"The Landlady And Her Boyfriend Turned Up One Evening And Refused To Leave" — People Are Sharing Their Worst-Ever Landlord Stories

Recently I told the BuzzFeed Community that I was in the mood to hear some good old-fashioned bad landlord stories. People's stories did not disappoint, and I selected a few of the best. Here are their responses:

1."The first apartment me and my now husband had was above a retail store and had cheap rent, and I worked with the only neighbor. We thought things were great for years until the building owner decided to sell. I paid my rent on a Friday and was told she was going to be selling the building. On Monday I came home to find the landlord walking someone through our apartment. No notice, no call for approval, just the landlord and four strangers in my house. She did this twice more before we called the police and reported her."

"It made me wonder how many times she had gone into the apartment without us knowing, because she would make comments about liking our new couch and how organized our bedroom closet was. She had not been in the apartment (that we knew of) since before we moved in so how did she know the couch was new and what kind of bedroom closet we kept?"

—p46bf3ddf0

2."I was moving, and legally you still 'own' the place you're renting until the first day of the next month (so in my case for example, I notified them of my moving on the seventh of January, and should have had until the first of February to move out my things and clean the place). My landlord basically said 'f*ck this law' and made me get all my stuff out of there and clean it in a DAY. [They] then proceeded to charge me for the full month's rent anyway, despite someone literally moving in like a week after I left. And then they had the audacity to call and bitch about the place not being spotless."

3."My current landlord is a real piece of work. Multiple times, both toilets in my apartment have stopped working. I've gone days without a working bathroom at home and would hang out at Walmart at night as long as possible to use the bathroom. It eventually got fixed but he told me it was my fault because I use too much toilet paper."

4."This only happened a few weeks ago. I was living in a six-bedroom, shared house, but the landlady is selling so gradually everyone was moving out. Only myself and another woman were left. Long story short the landlady and her boyfriend turned up one evening and refused to leave. They were eating our food, drinking our drink, moving bedding, furniture, you name it into the house."

5."My landlord kept $1,000 of our deposit for 'damages' but when the 'itemized invoice' arrived, it was a photocopy of a picture of a computer screen and was completely illegible. When we asked for him to clarify and show the list with prices, he freaked out at us and said we were ungrateful for him not raising the rent in the 18 months we lived there."

"Some of the things he charged us for were pieces of missing hardware on the sink, which were missing before we moved in AND weren't even replaced after we moved out. He also charged us for a 'professional deep clean' after we moved, but when we had to go back to get some boxes out of the basement, the new tenants were doing THEIR OWN deep clean because it was filthy."

—zillizard1

6."A couple of weeks before moving out, the HVAC broke and was leaking water all over the floor. The landlord sent maintenance over and the maintenance guy said the only thing that was wrong with the HVAC was that it needed a new filter. This was not true, and the HVAC kept leaking water. They never came back to fix the issue even though we contacted them multiple times. A few days after my family moved out I got an angry call from the landlord saying that when the cleaning lady went to clean the unit, she refused to enter because there was water everywhere."

7."My landlord sent me an email 2 weeks after I'd moved out with a list of all the 'damages' I'd be paying for, which included replacing all the carpet, the appliances, the blinds, pretty much anything that could be replaced. There were no invoices or any sort of proof that the work had been done and that the cost was correct. The cost was supposedly almost $6,000 at that point. So, I replied saying I would set up a payment arrangement AFTER I received the invoices."

"I never heard from the guy again and he never saw a cent from me. Come to find out, he went to prison shortly after for real estate fraud due to lying about occupancy rates in order to obtain loans from the government. Justice was served."

—stuckinak

8."Many years ago, my husband and I were renting a house trailer, certainly NOTHING fancy. The landlord would drive by daily, make surprise inspection visits, berate us on our housekeeping, and question our use of utilities — which WE were paying for, not him. He would make snide comments about our lifestyle; we were young and poor. There were fruit trees and berry bushes on the property and his friends would come over any time and pick them and he told them they could enter our house to use the restroom, which they did. He would actually MEASURE the grass and tell us we were mowing too close.

