Renting a home can be a great way to get the space you need without the long-term commitment and having to cover necessary repairs.

What would you do if after three years, your landlord got irate when you told them you would be moving out soon?

That is what happened to the renters in this story, but in the end they got their revenge and then some.

Check it out.

Landlords get $1800 blackmail by threatening to torpedo mortgage closing, winds up costing them half of their rental properties.

I rented the bottom floor of a three floor house for 3 years.

Paid the rent on time and other than a few times something needed repaired, we pretty much left each other alone.

Got a dog and a fiancée during that time that both started living there, documented everything through emails, they were very reasonable about the increases, no problems.

Cut to about 5 months before the end of the third year of the lease.

Sounds like a smart move.

We are getting married in about 6 months and decide it would make more financial sense to buy a starter house.

We actually have a conversation with them to let them know we were thinking about not renewing the lease and why.

An important note: The landlords were a husband and wife realty team that dabbled equally in rental ownership and being real estate agents.

The seal of the national association of realtors was prominently displayed on every page on their website.

They didn’t seemed especially bothered by it, but were very interested in being our real estate agents.

We said we’d consider it.

We wind up going with a personal family friend and finding a house that was what we were looking for, in a price range we can afford.

Put in a offer, some back and forth, and they accept and we start the closing process.

So we give 60 days notice to our landlords as required by the lease, down to the letter of the contract.

Why would they be upset?

They completely lose it.

I’ll skip over several weeks of drama and threats to the ultimate throwdown.

They sue me (as they hadn’t actually ever added my fiancée to the lease (important point for later) for “damages” to the apartment, before we had even moved out.

Why?

Because as they gloated several times, as real estate agents, they knew we couldn’t close on a mortgage with an active lawsuit against me even if it was completely frivolous.

They gleefully pointed out they could easy drag out the appeals for years.

After talking to a lawyer, who very kindly gave us a consultation at much reduced rate thanks to us being referred to him from the local bar association, essentially confirmed what they were doing was super unethical, but not strictly illegal.

It would very easy for them to follow through with, even if the lawsuit was completely frivolous.

In the end, we paid them $1800 in blackmail and I had to sign a confidentiality agreement, but we were able to close on the house.

Now to the revenge part.

Some important notes: I’m an engineer who routinely works with municipal agencies, including the code enforcement departments.

I’m pretty familiar with codes and how the system works.

The county law were I lived require that all rental properties be registered with the local township for tax purposes and issued a certificate of occupancy, which requires a code inspection, before it can be rented out.

As most of the homes in the area are 50 to 100 years old, landlords routinely ignore these regulations.

The code enforcement officers are usually too busy with buildings that are actively falling down to enforce them.

So, after a few months of planning, I put my plan into action.

Looking at the property records in that county (conveniently all online for free), I was able to compile a list of 15 rental properties they owned in the county (except the one we lived in, due to the NDA).

A quick weekend drive to take a few pictures of each one and a letter was compiled.

Nice job reporting them.

A concerned citizen (aka: my fiancée) had looked at a rental property but was concerned that cracks in the basement foundation (good luck finding a house that age without them) might be structural (unlikely but possible) and wanted to make sure they had been inspected for safety before the certificate of occupancy had been issued (extremely unlikely that one had ever been applied for, given our landlords).

A copy of the letter for each property went to the code enforcement officer, tax official, and township council for each township for every property they owned.

Condensing for space, she received several phone calls over the next few months from most of the townships’ officials.

She stuck to the same script of being a potential renter and wanting to make sure the houses were inspected.

Not one of the ones she received a call back about had been registered or inspected and since all of this was now documented in their books, they were going to enforce the regulations.

I don’t have the actual numbers, but I imagine costs of upgrading one 100 year old house to the current rental code, much less 15, must be in the 10s of thousands.

And that’s not even considering the fees and penalties for not paying the correct (higher) taxes for years.

Surprisingly, we never heard anything from our former landlords, though I like to think after that mountain of government hurt landed on them, they got a lawyer smart enough to tell them to stop poking the angry bear.

I just ran a search in the property records for them again, and it seems they’re now down to eight rental properties in that county.

It looks like a majority were sold within a year of us moving out, several at a loss.

So assuming we were the cause, it looks like 1800 dollars in blackmail cost them over 30,000 dollars, just in the sale of those properties at a loss, and almost half their rental income, not even considering the price of getting their other properties up to code.

The icing on the cake: I cc’ed my fiancée on a lengthy email chain from their business emails in which they conducted themselves in an completely unprofessional manner.

They also admitted to some extremely unethical, though not illegal, practices, such as admitting the lawsuit was completely frivolous but it didn’t matter because I’d pay up if I ever wanted to get a mortgage.

They should have been paying attention.

They we stupid enough to reply back to all.

So a copy of that entire email exchange was forwarded by my fiancée to the ethics officer and president of the local chapter of the national association of realtors they were members of.

As well as the national ethics officer, using the links to each organization they so helpfully had on their website.

Got follow ups from both asking if she wanted to file an official complaint, however she explained that due to the confidentiality agreement, we didn’t think we could file an official complaint without getting into shaky legal ground.

But we wanted them to know what kind of people were using their organizations name and reputation.

They said it was definitely something they would look into, but we never heard anything back.

When I went to their website tonight, all of the national association of realtors references had been removed and according to the membership list on the website, they are no longer members of the local chapter.

I like to think we had a hand in that.

This revenge really went above and beyond, but it was definitely deserved.

Let’s take a look at what the people in the comments had to say.

Good point.

It makes no sense.

That really ended up biting them.

This person says the landlords thought they were untouchable.

She should have been able to.

This is what happens when you treat tenants poorly.

When they get mad enough, anyway.

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