The tenant-landlord relationship is often a delicate balancing act of trust and accountability.

So a negligent landlord tried to tip the scales, he found himself paying the price for years of neglect.

Read on for the full story!

My landlord got not *exactly* what he deserved, but it sure was a rough ride for him.

I had a landlord who was pretty absent. I lived in this building (a high-rise, like 20 stories) for over 10 years.

Despite living next door to me, he was absent and cold personally, but cool enough otherwise.

To put it nicely, the landlord had a “do it yourself” attitude.

Rent was good, and our agreement was to NEVER bother him about anything unless it was an absolute emergency.

Shower head wonky? Go buy a new one. Fridge breaks? Get it fixed, or just buy a new one. Take it out of what you pay in rent. Lost the receipt? “I DON’T CARE, I know more or less what a fridge costs — just take it out of rent.”

But then the landlord started getting greedy.

Finally, his wife decided she wanted more rent, wanted to rent the place out as an office (which wasn’t legal), and wanted us out ASAP.

I agreed to move out a month early and get a month’s rent back plus my deposit.

Then came a complete 180 on their part. They said, “The place is ruined, can’t give you anything until you fix all this stuff.”

They started pointing out issues with the condition of the apartment.

The two main issues were that my cats had scratched up the leather legs of the dining table and the pull-up bar had made two dents in the kitchen doorframe, which was quite nice hardwood.

They also came to me with a huge list of things, claiming: “Oh, you hung a photo frame here,” “this tile is slightly chipped,” and so on.

The tenant did their best to comply.

This was the busiest work time of the year for me, but I was trying to be cooperative.

I got the table legs re-leathered and spackled the hole in the wall from the photo frame. I couldn’t do anything about the doorframe and told them to take it out of the deposit. I patched the tile, too.

But it still wasn’t enough for the landlord.

They kept adding dozens of little, everyday wear-and-tear things.

“You want me to change the window screens? These are all new screens and in better shape than when I moved in!”

But I did it all because I trusted the guy and needed to get my money back.

But the tenant didn’t get the money they were owed back.

At the end, he owed me 24k RMB (~£2500). Instead, he gave me FIVE.

“I still need to use the money to fix all that stuff. If you can’t accept the five, I can’t give you anything at all,” he said.

I was super ticked off, but took the five.

Word start to spread about the landlord’s misdeeds.

Now, people in the building are gossip-y. I didn’t participate, but I did tell this one older lady about my frustration. She told EVERYONE.

The wife went from being the star of the “mommies group” in the building to nobody wanting to talk to her. People shunned the guy, too.

I originally told them I was planning to move to another city, but an opportunity came up, and I ended up renting a similar unit in the same building.

Turns out, the tenant would be staying longer than the landlord thought.

They thought they could screw me over and never see me again, but now they still saw me. Often.

A year later, the office called me with a question about how to do something with the floor heating. I went to check and saw the kitchen doorframe still had dents.

I called the guy like, “What the heck, man?” He told me to mind my own business.

It turns out others had issues with the landlord too.

Five years later, I noticed the light at my old place was still on at 3 a.m. Huh, that’s odd.

I went to check. The door was open, and the place was completely trashed.

Cabinets were broken, there was stuff on the walls like “lazy landlord,” and the dents in the kitchen doorframe were STILL there.

So the guy never fixed anything and just kept my money.

Word spread about this too.

By this time, smartphones were popular, and we had a chat group for the whole building — about 500 people. I took pictures and posted everything.

Apparently, he had also taken other people’s deposits, and there had been a huge ruckus when they trashed the place. Cops were called.

Other tenants piled on about the mistreatment they’ve received from management.

All these people chimed in with complaints and pictures. There were photos of people smoking in the hallways, leaving leaky rubbish outside the front doors, videos of foul language in front of children, and dirty footprints everywhere.

Finally, consequences came for the landlord.

He got fined for:

• Creating a public disturbance.
• Degrading the quality of the living space.
• Illegally renting a residence as an office.

He ended up losing even more money than he tried to swindle from his tenants.

To top it off, building management wouldn’t grant him permission to have workers fix the place, so it sat there empty for six months.

The fines were big, too.

Take ~1.5 months’ rent from me and lose a year’s rent.

The landlord’s neglect ended up costing him far more than a few repairs.

Reddit is sure to have an opinion or two.

Even in the darkest of times, remember someone somewhere has it worse.

There are many stories of fed-up tenants giving their bad landlords their just desserts.

Wear and tear on an apartment lived in for a full decade is ABSOLUTELY expected.

Hearing nightmare stories like this makes others grateful for their landlords who aren’t so bad.

The tenant may have walked away with less than they deserved, but the landlord didn’t get off scot-free.

Penny-pinching left the landlord with an abandoned unit and a tarnished reputation.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.