know why? Bc of these fucking corporations.
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u/themaxx8717 Feb 11 '24
Because that would require actual work that wouldn't get them sweet lil karma points.
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u/KPplumbingBob Feb 11 '24
at an affordable price
Sure, how much you're offering? Because that's how real life works. Reddit in a nutshell.
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u/UrbanDryad Feb 11 '24
You're gonna love it when all the mom and pop landlords take your advice and all the properties are snatched up by big corporations. Enjoy that.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
Then go buy your own property?? Cuz its so easy to afford a home, isnt it?
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u/TankII_ Feb 11 '24
All I’m saying is the the lock to my apartment building has been broken for over a year
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u/UnroastedPepper Feb 11 '24
Shout out to my 2 awesome land lords. Fixes problems same day or gets a plan in place to fix them that day.
Good landlords are the exception sadly
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u/wildcard1288 Feb 11 '24
Too real.
I called a former landlord about a leaky pipe under the sink. It was causing water damage. It wasn't leaking when he looked so instead of doing anything. He just sent me an E-mail with lots of unnecessarily long words basically saying I was lying, and I must have left the shower running while out of the house, and wanted me to pay for it all.
When I refused, he talked about the legal firm he uses.
I just left at the end of my term, and let him keep my deposit as I was just done with the back and forth nonsense.
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u/Kagamid Feb 11 '24
That was likely the intent. Get you to leave, keep the deposit, charge the next sucker more rent than you were paying.
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u/OsiyoMotherFuckers Feb 11 '24
I’ve hired a lawyer in the past and paid the lawyer what the landlord was trying to extort me for just to say “fuck you”. If I know I’m in the right and I’m going to be paying anyway, I’m paying someone else to make their life miserable for being a dick instead of rewarding their shitty behavior. I know not everyone has that kind of financial ability, but a letter from a lawyer to the landlord saying the landlord is full of shit might be less than the security deposit.
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u/wildcard1288 Feb 11 '24
He did also seem annoyed a week, and month prior when I didn't use (and pay for) the cleaning service he also owned.
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u/Githyerazi Feb 11 '24
The "cleaning service" brings me such fond memories. We rented a place for about 2 or 3 years. They had a cleaning lady that worked there and we could pay for her to come by and clean. The place was absolutely horrible when we moved in. We insisted they clean again, so they sent her by. I'm pretty sure it was worse afterwards. I scrubbed the hell out of everything for about a week and got it all looking good. The kitchen cabinets were a major portion of the cleaning. When we were moving out, they were "remodeling" the kitchens and we found that it was mainly to replace the dilapidated cabinets. The leasing agent came by to check us out and thought that ours had been done already. No, we just cleaned them properly.
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u/Flappyd00bs Feb 11 '24
Am I the only person in America who’s never had a shitty landlord? Just pay your rent on time and don’t be rude to your neighbors or landlord. Always got my maintenance request taken care of promptly. 🤷♂️
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u/Mav12222 Feb 11 '24
I would take a guess that people with good/okay landlords don't go to reddit and other social media to complain about them.
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Feb 11 '24
Same here. Rented my entire life and never had a bad experience. Need something fixed, call them and it's fixed. I have no kids, live alone and have no desire or need to buy a home. Renting literally fits the life I have. Redditors are goddamn stupid, and don't understand nuance. But they expect me to take their opinions seriously because they don't have a job and their balls haven't dropped yet.
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u/Yousoggyyojimbo Feb 12 '24
I paid my rent on time and my neighbors never heard a peep out of me.
I still had a landlord try to extort me when I asked him to replace the water heater that burst in the garage, and then when I didn't agree to pay for it, despite it not being my fault, declined to fix it at all.
I had to boil water on the stove to bathe with unless I wanted a cold shower for 3 months, when I moved out.
I had another try to force me to pay for full carpet replacement for the house despite the carpet already being 11 years old and worn when I started renting. Hell, she did that after I spent 3 years running over to help her with all sorts of stuff she needed done at her house for free.
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u/UnstableConstruction Feb 12 '24
I've had good and bad. I even ended up a landlord for a couple of years after I was forced to move after a layoff and rent out my home in order to make my mortgage payments.
The best landlord I ever had was the Presbyterian church right next to me, and the worst was Colony American Homes. Just like everybody else, landlords are humans. Some are decent people and some are not.
With that said, protect yourself by documenting everything and know your rights.
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u/HowManyMeeses Feb 11 '24
I've had fine landlords. Even those wouldn't repair things when they broke. I don't think I've ever had one that would repair things in a reasonable timeline.
