Being a landlord can be difficult. From having to deal with maintenance and weird 'accidents,' to tenant disagreements, landlords have seen their fair share. And it's worse if they actually own the house, apartment, or condo. And because a lot of people who rent don't treat the space like their own, they often vacate having done extensive damage that the owner has to pay for- whether there's a good reason for it or not.
Here are some of the horror stories landlords and property managers had to deal with, not to mention the dumbest excuses they were given, which led to evicting the tenant(s). All content has been edited for clarity.
Small But Did A Lot Of Damage
“A guy got evicted from university housing because he was using the fire sprinkler head as the endpoint of a clothesline. This broke the sprinkler head, flooded half my floor (4th floor) and every apartment underneath down to the base level.”
“I’ll Pay Eventually”
“My dad’s the landlord but I’m technically second voice of the property. We own the house next door for renting purposes.
This tenant was the definition of ‘I’ll pay you eventually.’ She only talks to my dad if she needs help, otherwise she avoids us. But I’ll get back to that.
This woman had a dog and all that time we thought it was hers. She treated it like garbage, barely took care of it. One day she left this little puppy in the snow and my mom was furious. Before we could call over the dog to give him some warmth, the tenant walked out, grabbed him and slammed the door. She would keep using ‘pet fees’ as an excuse to hold off on rent and we learned that A) she was lying and B) the dog WASN’T EVEN HERS.
From what I put together, she held her ex’s dog hostage and took it out on him by not taking good care of him. My dad, after realizing it went to confront her and she hid from him, then drove away, claiming she had a party to go to. My dad blocked the driveway with his car and said he’d move it once she pays her rent. To clarify, he wasn’t blocking her IN, he was blocking her OUT from when she returned. She was so hysterical; it got to the point where she got her dad involved, but he ended up taking OUR side.
Her dad paid the rent, sent the dog back, and we were done with her.”
And They Asked For Their Deposit Back
“Had to evict someone for not using the shower curtain.
They took a long shower and flooded their bathroom, which ran down and flooded the apartment below them.
We lost the downstairs tenant as well. Plus insurance wouldn’t cover the damages since it wasn’t from a burst pipe or other plumbing issue.
Then when they were evicted they asked for their damage deposit back.”
Not An Inch Of Floor Uncovered
“I had a tenant who moved into the third-floor apartment and was apparently breeding huskies. No one in the building knew he was doing this because he never took a dog outside. They were just defecating all over the place.
Once I discovered this, and he didn’t pay his rent, it took three months to get him evicted. When I finally got him out, there wasn’t an inch of floor that didn’t have feces on it. The man literally stepped out of bed into poop. I can barely explain it and will never forget it. I put on hazard gear and completely stripped the place. I had to remove carpet, underlayment, and even some floor boards. Completely disgusting.
I gave up my building after that.”
Replaced The Cabinets
“My dad was a landlord and one of the tenants tore out the cabinet doors and replaced them with chicken wire and put chickens in the cabinets.”
Couldn’t Connect To Wifi
“I had a renter who would withhold rent for the dumbest reasons and would never talk to me directly, only leaving me notes on my door (only after she talked to my dad). When I would confront her by knocking on her door, she would pretend she was sleeping or pretend not to hear me. She was extremely anti-social.
At one point; my dad was over helping store some of my old stuff in the basement. He moved one of her boxes without thinking much of it and because of it; she withheld her rent. She also would contact my dad first for some weird reason. She once withheld her rent one month because her laptop couldn’t connect to the WiFi. I checked because I work in IT and her WiFi card was toast. It never occurred to her to check it elsewhere like her school. I offered to run a LAN cable but she refused because she wouldn’t be able to watch her shows on her bed and still wanted to withhold rent Lets just say we were waiting or her to move out. We didn’t want to evict her because even though she was weird; she kept to herself and was clean.”
Save The Turtles
“They built a turtle habitat without permission in the basement.
Heard this story second hand from a friend who knows the tenant. They started a turtle breeding business, so they decided to flood the basement with maybe 6 inches of water. The entire basement. It was a concrete floor, but there was still drywall on the wall.
Don’t know how the landlord found out, or how long they had the habitat, but he kicked them out immediately. No notice. It was either leave now or he’d sue for damages. Next day they were out.”
