I was quite lucky in the landlord department earlier in my life…

Except for one company I rented a place from one year when I was in college.

Yikes!They were awful!

And I learned a lot of lessons that year about what kind of landlords to seek out in the future.

This woman also had a bad landlord and she shared her story on Reddit.

Check out what happened!

Refuse to be a decent human? Lose your house.

“It’s 2011, my boyfriend and I decided to rent a house with our best friends – an engaged couple with two kids.

I’m changing names here: I’m Kylie, my boyfriend is Jim, and our couple friends are Brad and Angelina.

Jim, Brad, and myself are active duty military.

After over a month of searching we found a really cute house- 1850 sqft, nice yard, great neighbors, only $1350/m, hardwood except for 1 room, 7 minutes from our base.

The landlord is in a different state but tells us she pays one of the neighbors to manage the keys for her. It’s a military town and that’s not uncommon.

We all met up with him, toured the house, decided to sign the lease.

We moved in sometime in August. We liked the house, but there were crickets coming into one of the bedrooms through a crack in the window sill.

The landlord didn’t want to fix it and said to caulk it. It worked, no problem.

Hmmm…

We noticed the carpet in the living room was a little dingy and asked her if she would mind paying someone to clean it since we moved in that way. We even made a note of it and took pictures when we moved in.

She said no. I bought my own cleaner and the carpet lightened a few shades.

In October, we went to cut the heat on and it didn’t work. So we realized the oil tank was empty.

Part of the lease states when we move out we needed to leave a full tank of oil, which isn’t really a problem as long as we start with a full tank and use all the oil in it.

Call the landlord and ask her to have the oil company come fill the tank – which it’s 2011 so it’s going to cost $1,200 to do.

She says no.

We told her fine, we wouldn’t be leaving a full tank when the lease was over though.

She got mad and said we had to because it was a clause in our lease.

We had the oil company provide statements to say the last time it was filled was that prior January and it was empty when they came to fill our tank that month. We filled the tank, but the heat still didn’t work.

It’s been 2 weeks and it’s really getting cold, we asked the LL to get a repairman out to the house. Brad and Angelina have two small kids that need to stay warm.

My landlord took another week to fix the heat, and the people that did it were… questionable.

It worked for a month, but then quit.

We called in our own repairmen to come handle it since the last ones creeped me out, and he noticed some major issues with the chimney that needed attention right away.

Like it was unsafe to run the heat at all, the thing was about to collapse.

We let her know, emailed scans of the paperwork from our nice Honeywell tech and two quotes from contractors to get the work done. (it’s going to be $3000-3500ish) It’s an emergency repair, at the point it’s December and we are really cold.

We were using space heaters.

This was not a good situation.

The kids have chest colds and Angelina is ready to fly into our landlord’s state to handle her physically.

I mailed all of that information to her (Angelina’s bodily threats omitted) with a signature confirmation and a letter stating the issue.

A few days pass and nothing from our ***** LL. I got onto Google and read the landlord tenant act and local landlord court cases just to see if I had a leg to stand on.

I also spoke to my JAG, who’s brother happened to be a real estate lawyer, who was also friends with my next door neighbor (the keyholder dude, who surprise, never got paid to watch the house) and decided to come over for dinner with all of us at their place. He gave me some really good info.

She was done playing around.

The next morning, I called our landlord and told her, “look, you get this repair done or I will condemn the house and not pay a dime of rent until it’s done.”

She says she doesn’t believe me.

I overnighted a certified letter to her explaining the issue and requesting the repair be started within 5 business days since it was an emergency and I had already reported it a week prior. 5 days go by, nothing.

At this point I’m ready to walk out on the lease but don’t have quite enough legal issues to back that up so- Jim and I requested 20 days of vacation from the military.

I drafted a letter to LL telling her she had 10 days to get the repair done or we would terminate the lease, and we would not be paying rent while the heat was in disrepair.

I cited the previous letter and included her signature confirmation for it also. 4 days before we go on vacation, I overnighted and signature confirmationed the letter.

Two days before we are set to go on vacation I called a city building inspector, set an appointment, he came and condemned the house – it took him less than 15 minutes to decide.

Brad and Angelina took off to Angelina’s mom’s house and Jim and I headed out to spend a few weeks in WARM, SUNNY Florida with his Cuban family. (mmmm, the food).

We pro-rated rent for every day the house was condemned. I called the building inspector every few days to see if the work was done.

He also demanded that my landlord do a few minor electrical repairs. Several days have gone by. I spent half that month’s rent on good food, liquor, and Disney world tickets. On the 6th day in Florida, the landlord calls me threatening eviction.

Do it!

