When you decide to have someone rent out a room in your home, you have to expect that there might be some conflict involved.

What would you do if your tenant had his girlfriend move in most nights, even though she is not on the lease?

That is what happened to the landlord in this story, so he started taking away access to all the amenities in the house until his roommate moved out.

Check it out.

You want to have girls over all the time? Ok. Have it your way.

THE SETUP:

I have a 2 bedroom house.

I decided that I wanted to rent out the other bedroom in the house to make some money on space I wasn’t really using after COVID.

So I fixed up the place really nice:

This sounds like a great setup for the tenant.

The tenant gets:

• Private, semi-attached bathroom (bathroom is actually outside the bedroom, but I put up drapes between the bedroom and bathroom so tenant can walk between without me seeing)
• Common consumables! (I pay for toilet paper, paper towels, laundry supplies, kitchen supplies, etc.)

Sometimes being too simple can backfire.

I create the lease.

The lease is very barebones.

It just says “you get a room at this property.

You pay this much per month.

Landlord covers all utilities.

Your lease is X months long.”

I created the ad. In the ad I mentioned how “it’s ok to have guests over, but keep it to no more than twice per month.”

I did not put this into the lease agreement.

You can see where this is going.

I do a showing for a prospect, T.

I tell him the guest policy and he seems just fine with it.

I do the rest of the showing and all seems grand.

He signs the lease agreement and moves in.

THE PROBLEM:

He shouldn’t have agreed to the guest policy if he wasn’t going to follow it.

The first month is grand. Anyone can fool someone for a month. But eventually you return to bad habits. His bad habit was women.

He would have women over 4-5 nights per week.

I did not appreciate this.

I pulled him aside to tell him “Hey, you’re having a lot of girls over. You need to reduce how many girls over or, if you’re willing to pay a bit extra for having all these girls over, I won’t say a thing.”

He initially agrees with it.

He can ask for whatever he wants.

The next day, he calls me down and asks to speak with me at the dining room table.

It’s T and his girl du jour, G. T begins arguing, “How can you ask for more money when that’s not in the lease agreement? You can’t ask for that.”

I told him the guest policy was in the ad and that we spoke about it when he came here.

He said, “Yeah, but you can’t ask for that. If it’s not in the lease agreement you can’t do that. The guest policy isn’t in the lease agreement either, so I pay rent. I can have over whoever whenever I want.”

G piped in, “You just need to take the L on this one and write better lease agreements.”

Why is she there at all?

I replied to G, “You’re not on the lease agreement, so I don’t care what you think about it.” I turned to T, “It was in the ad. We also talked about it when you came here. You knew about this.”

T replied, “Woahhh man calm down. It’s just six months man. That’s my lease term. I’ll be out of your hair in six months.”

I replied, “Why can’t you stay at her place?”

G said, “That’s none of your business.”

No reason to argue, this is a legal matter.

“Shut up, G. I don’t care what you think. You want a problem, T? You got one. This is not cool and you know it. Why does she have to be here 5 nights a week? She practically lives here. I signed a lease with you, T, not with her. Why is she here?”

He shrugged, “Can’t help it. Not in the lease agreement man. That’s what lease agreements are for.”

I would be upset as well.

I was infuriated.

We talked about this. He’s choosing to follow the lease agreement.

Okay… fine… what’s a guy to do? I want him gone.

I don’t want T & G teaming up against me in my own house!!

They walked upstairs and turned on the loud music in their room.

She has a lot of nerve.

Later in the evening, G was downstairs cooking something on the stove by herself using my pots and pans.

She’s cooking for herself in my house! She’s not even a tenant but she sure is acting like one.

G tried striking up a friendly conversation with me, but I just gave her absolute silence for 10 minutes while I cooked. I took my food upstairs.

This is war. I’m going to follow the lease agreement TO THE LETTER.

If I advertised a feature in the ad but it wasn’t in the lease agreement, that thing is GONE.

THE COMPLIANCE

Every day I took something away.

How could the tenant not see this coming?

I first started by removing all the common consumables from the house.

He texted me later, “Man, you removed all the consumables? You need to come down on the rent.”

I replied, “Not in the lease agreement.”

He said, “It don’t got to be like this.”

I removed the drapes between his room and the private bathroom.

I took away the chairs for the dining room table.

He is going all out to drive them away.

I then shut off the clothes washer and dryer (circuit breakers were in my room) and left taped up the location of a local laundromat.

I also became an absolutely filthy roommate. I didn’t clean anything. I left bags of garbage wherever I felt like.

I never cleaned the kitchen and left the sink full of dishes. “Please man can you clean up” “No.”

Just kick the girl out, and things can go back to normal.

I had maid service. Cancelled that.

I informed him of the change. “Can you come down on the rent, man?” “Not in the lease agreement. You agreed to a rental price.” “C’monnnnnn”

I turned off the breaker to the stove and left out a wall outlet single pot electric plate for him to use.

I turned off the microwave. Not in the lease agreement either.

I actually started feeling bad for him. G started coming around less and less as I made the living situation worse and worse.

Victory!

Finally, he texted me, “Do you want me to move out?”

I replied, “Yes, when are you leaving my house?”

He said, “End of the month. You’ll let me break the lease?”

Of course, he can break the lease!

I replied, “Of course.”

He left at the end of the month. I had my house back. I made for sure to make my next lease agreement way more specific about EVERYTHING.

Sometimes you have to show people just how good they had it, and then kick them out anyway. Well played.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think about this story.

It is a bit over the top.

Who would agree to this?

This commenter thinks the landlord was an idiot.

Yeah, he wasn’t a great landlord.

Always use a good legal contract.

He is an overly strict landlord, but the tenant was out of line.

No winners here.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.