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!!!

I’ve been a tenant for all my adult life, and I have to say landlords have generally been fine (best two tenancies have been when we rented directly from the owner). Letting agents, on the other hand, are usually total shits.

A few summers ago I came home from a morning out with my children to find the flat door open, and was greeted by an eyeful of arsecrack from the strange man who was bent over, varnishing the floor of the open plan living area. We’d had no warning and certainly hadn’t given permission, and had to leave and stay out until evening when the varnish dried. When I called the agent to complain, her excuse was “I thought you’d be on holiday”. When I pointed out that they still couldn’t enter the flat without permission, whether we were there or not, she quickly changed her story to “my colleague was going to call you but forgot”. We found out later from our downstairs neighbour that the agents had indeed entered without permission while we actually were on holiday

When our contract ended and the owner decided to sell, the same agency handled the marketing and did a terrible job (listing was full of shit, describing the kitchen as new when it was at least 15 years old etc) It wasn’t our problem by then, but I felt sorry for the owner, who lived abroad and clearly had no idea how bad the agents were.

We've been very lucky with renting I think, although I always have a feeling of dread that our landlord will sell up at some point. Our first landlord let himself in when we were out, I hated knowing he'd been in our home when we weren't there.
Carpets and general maintenance aside, our current landlord is great, he leaves us to it and fixes major issues promptly. He's also not increased the rent since 2007 (which I am beyond grateful for), although non-essentails do not get maintained, so the house looks very scruffy both outside and inside. All the landlords we have rented from have insisted on fitting carpets themselves, the carpets are always cheap, don't wear well, have patchy underlay and are never stretched properly so they get horrible ruckles in them I've rented for nearly 20 years and I can't wait to buy somewhere of our own some day and have QUALITY WELL-FITTED CARPETS. Always regret not getting on the ladder sooner but house prices just kept getting more and more unattainable for us. But hey ho, there's more to life than home ownership.

At uni you would sign for your house for September the previous May before you left for the summer. We did so and paid our deposits (about £600 each for 3 of us) and went home for the holidays.

Turned up at the agents in September and found they had gone under. House had been sold and new owners didn't plan to rent so we had nowhere to live and lost our deposit.

I really hope students dont get screwed over now as much as they did back then but I bet they do.

I rent (since leaving the ex) and it's not been too bad lately. I'm a;ways worried about having to move, though, and as the kids are inheriting their dad's (my ex) estate, they want to buy a house for us 3 to live in and not have to worry about a mortgage or rent.

So just waiting for the solicitor to get a move on, I heard she's a bit useless, so will be getting in touch next week to find out where this is at. We need to get ex's house on the market, and I want more than just the single valuation from an estate agent who's known to have an association with that firm of solicitors. Estate agent firm are known in town for pricing houses low, and I want at least 3 quotes.

I will definitely be making sure of a thorough clean and a video before leaving.

My mum did a favour for my brothers friend, let her and her family who were overcrowded in a flat have a four bed house. No deposit up front and lower than average rent. My parents were off traveling and thought their house was in safe hands. Well they changed the locks as soon as they left, wouldn’t let in the trades men in to do gas checks etc and they completely trashed the place. They ripped the kitchen and bathroom out, damaged the fireplaces and trashed the garden.They refused to make rent payments after a
few months. My poor parents had to come back from traveling and had to watch for months our family home get trashed (they have another house just a few doors down) from the family home. The night before they were being evicted by bailiffs she allowed her eldest daughter to have a party in the house with alcohol and god knows what. Police were called and my parents got to see the state of the family home for first time in a long while, devastating!. Parents had to sell the other property they had to fix the family home and pay debts.

My landlord when I was a student moved a 40 year old Chinese man into our house without telling us (into a room we hadn't known existed).

That was a shock when we all came down in the morning although he turned out to be nice. Not what a building full of 19-year-old girls wants.