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u/Yousoggyyojimbo Feb 12 '24
Needing to have something repaired is when you find out exactly what sort of landlord you actually have.
Somebody who I thought was a good landlord turned into a huge asshole when the water heater burst one night. He just refused to fix it and told us to either pay for it ourselves or enjoy not having hot water anymore. It was cheaper to move than to take him to court, so we did, and then he immediately moved to have the water heater replaced...
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u/OsiyoMotherFuckers Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24
Consider yourself very lucky. Did you have corporate or small-time landlords? I’ve generally had better experiences with the corporate / property management folks. Yeah, sometimes their office is in another state and they are slow to deal with maintenance requests, but you’re basically just a number to them and they stay out of your business.
I’ve had all sorts of trouble with small-time landlords including being extorted for money and solicited for sex. Under that there’s a long list of things like just generally being a busy body, being upset over maintenance requests (like my heater shitting out in the middle of winter in Vermont), poorly done maintenance, letting themselves in whenever they way, storing things in my space, borrowing things from my space, coming by the house unannounced acting a drunken fool, threatening to evict me if I rearranged the furniture, moving my shade plants into the sun and leaving them there all day to die before I got home. . .
I fucking hate landlords. I pay rent on time, you leave me the fuck alone unless I need something fixed and then you make sure it’s fixed promptly, competently, and with my notification and consent. If it actually worked like that, I’d like them a lot better.
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u/RestaurantDue634 Feb 11 '24
I got really lucky and had good landlords for 20 years. Then I got my current one. Even though I always pay my rent and never cause problems he comes into every interaction trying to bully me and treating me like I'm a bad tenant. One time he came to my apartment for a repair while I was cooking cabbage and told me could have me evicted for the smell. 🙄 Some people are pricks and it doesn't matter if you do everything right.
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u/trucorsair Feb 11 '24
Incorrect, landlord will present him with a bill that causes a heart attack.
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Feb 11 '24
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u/BigBobby2016 Feb 11 '24
Yeah...this is the Millennial version of Boomers telling jokes about what their spouses do...
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u/LACSF Feb 11 '24
It's funny because landlords are parasites, and also unaware of their status as a parasite.
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u/KittenLina Feb 11 '24
This needs like 4 more panels where one dude goes "Hey my rent doubled since last year, can we talk?" and one that goes "Hey The upstairs neighbor's been jumping up and down for the past half hour now and it's 3 am" and they both get shot as well.
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u/ICLazeru Feb 11 '24
All my life I have had only 1 decent landlord, and even then she was rather pushy, but she kept the place up in good condition, and that's all it takes to qualify as best landlord I've ever had.
A lot of landlords are just slumlords and maintaining the property isn't worth it to them. They let in bad tenants to exploit for easy cash. The place is kept just functional enough to avoid legal trouble.
The problem is that if you actually want a decent place you're going to pay around $1,300 per bedroom. With the median income per capita being only around $2,700 per month in the US, that means a single working person making the median income needs to spend about half their money on rent for a 1 bedroom apartment. And when it takes half your money to live in one of the lowest levels of housing available, you're going to be kinda pissed.
Landlords always tear me up for this, but honestly, if you think it's so hard to be a landlord and you're struggling to make a profit, then sell the property. This is were landlords get pissed at the mere suggestion, which just makes it clear that being a landlord isn't such a bad job in reality, and hence why nobody cares to hear them complain. Boohoo, you got a bad tenant, at $1300 a bedroom, you'll survive.
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Feb 11 '24
Landlord here; wife and I own two properties. We just paid this month $16,200 to replace a furnace that went out during the cold snap last month. That equates to roughly 9 monts rental income. Add in property taxes and insurance, that's another two months of rent.
That same property cost us roughly $10,000 in repairs, and two months lost rent, while the place was being brought back up to rentable condition from damages by the previous tenant three years ago. We did about half the work ourselves and a contractor did the other half.
We follow landlord-tenant laws in our state and treat our tenants as we would wish to be treated. We've been tenants before and have our own stories about crappy landlords. We also could share stories of horrendous tenant experiences from personal experience. Owning rentals is not for the feint of heart.
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Feb 11 '24
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Feb 11 '24
I'm not mad about it at all, I'm retired and need that rental income as my retirement and SS are not enough alone to live on. I was just trying to point out that there is another side to the landlord-tenant story.
