15 Controversial Landlord Stories That We're Just Not Buying (Because We're Renting)

From Redditor u/ElusiveProwler:

So, we live in a two bedroom, two bathroom house. He lives in the master bedroom with his own bathroom. My bathroom is the hallway bathroom. Anytime he has friends over or a party, after the party he will text me or leave a note in the bathroom telling me that I need to clean MY BATHROOM, that his party/friends just threw up in or made any type of mess.

I've tried to tell him that I clean up after myself after every time I use the bathroom and I don't think I should clean up after anyone else. But he says that I pay rent for the room and the guest bathroom, so its my responsibility to clean that bathroom no matter who uses it.

Also, some of his friends have broken certain minor things in the bathroom and he says I need to fix or replace it since my bathroom is the guest bathroom and it doesn't matter if his friends broke it, which I've told him that there is no way I'm going to do and I will just leave it broken or have him fix it, since he is the landlord.

From Redditor u/randomnumbers543210:

Bit of a backstory. My wife and I live with her bestie. Bestie bought the house we were renting together, and everything changed. While rent was split equally, now we pay about 2/3 of her mortgage. Shared areas were no longer shared, they are now all hers and if she isn't mad over something, we get to use them as long as we follow her rules.

A while back, we got into an argument because she threw out some of my personal belongings because they were in her way. The argument was basically, her house, her rules, I have no say, so suck it.

We got past it, BUT this morning our pump for our septic blew. We need a plumber to come out and drain it, and we have to replace the pump. It was assumed my wife and I would pay half. I said no. She's the landlord, it's her house, her responsibility for maintenance.

My landlord is mad because now she's out over $1000, and my wife thinks I'm TA because I refuse to help pay.

Note, there is nothing in writing saying we share maintenance responsibilities one way or the other, AND there is another tenant whose rent supposedly goes into a savings account specifically for maintenance.

So AITA for basically using her own argument against her that she's the landlord, her house her problem?

From Redditor u/simplymeanttobe1013:

I [27F] and my husband [28M] moved into our own apartment back in July 2021. When we moved in we didn’t have any problems except seeing a roach or two that we thought was normal, but over the next couple months that quickly turned into seeing them daily, all sorts of sizes.

It got so bad to the point my asthma started acting up because I am allergic to roaches, and the anxiety of having an infestation in my clean apartment landed me in the hospital. I had no idea where they were coming from. I pleaded with my management to do something and they refused. I hired my own exterminators that stated that unless they treated every single unit in my building, the roaches would keep coming in.

The law in my city says that landlords are responsible for pest control and if they don’t do anything about it within a certain time frame, I can take them to court. So I hired a lawyer that sent them a demand letter, along with my exterminator bills and hospital bills and it must’ve scared management because they put a letter on everybody’s door stating tomorrow they will be doing a mandatory inspection of all apartments to see where the infestation could be coming from.

I was talking to my next door neighbor as I got home from work and he was upset because he apparently has been subletting which is against the rules and has animals that the landlord doesn’t know about. When I told him that it was probably because of me he called me an AH for making such a big deal about “a few little bugs.”

I don’t think I’m an *sshole, but I didn’t know they were going to force inspections. I just want my apartment to be roach free :( So, AITA?

From Redditor u/GardeningMonster:

I F(25) have been renting a house since I was 18 (7 years). When I moved in, the backyard was a large piece of dirt, no lawn or anything, just a decently big backyard with a fence all around. It was a cheap but not great house, but I signed because I wanted the backyard space.

Over the past few years I erected a small garden shed, greenhouse and pizza oven (transportables), planted lots of veggie gardens in big transportable garden beds, and put down some nice pavers, an aquaponics set up, and generally made the backyard a really green and beautiful place to be. It became the green oasis all my friends gathered at.

A few months ago, my landlords let me know they were planning to sell, and my final move out day was a week ago. When I left, I brought my garden with me to my new place - nothing in my last backyard was directly planed into the ground, and nothing permanent. I dismantled the sheds and greenhouse, loaded up all the pots and garden beds onto a truck and cleared the backyard in three days with lots of help.

My former landlords are furious over this, and demand that I return the backyard to the former state - apparently they’d listed the house for sale with pictures of the backyard and potential buyers were walking away from the house when they saw the barren backyard. They’re accusing me of stealing their plants, and wrecking the backyard.

Legally I’m fine - my contract said I could garden, and I have photos from the first real estate walkthrough before I moved in that show that the backyard was in the same state as I first found it (although with more fertile soil now probably). The same real estate agent signed off my final inspection, and I got my deposit back.