@DimplesToadfoot

I was in a rented house when I had my son. The landlord used to come knocking on the door on an almost daily basis asking to buy my son. He only came if he knew my partner was away so I was always alone. Each time he increased his offer but each time I refused he increased the rent, our initial rent was £70 per week, within 6 months it was £330 and his offers were in the region of 5k! he'd stand there arms outstretched holding one handle of his carpet bag with the money stuffed in it.

Thankfully we soon moved and bought our own house but I can still picture him clear as day in the doorway

My son is 30 now and I still joke to him that I should have taken the money :-)

I'm sorry why weren't you reporting this to the police??

Rented from a colleague/friend and her partner who returned to Canada supposedly meeting him there. Lease all signed etc. When she got there he did not turn up - he wanted her out as house in his name only. We got stuck in the middle.

He then agreed for his ex wife (not my colleague) to come and empty house of his possessions/furniture. Awkward. She was pregnant by someone else and about to go into labour. She told me when she drove away, he would never see any of the stuff because he owed her child maintenance. Her new partner accused us of stealing a Seadu(some kind of jet ski).

I also had to look after their large iguana who was toilet trained. It used to hide in my girls' toys like ET. It took to going for my dh and trying to pinch extra food. I was so pissed off. I asked them to remove the large bear rug complete with head and teeth from the living room.

Landlord then faxed my place of work telling me to get out on Friday or pay double the rent. I refused. My rental agreement included a clause I pay electricity, rates etc to my colleague who transferred them. Except he then didn't. I got a bill for £700 for electricity and 2000 plus for council tax. It went to a meeting at the Council, I sent them a copy of the Lease and it came down on my side thank God.

I then found out the house was about to be repossessed, and I had to tell the Building Society I had a legal tenancy agreement.

So much other weirdness including finding dodgy porn and something I thought was a horse's bridle in the bedroom.
Never rented again.

For the record, I’ve also rented on the continent (north of Europe, at least). It’s a myth that more people rent on the continent, outside Germany, and that people are any happier about it than here, outside Germany. Germany has very strong rent controls. Elsewhere there are growing complaints about increasing inequality, there as here: renting is always money down the drain and landlords take what they can, rarely giving full deposits back for instance. But there are laws, there are standards - and those laws are expected to bind landlords just as much as tenants. It’s possible to access law at needed even as a tenant, but you’ll find the needs are much lower due to those laws and expectations. Certainly you will not find 2 out of 3 rentals with fresh paint covering recurring black mould that landlords have no intention of fixing. The class divides in Britain do not exist over there.

I am always intrigued when renters talk about “passing” an inspection as if it were some kind of examination or competition. It isn’t! The only thing the property owner is entitled to comment upon is the state of the property as to whether anything is damaged, worn out, needs replacing or repairing. They are not entitled to pronounce upon your lifestyle, possessions or standard of housekeeping.

The tenant’s responsibility is to hand back the property in a similar state of repair and cleanliness as it was when they received it. How they choose to live in the meantime is their business. Property owners may need to have this spelled out to them.

A few years back when I was still renting the woman from the agency came to sign off some work done by painters to the outside. She had emailed me to ask if she could make an appointment for an inspection the following week, I called out to her that she could come in an do her inspection while she was here, as it was going to be a “quick five minute flick”. Nothing needed repairing or replacing.

She asked “Oh, is that ok? You don’t need time to prepare?”

“Prepare what? You take the place as you find it and I don’t expect you to be here more than 5 minutes. Shall we get on?”

As predicted she was in and out within 5 minutes because I had “managed” the interaction that way. Later I realized that I hadn’t even made the bed that day.

My first tennent tried to kill his partner with a samari sword. I knew nothing about it until they stopped paying rent as he had been arrested by armed police who swarmed the house.

They trashed the house when I evicted them for non payment of rent but thankfully went. Then we found out they hadn't paid the council tax or Bill's for the entire length of their rental.

They moved on with no issue to another rental with no references. I had 150 fag burns in their bedroom carpet.

Thank fuck I have never had anyone bad since but OMG did that open my eyes! The mum had two young kids and took him back. Poor bloody kids.

