How would you deal with a negligent landlord who wouldn’t solve issues in your apartment?

This man complains about his landlord who wouldn’t fix the broken windows in their unit.

The landlord even threatened to evict them if they involved a lawyer in the problem.

So, he went the extra mile to find out other violations he’s been committing and reported him to the appropriate committees.

Read the full story below for all the details!

Landlord Refuses to Fix Broken Windows, Costs Him Thousands of Dollars and His Job

My girlfriend and I moved into a house that had several broken/cracked windows held together with tape.

The rest of the house was great and in perfect condition.

The landlord promised to fix them ASAP.

He kept promising to fix them month after month, with no action being taken.

He started recording their conversations.

After 6 months, I began recording his phone calls.

And I had recorded him threatening to have us evicted if we got a lawyer.

Which is highly illegal in my state (landlord cannot retaliate against a tenant for getting a lawyer).

So, we got a lawyer and provided him with the recordings and pictures of the windows.

It turns out, his company was handling the payroll of his landlord’s company.

We also contacted the City Code Enforcement Department.

And reported some minor code violations that we noticed throughout the house.

At this time, I worked for a medium-sized payroll and corporate compliance company.

The company happened to do the payroll for the company that my landlord was the president of.

Because of this, I could see exactly which laws he was breaking due to state and federal human resource and labor law regulations.

He reported the landlord’s company to the appropriate regulatory committees.

For example, he did not have a company handbook and labor board posters displayed.

He also didn’t have various federal compliance reporting measures in place.

Being in the industry, I knew the minimum fines for the slew of violations his company had would be about $730k.

This is due to the length of time they had been operating without these requirements in place for his business.

So, I reported his company to the appropriate regulatory committees.

Knowing perfectly well that when the crap hits the fan, they would look to him for answers.

The landlord was fined $10k for code violations.

I didn’t hear anything regarding his company violations for some time.

While the legal negotiations continued between my lawyer and his.

In the meantime, the code department issued a $10k fine for the code violations. including the windows.

They required him to fix the windows.

It cost him about $6 to replace all of the windows in the house.

Now, anyone who knows windows knows you shouldn’t replace one window at a time.

Especially when you have numerous bay windows in the house.

This required him to replace windows in the entire house.

Which ended up costing ~$6k as there are lots of windows in the house.

And then another $5k for the lawyer’s legal fees.

The legal negotiations ended after the windows were replaced.

In my state, due to a clause listed in the lease, I was able to bill the landlord for my legal fees to fight him on this issue.

Add $5k.

We are now at $21k USD in costs incurred by the landlord for these windows.

He noticed the landlord was no longer on the company’s payroll.

A couple months go by, I notice he’s no longer on the company payroll.

When I called his company to verify we shouldn’t be paying him, I was informed there were “organizational changes.”

Due to fines brought against the company for a number of violations.

The landlord lost his job and his company was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars!

When all was said and done, the landlord paid $21k out of pocket directly for the windows.

And it cost him his job, and his company at least $730k in federal and state violations.

It didn’t cost me a dollar in the end.

I couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.

Whoa! Pro-level revenge indeed. Let’s find out what other people have to say about this.

I see what you did there.

Well done says this one.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

A landlord speaks up.

Finally, people are loving the revenge!

Take care of your responsibilities, fam!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.