To ask for your bad landlord / terrible tenants stories?

[SylviaPlath1984]

So I was watching nightmare tenants slum landlords this afternoon and I was shocked at how awful both sides can be... then I thought I bet Mumsnet have some wild stories!!!

Our previous landlord;

Attempted to drill a hole in a glass shower door. It promptly exploded into tiny bits of glass gravel.

Squirted mr muscle sink and drain unblocker all over my bathroom rug whilst attempting to unblock the shower, which was clogged with glass gravel.

When the shower started to leak into the kitchen ceiling, creating a lovely waterfall, he resealed the shower. When it continued to do it he just ignored it.

When it became clear his kitchen ceiling was going to fall in, he decided to replace the bathroom floor. He never did attempt to find the source of the leak.

He didn't know how to replace a tile floor so he just ripped up the old tiles and out down new ones. Without putting down any board to level the floor. So when you stepped on them, they just snapped.

This was the point when the ceiling leak became worse and the toilet also began to leak water down into the ceiling. This was obvious to us. He tried to. Convince us that the tile was leaking. I wasn't aware he'd put down magical water producing tiles. He covered the crack in the tiles with sealant and expected us to pay for Lino because that would solve it.

The water, with nowhere else to go, then started to leach out into the landing. Soaking the carpet.

This was all coupled with rising damp, black mould around all the windows and doors that hadn't been sealed properly and all over the ceilings from his leaking roof.

And to top it all off, he got shirty when we moved. Because us not wanting to live in a tiny damp hell hole that he didn't want to fix, was ' leaving him in the lurch '.

I can’t be 100% sure but I’m sure I once had a landlord who had guests stay in the house when we were away.

Years ago I lived with two other women in their early 20s after university. Just before Easter the landlord dropped by to sort something out, and we mentioned in passing conversation that we’d planned to go home over Easter to stay with our respective families for the long weekend. The conversation moved on and she sorted the issue she’d stopped by for and left.

Easter rolled around, we all went home and came back - the house seemed different. The front room had a stack of magazines which had somehow slipped and splayed onto the floor, and a vase which had been sitting on the coffee table (always in the same place) was on a completely different part of the table. My housemate also said her bed looked like it had been made differently to how she left it.

Could be completely wrong but I think the landlord has guests stay there over Easter, as she knew we were away. Maybe my housemate just made her bed differently, and we moved the vase without moving, and the magazines just fell over - but she wasn’t a great landlord anyway (we had mould and damp and she didn’t very little to help).

I almost wish one of us had come early and caught someone in the act!

One of our tenants has just moved out . She accepted a HE house last Thursday . Started moving out last Friday and put keys thought he letter box on Monday . No months notice , one message from her phone ( which was about to break apparently ) to let us know she accepted the house ( fair enough ) , no attempt to clean or tidy or take all her crap out of the garage. She left bags and bags of clothes and toys , about 7/8 children’s bicycles, a few brand new tyres ?? But took all the lightbulbs 😂 .

The new tenant is moving in on the 1st March . She accepted the house the evening we got the first and only text message .

@RuledbyASD, the landlady was Bulgarian and lived in Bulgaria. In the U.K., she had a Scottish sugar daddy who she used to come over to visit. However, when he went into a care home, she couldn't stay with him there, so had nowhere to stay, her goose was cooked. Because she had nowhere to stay, she'd let herself into the rented flat instead.

@ConsuelaHammock

Took all the lightbulbs 🤣🤣

No LL has ever walked on me. First thing I do is change all the locks.

I once had a LL call at 9 pm. Told him I would call the police and not to come without 7 days notice in writing.

I was in one house where they wanted to show new tenants around while I was still in residence. I asked for a rent reduction and they said no. The agent rang one evening and asked it they could do a viewing. I had just come in from work and agreed only if they came after 7.30. They came an hour early just after I had sat down with my meal so I made them wait 30 minutes in the car. The viewers were rude and kept asking me questions when I was trying to watch TV. How much is council tax, how are the schools, etc. I told them ask the agents. Im not employed to show you around. The man was making remarks about my personal possessions. I told him you are here to look at the property, not my stuff. They left to look at the garden. I should have locked the door behind them. 10 minutes after I thought the viewing was over the man came back in (without the agent or any permission) and started asking me questions about the neighbours. I told hi to get out, the viewing is over. The agent apologized to the viewers, not to me!