I have been more guarded since as I dont want to appear like a walk over. The next tennants are still there after a decade but even they started paying rent a few days late, then weeks, then a month late. I just served them a section 21 after the second attempt to get them to set up a dd.

Then I had to go to their house to explain I cant pay the mortgage if they dont pay the rent. They are old enough to be my parents. It was truly cringe that they seemed to have no idea how to adult in their sixties. But they overall they are great. It didnt make me wonder how you can get the a fully grown adult and think it's fine to tell your landlord about your multiple cruises every year and not priorities the roof over your head.

But on balance the tennants have been good, I just had the psycho nutter from hell. I think they just went from house to house taking the piss so how they passed letting agent checks, I cant imagine

Our first rental was a nightmare. It was the owners family home that they outgrew. They bought the house next door (that had no garden) and essentially just packed the essentials and moved over.
We couldn't use most of the kitchen cupboards/built in wardrobes as they were still full of their stuff.
They had the agent do an inventory for them, which included everything left behind, including felt tip pens with no lid; empty tubes of superglue; instruction manuals for hoovers from the 80s. The lot. So we had to keep it all.

They then moved to London, so the new house was just their weekend pad (in reality more like one weekend every 2 months).
But they decided that as they had no garden they wanted continued use of 'our' garden and we were no longer allowed to use it. Even when they weren't there. Neighbours would dob us in if they saw us using it and we would have angry messages relayed via the agent.
We were then informed we had to keep the blinds down on all windows that overlooked the garden at all times.
Then we were told we weren't allowed to use the dining room as they couldn't trust that we weren't opening the French windows onto the garden.
Then they changed the locks on the French windows whilst we were out at work and refused to give us keys.
Then they told us we weren't to use the parking space as they needed it when they came home.

They didn't renew our lease after the first 6 months and kept our entire deposit as apparently the house was filthy when we left.
We had cleaned every single inch of it when we moved in and likewise when we moved out.
We were only 18 and I wish now that we had been braver and stood up for ourselves.

Thankfully we found another rental, far more suited to us and we have been here for 12 years!

I rented a flat at uni and kept the same flat for three years - except my landlord kept sending people round to view my flat as an example of his flats which is bad enough but he never told me so I would be at home, flat a mess, I might not even be dressed and the door goes with some college students, parents and sometimes but not always my landlord wanting to look around.

My flat wasn't even that nice so wonder how bad the rest of his properties were.

I once had a landlord show people around the property without telling me. Unfortunately I was off sick that day and woke up in bed to find him and two horrified strangers staring down at me.

We rented a tiny lodge house shortly before DS was born. It was at the end of the owners long private drive to their massive estate home and stables. The chimney stonework was crumbling and our bedroom wall got soaked whenever it rained (in Wales, so A. LOT). We asked them hundreds of times to fix it. They blamed the damp and consequent rampant black mould on us breathing or not opening the windows enough. We had a newborn in that house, I was very ill for months, and we couldn't afford to move for a year. They drove past every day, in their very expensive cars and their horse boxes full of pricey hunters, knowing full well the health hazard we were living in, and didn't do a thing. I often wonder how they slept at night.

Our current landlady is absolutely brilliant. We love living here, have made cosmetic improvements to the house which she says has made it a nicer house than when she lived here herself, and transformed the garden. When the pandemic hit she called us (knowing DH is self employed and couldn't go to work) and said "don't prioritise paying rent over feeding yourselves". We paid half rent for two months at her suggestion and quickly repaid the debt as soon as we could. She's absolute gold and I hope we get to stay here until we can hopefully afford to buy one day.

Most of my tenants have been good, one was terrible though. Didn't pay the rent and deliberately broke the boiler and appliances then used this as a reason for not paying the rent. Left the place needing a complete refurbishment when they left owing me thousands of pounds in rent (never recovered).