Still Part Of Investigation
“Last summer my tenant told me on July 15 that she couldn’t pay rent for July, or ever again. Okay here goes eviction.
She then told me the cops raided the place the Friday before, because her husband was selling and looking at child videos online. She was cleared but their three kids were in pictures he sold, along with her best friend’s kids. He met her at 16 and he was 32, so frankly I’m not surprised at his affinity for teenage girls, and the neighbor upstairs of course told me later that he saw the guy bringing in young girls often.
I had to call the police to make sure I could even go into the condo, in case it was still part of the investigation. He warned me it was in horrible condition and Department of Family Services banned the kids from going back in. I finally get there after work and it’s chaos. A hoarder’s paradise with cat poop ground into the floors and who knows what all over the walls. Dining room and master bath were nothing but boxes and bags to the ceiling. I made her agree to a 10-day move out of every single thing she had or I’d take it to court, which she didn’t want. So she did, dwindling me more and more along the way by filling the entire dumpster area and making it unusable by any other tenants. Broke more things somehow in the move out. Was in denial about how disgusting it was the entire time and obviously never paid July.
Thankfully we turned it around and sold it November of that year and I finally deleted the photos and videos to heal my brain. I was shaking when I first went in there. Never be a landlord.
To add, we let them pay late every single god darn month. We bought new appliances that we now know were replacing ones they broke themselves. We let them do two months without paying at all the year prior (they did catch themselves up on that, mostly). I gave them so much leeway because she was nice and I felt bad for the kids. Husband was an idiot but I never had to deal with him.”
Luckily Someone Was Home
“I had an upstairs neighbor flood her apartment which subsequently partially flooded mine. Turns out she had washing machine in her kitchen, and the apartment wasn’t set up for a washing machine. So she just ran both the water and the drain tube from her kitchen sink. Well, drain tube wasn’t secure, it popped out from the sink and just drained all the water onto her floor.
She wasn’t even home at the time. Turned on the washer and left. Literally had water pouring from the ceiling through my recessed lights.
Luckily I was home and had plenty of buckets and was able to minimize damage but it took the landlord over an hour to get there and by that time the wash cycle was done.
The kicker, despite the lease explicitly prohibiting washing machines in the apartment, and the damage to the apartment, she didn’t get evicted. It took many other serious issues before they finally kicked her out.”
Toilet Seats Were “Too Dirty”
“I was an RA back in 2004. My male showers kept clogging in the bathroom on my co-ed floor. Facilities would have to be called in to address it, and after the third time, they investigated a little. A guy comes to me, ‘So normally we find hair, conditioner, or other stuff like rubbers clogging the drain, yours though, it’s feces. Poop. Human waste. Someone is pooping in your shower.’
I immediately went to the three wrestlers who lived on my hall (having wrestled most my life I knew how rowdy they could get) ready to accuse them, and they flat out told me, ‘If it was us, we’d be pooping in the hall.’ I took them for their word and left it all alone till a week later when someone clogged again. Shut down my bathroom, forced everyone over to the other bathroom until we figured it out. The next morning, my co-RA woke up early to go brush his teeth and noticed a STRONG scent of human poop in the bathroom when he walked in. He thought this odd as there were no feet under the stalls, but the shower was running. Knowing what I was dealing with, he waited outside the bathroom until the person showering came out.
It was the guy who lived next to me in a solo room. Extreme OCD (we’re talking fully cleaned his room daily top to bottom). We found out over time that the toilet seats were ‘too dirty’ so he was pooping in the showers and forcing it down the grate with his shower sandals. He was fined by the school for the overtime paid to the facilities people (as this usually happened after their hours) and after another incident, forced to move off-campus.
Best part: Dude was a student worker in the cafeteria. I never ate at his station again.”
Tattoo Was More Important
“My sister used to have some duplexes she rented out. One tenant was several months late on payments and numerous times the tenant promised she was working on getting the money.
My sister was being nice because the tenant was in a hard spot and recovering. One day she went by to visit and the tenant had a brand-new tattoo sleeve all the way down her arm. When confronted about why the money wasn’t used to pay rent the tenant said they really wanted the tattoo.
The eviction process started immediately.”