Next day I rang the agent and gave them down the banks. I made sure they never got another viewing while I was there. If I saw their phone number I never answered. There were no smart phones then.

Same tenants had an old dog when they moved in. We let it go because we didn’t want them to have to rehome him . Sadly the dog had to be put down about two years into their tenancy . It was agreed that they would ask if they wanted another pet . They never did ask but bought a huge mixed breed dog . Think St. Bernard type cross .
By the time they did the runner last week they had snakes , about three dogs and goodness knows what else .

@sneakysnoopysniper, why on earth did you allow viewings? You're not required to.

I don’t have any ill feeling to the tenant btw . They think we don’t know where they have moved to . We do 😂.

[quote EileenGC]@Rainbowandscarlett did we have the same landlord? 😂😂[/quote]
If you lived in York then maybe we did!

I rented out my property a few times after moving in with (now) DH. Previous tenants had done something to the bathroom floor and I’d travelled down to get it fixed as the managing agents had been a bit slow.
Their deposit had paid for it to be fixed - basically they’d flooded the bath more than once and ceiling had partially collapsed making it unsafe.

Turned up with the builders and there were some people living there. We called the police, but it turned out that the managing agent had re-let the place (with the unsafe floor) and signed the lease himself on my behalf!
They did move out, but I don’t know whether some money changed hands.

The only other issue we’ve had as landlords - we now have 5 flats we rent out, was when we re ted to someone claiming housing benefit. I had to really convince DH it was his moral duty to house anyone and we had to evict her for non-payment of rent.

So many nightmare renting stories. All of these were houseshares, which in my experience are the worst for landlords pretending tenants have no rights. The 'highlights' have been:

Being woken up (more than once) by my landlord letting himself into my bedroom. And bumping into my landlord when I was only wearing a towel, getting out of the shower. After moving in, found out that our landlord was dodgy AF and had loads of post delivered to the address that he would let himself in to have a collect, and snoop around the house when he was there. I was working nightshifts at the time so I'd be home asleep in the day, which is how I found this out. He refused to accept this wasn't ok and told us that if we didn't like it we could leave. Later worked out that the post was him committing benefit fraud using fake tenants at the property.

Landlord who decided to renovate the house while we were living in it. Left us without a kitchen for three months, expected us to be happy to leave the house unlocked for any tradesmen to turn up unannounced at any time they fancied, any day of the week. Included the water and electric being turned off at random. To 'compensate' for this, he gave us a rent reduction of five pounds a day for us each to get a takeaway tea which he felt was more than generous because he didn't have to give us anything.

Landlord who sold the property to a company who planned to use it as a halfway house for people to move into after drug detox. I have no issue with this purpose - except I was only three months into in my fixed six month tenancy. He told me he didn't think it was a real tenancy because it was a houseshare. I was working for a homeless service at the time and I found out about the new project (and that it was where I lived) when talking to a friend who worked in addiction services. I had to delay the set up as I was still living there, but he was allowing staff to come in and start preparing the other rooms while I was confined to my bedroom. He expected full rent during this time.

I moved into a houseshare where internet was included in the (expensive) rent. The house was one where parents had originally bought it for their student son and his mates to rent while they were at uni. Student son didn't want to stay in the area after graduating. One friend did, and the parents-turned-bad-landlords started renting out the other rooms. First problem was the WiFi turned out to be nextdoors. The landlord owned both houses and thought that one router between two houses was sufficient. It meant when the WiFi went down (regularly) we couldn't do anything about it unless next door were home. Bandwidth was so poor I was struggling to get my work done (I was a mature student) Multiple complaints to the landlord and eventually he countered with 'its not that bad I know because I've been testing it out on your computer while you're out' (I was out on placement and he was letting himself into my locked bedroom, I hadn't thought to set up a password on my desktop back then)
In the interim id also found that the landlady would let herself into the house, do washing up and throw away things she didn't like. Turned out the original tenant knew this and liked it - she'd taken on a surrogate mum role to him and she felt this was a bonus. As an independent 30yr old I didn't share the same enthusiasm. Also we discovered that one of the reasons for the poor bandwidth was that original housemate constantly downloaded (not streamed) HUGE amounts of porn. Literally 24hr downloading. Landlady knew this also and thought it was just a 'quirk'. By chance after I moved out I bumped into the new tenant who had taken my room, landlady had told her all about the terrible/rude/ungrateful tenant who had just left. She kept my deposit for moving out early (I'd told them I would stay if they provided me with adequate internet but I couldn't do my coursework without it)