When I was looking at properties for sale, one chap let me into this house where his tenant came down the stairs in his pyjamas and said "you never said you were showing buyers round" and the landlord said "I don't need to Chris" I piped up and said yes you do, I'm a landlord and you absolutely need not just to give notice but permission. He argued the toss with me!! I left the property anyway and told the tenant to contact citizens advice, never went back

God, loads.

My first landlord (I was 16) used to let himself in when I was at school and poke around. I used to get home sometimes and notice a sort of perfume smell (he was also an estate agent - what IS it with estate agents and overpowering aftershave?) and a vague sense of things not being where I left them. Only found out when I was home sick once and he walked into my bedroom. After that I always kept the chain on. The next time he turned up a neighbour caught him trying to break in and he made up some lie about being worried about me to cover, which escalated to calling the police for a welfare check since I was obviously inside but refusing to answer the door!

My next landlord was okay but didn't do a single inspection or any maintenance for 10 years, then when the ancient boiler broke she refused to replace it but insisted on sending every plumber she could find in the Yellow Pages round in the hopes she'd find one who wouldn't say "it's fucked you need a new one." Wound up with no heat or hot water for 4 months over winter, was hospitalised with pneumonia, had to file a complaint with environmental health who also discovered there were significant mandatory fire safety features missing - and she still tried to raise my rent a month later. I moved out then.

Next landlord was fine but the building itself was an awful place the live and the landlord of the flat immediately below mine seemed to exclusively rent it to nightmares. First to a couple who stole everything not nailed down, then to a woman with 5 dogs left alone all day (back door left permanently open) who barked and howled all day and shat all over the shared garden.

So happy I own now!

Tenant put notices up threatening to stab everyone else in the building. Total nightmare.

Sneakysnooper - you sound like a nightmare. I hope people like you are in the minority. Never read anything so selfish and mean spirited in my life.

@MottTheHoople

Sneakysnooper - you sound like a nightmare. I hope people like you are in the minority. Never read anything so selfish and mean spirited in my life.

I had to read the post twice in case I missed something, what's mean spirited about the post?

If sneakysnooper rents in England he/she is absolutely correct. What's the issue?

We had a tenant who pretty much destroyed our our property. It had been recently renovated with new carpets etc. She didn't pay us the rent (despite getting housing benefit), lied to various agencies that we were harassing her (this was found in our favour as she was caught completely fabricating things). She allowed her dogs (not allowed in TA) to use the front room as a kennel. There was dog mess everywhere, the urine soaked the carpet and underlay. Her son had broken the front door so they'd ripped up the laminate in the bathroom to patch it up (she'd not told us about the damage). Her idiot son had knocked staples and nails in to every piece of woodwork in the house (door frames, bannister etc.), she refused to allow the gas safety check to take place so we had to get the Police involved, she bypassed the gas and electricity so she hadn't paid anything in a year and put the house at risk and when she left (without paying, obviously), she left her collection of old sex toys in the middle of her bedroom floor.
Needless to say we did up the house and sold it. She cost us thousands in terms of repairs and unpaid rent. She is the reason that we no longer rent out to tenants on housing benefit.

@murbblurb

If sneakysnooper rents in England he/she is absolutely correct. What's the issue?

maybe I quoted the wrong name, no offence sneaky snooper if that is the case. I just traded through just now to find the post I meant, but it seems to be gone. Something about refusing to get out of bed to show new tenants round or something. Oh well.

if England, no tenant has to allow or be involved in viewings. Or to tidy up for viewings. The contract may state that viewings are allowed with permission, but that gets iffy on 'quiet enjoyment'.

If the tenant decides to refuse access, only enforcement route for a landlord is via court - like anything to do with the landlord/tenant situation. Seriously not happening at the moment.

@Livelovebehappy

sneakysnoopersniper wow, you’re a landlords worst nightmare! Do landlords actually always get references from previous tenancies? Surely that would weed out people like sneakysnooper, who I’m guessing no landlord would touch with a barge pole.

Yes how dare sneaky be business like on a business arrangement. Be nice and kind and let the landlord use your home as they please because it’s their house. Nope. Nothing wrong with knowing your rights and acting accordingly.