I told her to please take me to court because I was ready to embarrass her. I cited the landlord tenant act, told her I was going to sue for travel costs to FL, hotel costs, and at that point she was already looking at $850 and it was just going to get more costly. (Longshot, but, I was mad).

I also said we were prepared to just walk out if it wasn’t done by the time the certified letter stated it should be, again, I wasn’t kidding. I had already reserved a Uhaul.

Oh, and she would be reimbursing me for that $1100 in oil I hadn’t been able to burn.

She said fine and finally replaced the chimney two weeks after the place was condemned.

My neighbor told me she had to borrow money from her family to get it done. Not my problem.

She also told me I was a horrible person who was torturing her and her 5 year old who were victims of domestic violence.

She also told me we were only slightly better than the last tenants, who she “thought were black by how terrible the house looked when they left”.

Okay, wow, a slum lord and a ****** – I should play the lottery. I’m sorry for your situation but your husband has been a **** to you since you got together. How do I know?

Yikes…

Turns out, one of my supervisors is friends with her old supervisor and he and other members of her chain of command had responsed to fights where her and her husband hit each other.

Apparently the husband has a drinking problem too.

They tried to get her to leave him but she is just as bad, she busted out his windshield one time and burned all his stuff another.

Turns out she got a general administration discharge.

She seemed so nice and sweet when we were getting ready to sign that lease. I still can’t believe what a bucket of coo coo for coco puffs she turned out to be.

Whatever, we came home to a house with functioning heat. Brad and Angelina decided not to move back in but that was all cool with Jim and me.

We notarized an agreement between us and told them we totally understood and would take over the rent. Missed them after they left, though.

Oh, really?

Later on, in March, a realtor knocked on my door and said he wanted to show the house to a couple. I said, you have the wrong place buddy, I’m renting this right now. He’s like no, the owner wants a short sale hopefully by July.

I explained I had no notice and was a little confused but it was okay. He was very uncomfortable and unhappy to have walked into a situation where a tenant didn’t even know he was coming. I told him it was totally fine, and went on to divulge some details about his new client.

He was pretty appalled. He leveled with me- its a cute house but really only worth $90k due to the market crash. It had last sold for $124k, according to zuilla. She’s asking for 120k and on the verge of foreclosure. Seriously? I let the couple and realtor in the next day.

Didn’t worry about it after that. He came to take detailed pictures so he wouldn’t have to bother me with flaky potential buyers. He was so nice, I let him help me find a new house to rent when my lease was up. We are still friends on Facebook.

Then, in July the realtor called me and asked if he could show the house to a client. Absolutely. I cleaned and made sure I looked nice for her visit….and when they got to my house I noticed the lady was black.

And she wanted to rent. I said, ma’am, call me later today and don’t tell anyone. She did! I told her what my LL said about how she couldn’t believe her past tenants were white because they left the house trashed when they left.

I said, “I don’t think this is a good house for you, I know a great guy who is renting out his beach side condo for the next year while he goes out to Africa, why don’t you call him?” I text his listing to her, she calls him, ends up renting his house.

None of that is really revenge. Before we moved out, Jim and I cleaned the house.

We left the carpets sparkling clean (had professionals come in and do it), payed a gardener to come in and make the yard spiffy, patched up some small nail holes and even painted some window trim that was chipped when we moved in. we basically left it better than we found it, we had already repainted 3 bedrooms in flattering colors when we first moved in (that was approved by the LL no problem of course).

You know what’s coming next…

We took pictures before and after we moved in. A month goes by, we are all settled in our new condo, and she didn’t give us a dime back in freaking deposit. $2400 down the damned drain, plus the cost of little repairs we made out of pocket so we couldn’t have to deal with her crazy ***.

I was angry. I began organizing to go to court. Then suddenly Jim is told he’s deploying soon. A week goes by- Also, I’m pregnant. Which we were casually “not trying but trying” to do.

We were happy about that part, but I was puking every day twice a day and emotional. Then Angelina calls me and guess who is on Craigslist slinging her **** hole slum? My LL. I lost it.

Payback time!

I got on the same forum her ad was on and posted about the house, every single problem we had, every phone call, every snotty email, how many weeks we went without heat, the crickets, LL’s messed up relationship with her off and on again husband, the oil tank, and the racist comments.

I never said “don’t rent or buy”, just shared my experience as a tenant. I didn’t name any names but I did link her ad. Received 7 emails thanking me stating LL seemed really nice on the phone but they would be dodging that bullet.

The house foreclosed a few months later.”

Reddit users weighed in.

This reader chimed in.

Another person shared their thoughts.

This individual was confused.

This Reddit user had a lot to say.

And this person spoke up.

Ugh…what a nightmare…

Renting is a scary world!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.