Landlord who decided that it was appropriate to rent out the last and largest room of a houseshare of 3 twentysomething girls, to 3 middle-aged labourers who were in the area for work. He put in bunk beds for them and told us it was fine because 'they cook meals together so won't take up any extra time in the kitchen'

Oh and the one where we had stuff go missing from the house and found out the landlord had left 'emergency keys' to our house with 3 random neighbours on the street without our knowledge. We only found out about this when another neighbour approached us and told us the landlord had asked her if she would 'keep an eye on us' and hold a spare key to 'let in repairmen' because he wanted to take the key off one of the neighbours who they realised was dodgy. The last neighbour had asked the landlord if we were ok with her having a key, and with his cagey response realised that we probably didn't know he was offering out keys to our house!

I think landlords should be required to evidence that they know basic housing law and agree to adhere to it before they are allowed to rent out a property, and that they all should be licenced.

I'm so so glad to be out of renting. I had a lovely LL in an HMO who unfortunately passed away suddenly and her adult DC inherited the house - they did nothing, it took several months to get the bathroom ceiling (which had collapsed on one of the other tenants in the shower) fixed, and were having the basement converted into a flat which left the entire house covered in dust. During that period of work I kept getting home to find my door unlocked or things moved. They flat out denied anyone going into rooms until I was off sick and walked out of my room to find 2 random builders going through a big key ring trying to find the key to the room next door.

I moved out of there as soon as I could, and moved into a lovely flat (cosmetically) but the LL owned the entire block and had clearly done everything as cheap as possible. He lived 100 miles away and refused to have the flats managed or employ local trades, so you would always hear 'I'll get there in x days/weeks to have a look'. Great when you have water pouring through the ceiling (and over the fuse box) from his flat upstairs

He also sold the garden. Not only did our leases include garden access which we no longer had, but we only found out when I woke up one morning to find workmen staring in my bedroom window one cold Sunday morning in February (I lived on the second floor so didn't often shut the curtains, the garden was equal to my bedroom window due to being on a hill).

He liked to text at 10pm on a Friday to say that people would be coming round to inspect/service boiler etc at 8am the next morning. But he always got a 'hat doesn't work for me, I expect 48 hours notice as per my contract) response.

I was in the flat a number of years, and he had previously told me that he considered the deposit as part of his earnings, so gloated that he had never returned one. That was good to know as I made sure that there was 0 option for him to retain deposit.

He still tried to keep the whole thing until I sent him the video walkthrough of the absolutely spotless, professionally cleaned flat (with professionally cleaned carpets) which featured me posting 2 sets of keys and swinging by the gas and electric meters as I left the flat, and suggested we sent it to the deposit scheme for a decision....

@SylviaPlath1984

Broke my heart on so many levels too. From the realisation that a tenant who I had liked for many years had done such a terrible thing.

Dealing with a filthy house that was full of his possessions including those of the baby.

Legally was a nightmare at the time because he had name suppression and no one really could give me details on how to end the tenancy without naming him in relation to the crime as that couldn't be published at the time.

The police had cut holes in the carpet and sprayed the who house with luminol which leaves a residual all over the walls. I had hours of police interviews as did my other tenants. The police in the end were helpful but at the beginning they wouldn't even tell me what had happened only that they were seizing my property for an investigation.

The mother of the child wasn't on the lease so technically I shouldn't have given her family access to the property so she could retrieve her goods once the Police had released the property. But no way was I going to make life harder for a grieving family so I did even though I was worried that it may have repercussions on me.

We ended up having to completely redecorate. It cost us thousands in cost and lost rent as well as the devaluation of the property.

But the emotional toll was far greater. I didn't sleep for weeks with the stress of it all. My other tenants needed counselling.

But all that is just a drop in the bucket compared to a baby losing his life like that and the pain that his mother will forever have.

My tenant was sentenced for 12 years which is a long time for this crime in this country.

In my younger years I worked in residential lettings/a brief stint in a housing association. My. God.

Had someone who completely trashed the place. I mean tore up carpets, smashed up the bathroom, pissed EVERYWHERE (the smell )... he was well regarded in his profession and we had half a mind to tell his professional body...

Woman who wouldn’t put dirty nappies in the bin but was happy to leave them in a pile in the garden

Woman who had 6 viewings on a flat on a busy road and complained on day 1 after moving in the road was noisy.

Family who left their pram outside the house and kicked off to fuck about it when it got nicked?!