I’ve received mixed responses though, because I saw the landlords taking pictures of my backyard before I left but didn’t make the connection because imho when pictures of a house has furniture in it, you don’t expect to also get free furniture. Some of my coworkers suggested that IATA because the house valuation certainly has fallen dramatically because I didn’t tell them I was taking my garden with me, so they couldn’t plan to landscape before lockdown hit.

Tl;dr AITA for moving my garden that I build from my former rental house into my new house, upsetting my former landlords who didn’t expect me to take it with me?

From Redditor u/throwawayllsucks:

Hi all. I (22f) live with my mom and siblings (53f, 16f, 11m). To keep this short, we have lived in an illegal basement apt. for 18 years. I was told by LL (landlord) that it met govt. requirements and only found out it was illegal after he begged us not to call an inspector for a sewage leak he refused to fix in November. At first we were afraid to, but a housing program was coming through and we'd had enough, so after swimming in sewage for a month we called the inspector. He was not happy, because he was getting fined every day starting mid-Feb for having an illegal place (We had a fire escape, so they didn't have to emergency evacuate us). We continue to clean 20 gallons of sewage from our living room everyday, and no we can't fix it, because we have to tear down walls to find the guilty pipe.

He still hasn't fixed it. All the events in the past four/five months is half-blackmail from him to get us to move out without facing court fines. We had roach and mice infestations caused by our neighbors that, both times, he refused to do anything about. His dad stole our Christmas packages and dug my gift out of the garbage in front of me, LL himself refused to call a plumber UNTIL he was worried about the foundation and then forced me to come home from school because I didn't want him in the house alone with a random plumber, they yell at my mom on the phone but not me because I'm making most of the legal decisions here and was paying the rent, etc, etc... We barely make noise, and one slightly loud movie night my LL came down in the middle of the night and banged on my window to tell me to turn it off, completely skipping the options of calling me or even trying the door. I didn't have pants on. LL's wife curses at us over the phone while we have no idea what she even has to do with this. They told me to drop college and get a job the second time I ever missed rent, when I already had a job. I've had enough of their hostility.

We have court tomorrow and they said they were taking us for non-payment of rent, which is true because the inspector himself said to stop paying. However, he does not want us to mention that it is illegal because he's going to face A LOT in fines, likely 6 digits. I'm sick of being considerate when they think it's okay to have a family of four living in THEIR sewage and harassing them in the meantime. The housing program is going through, and we are in no danger of being homeless anymore, which was 99% of our concerns.

WIBTA if I tell the court about my LL evicting us because he's getting fined and the place is illegal?

From Redditor u/mappn3rd:

My landlord has this rule that if you are moving out he will start showing the apartment in the 3 months before move out. The lease didn't say anything about whether I had to leave during showings, just that he needed to give 24 hours notice and I couldn't decline a showing.

He keeps showing the apartment and it seems like nobody wants it because it's expensive (he is trying to raise the rent a lot which is why I am leaving) and sh*tty. It's a studio apartment, it is dark and gross, and the pipes burst a few years before I moved in and there are still water stains everywhere and nasty bent ceiling tiles. He is using very old photos on the listings so people see something that looks nice and then show up and see it is nasty.

At first, I was trying to be considerate and leave or step out during showings but after so many I got sick of being interrupted and having to move plans around with only a day notice because my landlord can't be honest with his listings and use a reasonable price. I told him how annoyed I was and how he should just put up honest photos and honest rent and he got pissy with me and told me "don't tell me how to run my business"

So last Friday when I had off work and was hoping to sleep in, he said he'd be coming by "in the morning" and I went to sleep with those foam safety earplugs in, with a pair of noise cancelling headphones over top, and a pillow over my head. I slept without being woken and then saw some texts from my landlord asking if I remembered he had a showing. I texted back like "yeah, when are you coming by?" And he said they'd come by and it was uncomfortable for them to be touring the apartment next to me sleeping. I said "Oh wow I must of been out cold, work has been crazy"

Then on Sunday, I had plans to have friends over. I told them my landlord might come by but just ignore him. We were hanging out drinking and he came by with a family. It was awkward since the studio apartment was pretty full already and he asked me if I had gotten his text about a showing. I said I hadn't seen it, I'd had a double shift at work and must have missed it, work has been crazy. He asked us to step outside and wait in the hall and I said I didn't wanna disturb the neighbors who work nights. So he showed the apartment with us in it.

Anyway, I've decided to not schedule around him anymore unless he stops trying to bait and switch people. Because it's a pain in the *ss to be woken early, to have plans on my days off interrupted, all with just a day notice. And if he wants to be showing the apartment with someone still living there, people are gonna see that.

I also decided to not be direct with what I'm doing, he got mad when I tried to be direct. I'll just be saying sh*t like "Nah, I must have missed that, my job doesn't let me have my phone out on shift" or whatever.

AITA for not leaving my apartment when my landlord shows it?