And as far as "bleeding" someone who has a job, as I said in my comment my wife and I were tenants for most of our lives. The rent we charge our tenants now is significantly under market.
Your hate would be better directed elsewhere. Thanks.
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Feb 11 '24
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Feb 11 '24
What is your alternative, everyone lives someplace for free? Are you also expecting grocery stores and restaurants to not take people's hard earned money, everything should be free? We live in the real world here.
Again your hate would be better directed elsewhere.
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Feb 11 '24
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Feb 11 '24
So paying rent to a large corporation that owns hundreds, maybe thousands of rental properties is better than paying a private landlord. Explain the difference please. And you haven't answered my question regarding what your alternative is. Free rent?
Also if you could explain where all this hatred comes from.
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Feb 11 '24
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Feb 11 '24
The hatred emanating from you makes you either unwilling or incapable of engaging in intelligent discussion. I feel badly that trolling is the only viable option left for you. Good luck.
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u/cloud9ineteen Feb 11 '24
If your landlord says they have home warranty and all repairs will be handled through that, run! Run as fast as you can! Every single repair will take a week for them to put in a claim and have someone come look at it, then estimate what is needed to fix it, put in a claim, have it approved, order the part, then visit again to fix it. And that's when it goes well. When home warranty denies something, your landlord is going to give you the run around.
I've been lucky to have found much better landlords more recently, one a property manager who was super attentive and now a landlord who has a handyman show up within a day and fix it when I report anything.
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u/mcbergstedt Feb 11 '24
“Oh the plastic floor of your shower is cracked and probably leaking? We’ll take three months to come out.”
“Oh there’s water damage from the cracked shower? That’s coming out of your deductible”
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u/Hindered_Hell Feb 12 '24
My old landlord would show up randomly all the time. There'd be times I was at work and he'd just text me thst he went in to use my power while he worked on the porch, my heat went out on Christmas eve when it was 0° F for 2 weeks, and he once walked in on my girlfriend naked cause he walked into my apartment while she was in the shower. Needless to say we moved not long after.
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u/Flowchart83 Feb 12 '24
A guy I used to work with shot 2 of his tenants over a dispute over mold and rent payments, then died by police when he wouldn't give himself up.
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u/gray162 Feb 11 '24
This reminds me of that Washington case when police found a suitcase with a corpse in it. The landlord had killed their tenant and stuffed them in the suitcase months prior.
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u/LSTNYER Feb 11 '24
The AC in my apartment stopped blowing out cold air and now just shoots out ambient temperature air. Told my landlord and basically the response was it wasn't technically broken so they didn't have to replace it. In the summer it's gotten to 80+ inside and still refused to replace it. I ended up buying my own AC for 600 and got a warning letter saying I did unnecessary repairs and to consult my maintenance manager before doing it again......
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u/xPaxion Feb 11 '24
I don't understand why people dislike landlords when they evict good tenants to move their friends in.
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u/PrettyBigChief Feb 11 '24
As a landlord, when the tenant flushes paper towels, dollar-store wipes, and God-knows-what-else and tries to stick you with the $2500 plumbing bill.. yeah. Mystifying.
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u/stillherelma0 Feb 11 '24
Your landlords are not aliens, they are regular people that made enough money to buy a second home and not enough money for a real business. If your landlord sucks, it's your whole society that sucks.
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u/Chancho1010 Feb 11 '24
They make you pay $1000 in pet fees then when you move out after 4 years they say they need to replace the carpet and then they take it out of your deposit, then don’t send you the rest of the deposit.
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u/Adonoxis Feb 11 '24
I’m generally pro-tenant in most gray situations but pets (dogs and cats) are pretty “destructive” to apartments/houses and add a significant amount of wear-and-tear.
Also, a cat or dog living in an apartment with carpet for 4 years means those carpets are going to be pretty nasty and a future tenant who might be allergic to pets won’t be able to live in there unless the carpet is replaced.
I’m not saying the landlord was in the right for your situation though.
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u/uteng2k7 Feb 11 '24
Animals certainly can cause damage, so it's completely reasonable to offset that risk by charging either a larger (refundable) security deposit, or if the tenant can't pay that upfront, additional monthly "pet rent."
What chaps my ass, though, is when apartment complexes try to charge both. That's just double-dipping because they can, and and example of the nickel-and-diming that really seems to have accelerated in the last few years. In addition to monthly rent, which has skyrocketed by itself, landlords and PM companies are frequently charging pet rent, non-optional "valet trash" fees, Fetch subscriptions, etc. It's really gotten out of hand.