Had someone who moved out and left an actual scrap yard in the garden. Must have been 10 odd half broken up cars.

Perpetually drunk tenant who once offered a strip tease to a contractor.

We had one where the tenant had moved out and I don’t think they’d cleaned in forever the house was so filthy, including faeces on the floor etc we had to let social services know as they had been living like that with a small baby.

Genuinely had someone complain it was too dark outside his house, attached a picture of the night sky with that email...

I’ve three others that are so ridiculous but I tell everyone those and don’t want to put myself

My tenant moved to Brazil in the middle of her tenancy and sublet the flat to her mate and his family without telling me.

Due to a crap lettings agent I didn't find out for nearly 6 months.

My landlady 'employed' her idiot son to do maintenance stuff. Which was mainly an excuse for him to let himself into flats when he thought people were out, and snoop around. His other charming habit was to take things laying around. Like, I borrowed my friends hedge clippers to cut back an overgrown bush which was obstructing the path to the front door, after months of them ignoring the request to do something with it. Cut things down, went round the back to dispose of the clippings, came back to find he had come by, and taken off with the clippers. His comment when I called to ask what the hell he was doing was that he thought they were his. This absolute peak of this is when he did the same thing with a cat trap I had rented from the local animal shelter to try and catch a badly injured cat who was hanging around our back garden. He just went off with it. His mother, whenever you asked her about it, made all kinds of excuses for him. I was so glad to move away from them.

First rental in early 20s, landlord would send handyman to let himself in to spy on us when we were out. Eviction papers cited "drug addicts" with a photo of a sharps bin - DP is a type 1 diabetic.

I had one scumbag who utterly destroyed the flat I rented out, after not paying rent for six months. There were holes in the doors and walls, all the sinks were blocked, and it was so disgusting, there were flies in the fridge and even a turd in the bathroom floor. He also left all the stuff he didn't fancy taking meaning I had to hire a removal company. I spent thousands making it right.

I've also had a dick of a landlord when I did rent. Me and my mum cleaned the house from top to bottom when I left (my mum puts Kim and Aggie to shame with her cleaning skills) and the landlady didn't want to return my deposit because there were the little plastic parts from clothes tags in the kitchen drawer. I said "fine I'll come back and take the tags out" and she said I couldn't, she wasn't insured for me to be in the house she also tried to claim I'd put picture holes in the walls and tried to take the "repair of the walls" off my deposit. Unlucky for her I photographed the house from top to bottom when I moved in and showed her that the holes were already there. She also once stood denying there was mound when it stank and there were black spots on the ceiling. She actually said, as I pointed, "well I can't see anything".

I took her dispute today the TDS who ruled in my favour thankfully.

@Glitterblue

Nothing really awful but our landlady was so controlling! She couldn't see past the house being "her mother's" (she had moved in with them) and kept telling us how "mother didn't keep the wheelie bins at the front, I don't like unsightly bins at the front" and "mother used to weed the pavement outside, I would like you to continue that". "Mother" had had an unbelievable amount of pictures in the living room and all the hooks were still in the walls but we weren't allowed to take them out. We didn't have anywhere near enough pictures for them all! Eventually she decided to put the house up for sale and at that point she suddenly wanted to do the repair jobs we'd been asking about for years- but she hardly gave us any notice. She would phone on a Sunday evening and say she wanted to come on the Monday morning, it didn't matter that we were all out, she would just let herself in!! She also refused to get properly tradesmen in if things went wrong and always sent her husband or handy man to try to fix things first but they never could. Towards the end of us living there, she started coming to the door at 8pm for various reasons, and she pretty much spied on us until we answered the door. One time I was busy doing bathtime and bedtime for DD, and DH was doing something else and we didn't answer the door. Then our friends dropped their son off with us at 9.30pm because the wife had gone into labour and we were having the son - and she must have been watching from somewhere because she was at the door straight away after we'd answered it to them! We never felt relaxed in that house at all.

When I was looking at rentals before I bought, one came up in a local village I'd coveted since childhood. It was where my Nan lived and I had really fond memories of that village. And houses coming up for rent or sale where like hen's teeth so I jumped at the chance to view the property and was apparently one of six people going to see it. I almost said "I'll just have it and move in right away and give the landlord everything they want", I was that desperate to move there, but common sense told me to go and have a look.