9."When I was 19 my landlord went into my apartment, looked through my fridge (and who knows what else), and called my dad to tell him that I had a 12-pack of beer. I lived in a small town and my dad was the chief of police at the time. My dad threatened to kick his ass if he ever invaded my privacy like that again. I moved out as soon as my lease was up."

10."My landlord stopped by and asked to do his annual inspection. I've lived there for more than two years and this was the first visit. I told him to go ahead, but I had to leave for work soon so I was going to finish getting dressed. He commented that I had a lot of nice stuff and mentioned that I could probably afford to pay more in rent. I caught him going through my closet and looking in my dresser drawers. I moved out 2 weeks later."

11."Not necessarily a landlord but a management company for a 'luxe' building. My building had what turned out to be a serial arsonist. He set fire to his apartment multiple times a month, which caused no less than five fire trucks to come each time, and terrified the tenants. No one knew at first that the fires were the work of one person, but it became clear when the arsonist's neighbor started posting about him and his erratic behavior on our building portal. In addition to setting fires, this guy was a sex addict and would have 24-hour porn marathons at full volume, preventing his neighbors from sleeping. He also had a few instances where he was more overtly a threat, e.g. wandering the hallway with a hammer and slamming the walls, but I digress."

12.I had a break-in about two weeks after moving to a new state. After three days of calling the office, someone *finally* answered. The first thing they said? 'Well, do you know who it was, is anyone mad at you?' Way to blame the victim! When I asked them to put a lock on the external door, since the front door to my apartment had a big pane of glass on it, they said 'well, we don't usually do anything when people have break-ins." I made it six months before I broke my lease and found somewhere safer to live."

13."I rented a small home at one time from my sister-in-law's father. He would come to the house every month to collect the rent and would beg me to have sex with him instead of paying. I would make him leave and refuse. When I finally had enough and told my husband and his family, no one would believe me because 'he was family'! I was furious."

14."A landlord I had owned multiple properties and he wanted me to help him remove the tenants from one of his houses. He didn't tell me that the had told the family (whose lease was not up) that I was in the market to purchase the house (I wasn't). I also found out that this family had a handicapped child. I told the landlord that I wasn't going to help him, so he evicted me from the house I was renting."

—Tom, Wisconsin

15."I lived with three other girls, all of us 18 years old. The landlord (a 70+ year-old man) lived in an apartment just a few doors down from us. He would come to 'visit' because he was so 'worried' about us young girls living on our own. Except he would sit on the couch and spread his legs so that his nuts would hang out the leg of his shorts. No idea what pleasure he derived from that, but we broke our lease to get out of there."

16."At the apartment I shared with my ex, we noticed one day that someone had been in our unit unannounced. They didn't leave a note or anything. I called the office and they said that maintenance had been in doing some work. I said that they have to give notice to enter, and the story changed to there being water in the tenants' unit below us. I asked where the water was coming from and they couldn't answer. Told them I'd give them a pass this time. It happened again and they locked our dog on the balcony and forgot to let him back in."

17."The place I rented was an apartment inside the main house, and the landlord, his wife, and their child lived above me. They were not zoned or approved to have rental units so the story they told was that I was a 'family friend' who was staying with them. Any time I was outside, the child would want to hang out with me. Their kid was very, very disturbed. I had to tell the landlord I didn't want to be alone with them after they told me they were going to strip me naked and lock me in their room. The child was 6 at time."

18."Upon moving out, we left our home spotlessly clean. The floors were polished, the carpeting was professionally steam cleaned, and the drapes were dry cleaned. There was no dust. Even the garage was spotless! The landlady inspected VERY carefully and, finding no dirt, pulled the gas stove out from the wall, looked under it, and still found no dirt. She then pulled the gas pipe out of the wall, stuck her finger in it ,and found it to have a thin layer of an oily substance coating the inside of the gas pipe. She then said, "this place is dirty, so I'm keeping the deposit."

Phew. If you've had a terrible landlord, let us know in the comments below — it's therapeutic, trust me.

Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.