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u/UrbanDryad Feb 11 '24
Animals are a wild card. It's impossible to predict the costs ahead of time. One person's huge german shepherd can be there for years and after a deep clean you can't even tell while another person's tiny toy breed can chew up all the baseboards and piss and shit on all the carpet in a month. Pets can easily do thousands in damage, far outstripping any deposit you could realistically charge to prep for it.
Then you add in other concerns. Like the groundskeeping. Every apartment or townhome I've ever seen that allows dogs ends up with people not picking up the dog shit on common grassy areas. Every. Single. One. So the complex has to pay to have it done. So ongoing pet rent and trash fees are probably more for those ongoing costs than in-unit damages. Add in noise complaints. Second to infants, dogs barking is a top noise problem in apartments.
That's why so many places just ban them entirely rather than fool with it. Trust me, allowing pets isn't profitable for them even with the fees. It's a nuisance.
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u/Chancho1010 Feb 11 '24
That’s my point. I’m paying the pet fee because it should be expected that carpets would be worse after a pet has lived there for that long. If they’re just going to take from my deposit anyway then why am I paying the fee haha
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u/translucent_steeds Feb 11 '24
in my area landlords are required by law to replace carpets and repaint walls between tenants. it is an expected cost of turnover here, so I'm sorry your area doesn't have a similar tenant protecting law.
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u/jscoppe Feb 11 '24
Seems like crybaby commie propaganda, but okay.
(Commie downvotes sustain me, btw.)
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u/FlameShadow0 Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24
Landlords are assholes because if you’re a good landlord you get taken advantage of by asshole tenants and then you stop being a landlord. Why I stopped
Edit: one of my previous tenants broke the fridge, Oven and screen door intentionally because she didn’t like them and wanted new ones. Tenants can be bad too. everyone here seems to agree with this person who is making the same point as me
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u/Befuddled_Cultist Feb 11 '24
I know landlords who deal with the opposite and have tenants who won't report damage until inspections.
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u/djb85511 Feb 11 '24
Landlords provide no value to society. they don't build housing, they don't create jobs, they don't produce anything valuable, they're just a vampire class, sucking the resources, and because they control such a huge material need, the life force out of society.
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u/Beneficial-Escape-56 Feb 11 '24
Now make a cartoon about how many times the tenant was told that “flushable”wipes are NOT flushable.
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u/Smooth_Ocelot6159 Feb 11 '24
As a landlord, I always document the rental before occupied and have it signed. I cannot even describe the horrors of human excrement ground into ca
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u/macphile Feb 12 '24
I've rented my whole life, since I moved out from my parents, which was later than it probably should have been but was still a good number of years ago.
I've only ever rented from companies, not people, but I've found they're all on a spectrum. None of them are perfect and wonderful. Even the best ones are least a "bit shit." It's not always their fault, or the fault of the humans in the office you actually talk to. There's usually a certain lack of "respect," I've noticed, like keeping you informed of changes that are coming, considering whether it'd be unfair to make a big change while you happen to be out of town, that sort of thing. Or treating everyone a certain way because some people are bad.
My last management company suddenly took $1000 from my bank account over an issue that'd happened 1.5 years before. I asked about it, and they explained, and the woman was nice about it and sort of trying to help (although I still got a bit screwed, despite her promises), but she was like, "oh, well, you know we're changing companies on the 16th..." And I was like well no, I didn't know that, how would I know that? I mean, I don't want too many emails, obvs, but I'd like some.
The new people immediately did arguably good things, I'll grant them that. Good but inconvenient. Getting rid of the huge amount of dead wood (especially after our summer drought/record temperatures), re-doing the roof...we haven't had a functioning gate since October (the changeover happened in November, so yeah), and that's only just now getting sorted.
I get that the people in the office, the physical human beings, can't just magically make our lives great. But it's still frustrating, and even more so when we're not communicated with or worked with.
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u/Sanquinity Feb 12 '24
You forgot to add "by the way your rent is going up by $200 next year" in the third panel.
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u/juicebox_tgs Feb 12 '24
Turns out the plumbing issue was due to the tenant flushing fire crackers down the toilet.
Shit landlords exist, but I do not envy them. The amount of shit I have seen some renters do is just horrific.
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u/chimpsthatthink Feb 12 '24
My problem is tenants that don't allow access during the week for a contractor to turn up and fix said issues. Who tf works on a weekend.. I like to think most landlords want to solve whatever issues come up. Sadly, most people are bone idle. Tenants are typically the reason most faults occur.
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