I'm so pleased I did look round, as the landlord sounded exactly like this. It was a lady renting out her mum's house. The carpets were really old 70's ones and there was no shower just a bath. I actually said I don't mind footing the cost of installing a shower over the bath and she said "No, mother didn't like showers and she loved this bath". Mother also loved the carpets, cutting the grass every week (and so I would have had to as well), no TV would be allowed in the bedroom as mother thought it was common (I agree with Mother actually but I hate being told what to do). She was like the sister of Norman Bates. I ran a mile and told the agent exactly why. He said he didn't get a tenant from the six viewings for the exact same reason.

Where to start...these are all from one set of tenants who 1) were upset at leaves on the lawn when they moved in (it was October); 2) expected our 1890 home to have completely straight walls, no cracks and no spiders; 3) drove their car into the wall on our driveway and sent us the bill because it was 'too narrow and not lit properly'; 4) were upset because their son nearly (but didn't) got 'impaled' on a stick in the garden; 5) and the icing on the cake...accused us of coming and having a shit in our garden (even though we were living abroad at the time). Plus they never paid their rent on time. PS. if you're reading this and this was you...you were fucking nightmares and need to grow up. And breathe...

In fairness to people grumbling about landlords using relatives - I do this as a LL because often my go-to plumber/handyman/joiner/electrician is booked up for six weeks and actually my uncle can do a tap replacement/wire a new plug socket/lay beading efficiently. I only get my uncle though if a tradesman is gonna take too long

In our last house, the landlords would never get tradespeople in to fix anything, and that includes plumbing, electrics and oil fired central heating!

We gave our notice in after a week where the power was tripping every few minutes and they just kept trying to sort it themselves. Eventually, we got a friend of a friend electrician in at our own expense. He isolated the outlet causing that day's issues but absolutely refused to touch anything else, warning us (landlord was present) that it was completely unsafe. The landlord just waltzed off home and then said he was stunned when we told him we were leaving as the house was unsafe. Turned out there hadn't been an electrical safety check for almost 10 years!

Ooh I once had a tenant with insanely high standards. Complained that

• the brand new washing machine was noisier than her last one
• the communal front door made a loud noise when it closed and made her jump
• there's slugs in the garden (flat is next to a river)
• people walked past on the street too close to the window

She said she'd like to re-paint the kitchen. I said I never mind tenants doing this as long as it's not a garish colour. She wanted to paint it a lemon yellow, I said that's fine. She then said "well if you buy me the paint and only charge me half the rent next month I'll paint for you" erm no, it's your choice to paint not mine. If I was gonna fork out I'd get a professional to do it for not much more than half the rent.

She then paid me usual rent less the £40 for the paint and brushes she ended up doing a runner mid-contract and couldn't understand why I kept her deposit. She's lucky I didn't pursue her for the remaining4 months!

Tenancy cleaning reminded me of another. The LL from the property he renovated while we were living in it, copied me into a straightforward email with the tenant who was taking over my room. Except he copied me into the email chain, where he had told the new tenant that I was responsible for paying for a professional clean of my room when I left, and that the new tenant should let the LL know if it wasn't up to scratch.

I replied all, to tell the landlord that if he bothered to read my contract there was nothing in it about an end of tenancy clean. That I couldn't arrange an end of tenancy clean if I wanted to, because I'd told him that I was moving out on X date (the Saturday when I was off work) and that he had illegally signed up the new tenant to move in on the same day despite the room still being mine (my notice expired at the end of the month which was mid week the following week) and despite me not saying when id be going (he just assumed id be out in the morning and that new tenant would be afternoon)
Also that I hadnt said anything when I moved in, because I hadn't expected the room to be professionally cleaned (given it was a houseshare, they're not usually) but that id had to clean the room myself and I'd be dammed if i'd be held to higher standards for the next tenant. I attached to the email a photo I'd taken for comedy value when I moved into the room, of the large green dildo I'd found wedged between the (broken) bedframe and the wall. The landlord hadn't bothered to inspect the room when the tenant before me left, as he also had me move in on the same day she was moving out, charging us both rent for the same day and meaning I spent the first half of moving day sat in a McDonald's car park with all my stuff waiting for the tenant to finish moving out. Id arrived to find the dumped bedframe and had to take it apart and store it in the back yard until we could get it to the tip, and it was when taking it apart I found my bonus moving in gift!

I felt bad for the new tenant but at least he was forewarned... Landlord was so arrogant he emailed me to say that he was going to take action against me for potential loss of earnings because I was affecting his reputation.