Mystery Bags
“When I was living in a dorm, there was a mysterious case of small plastic bags filled with poo appearing on a tree in front of the dorm building overnight. How did they get there? A foreign student seemed to have had some kind of toilet shyness and didn’t want to use the shared dorm restrooms, so he did his business into small plastic bags. He then decided, instead of discarding those bags discretely, to just throw the bags out of his window into the tree at night. This didn’t go well with the facility management of the dorm, and he lost his dorm room.”
An Expensive Lesson
“I bought a duplex with the intent of renting out the upper floor to cover the mortgage, while my wife and I moved into the bottom unit. We rented to a young couple who had a nice letter of recommendation from their previous landlord at a very nice everything included price of $450 for the term of one year only. After that year, I probably won’t rent ever again.
-Moving his dad and hiding him from us (into a one-bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchenette. Where was he even sleeping).
-Smoking in the apartment despite being caught multiple times.
-Never paid rent on time and always had the late fee tacked on.
-Brought her kids in and hid them from us after her ex got evicted himself. Nothing against kids, but I’m highly certain CPS would have had a field day with two kids and three adults in a one-bedroom apartment.
-Best of all, the letter of recommendation from their previous landlord was only written to get them out of their last place because they had….Bed bugs. We found THAT out the hard way in the last month they were there.
-Didn’t pay the last three months of rent and called the police on us when we obviously didn’t return the security deposit.
Overall, it was an expensive lesson that we learned.”
Now In Collections
“Not the landlord, but a friend of mine just had to evict someone from a home she owned after the following conversation (T = tenant, F = Friend):
T: Hey! Just wanted to give you a heads-up that money is pretty tight right now, so I won’t be able to make rent this month.
F: Okay. As per our contract, you technically have until the 3rd to pay, and it doesn’t accrue late fees until the 5th.
T: Oh, sorry, I should’ve been more clear. I won’t be able to afford rent at all this month.
F: I mean, each day after the 5th is $50 in late fees, do you know when you’ll be able to pay?
T: AS PER MY TEXT, I won’t be paying rent this month.
Took her a couple weeks to get a court date, but the tenant is now out of the property with a buttload of bills now in collections.”
Yes, We Can Believe It
“I knew a guy in college that moved into an off-campus apartment with his friends, because he was completely broke and irresponsible. He didn’t add himself to their lease, in an attempt to avoid fees for additional occupants, and he didn’t pay rent to his roommates.
About a year later, his friends graduated and moved out, and they gave him plenty of warning so that he could get his stuff together and move out.
He did exactly nothing.
The landlord came and told him that he had to vacate, because the lease had ended, which lead to the dumbest excuses I’ve ever heard in my life: Well, this isn’t my apartment, so it’s not my job to pay rent. I just live here.
Later on Facebook, he tried to twist this into a sob story: Can you believe they just evicted me??”
Thankfully He DIdn’t Blow The House Up
“I helped my father evict a tenant.
The house had a small secure garage attached to it. But rather than use this to repair his motorbikes, the tenant had three of them inside the house. Two in the living room, in bits and one in the spare room upstairs, also in bits.
Oil everywhere. He’d spilt at least one gallon of old downstairs which had soaked into the carpet and floor underneath. He’d taken the carpet up and thrown it in the garden. Upstairs there were numerous small spills, carpet wrecked again.
Dirty hand prints all over the doors and walls, especially on the stairwell, kitchen cupboards and so on.
We found out as the neighbors were complaining about the smell of petrol – he had a leaking fuel tank in the kitchen, on the draining board. It was very slow so thankfully he hadn’t blown the house up, but the kitchen stank, along with the outside drain.
My father had a clause in the rental agreement that specifically prohibited any kind of workshop type activity in the house (no woodwork, pottery, engine repairs etc). So it was fairly easy to evict him, took two months. He didn’t even ask for his deposit back and left two of the bikes behind – two old Hondas that were beyond repair. My father sold them for a few quid to help pay for the repairs to the house.”
“I Only Rent Flats To Families With Children”
“Three college student girl tenants turned the flat into a brothel resulting in complaints and damage to the flat itself. Just threw them instantly on the street not asking for any rent due. I now only rent flats to families with children.”
Too Far
“I once had to go to court to prove that I had car insurance (long story), so I was sitting in the courtroom waiting for the judge to see me.
The guy before me was a cranky old guy who had been renting an apartment for something like 20 years. He apparently had stopped paying rent, and refused to move out, because he had “paid so much rent, he should own the place by now.”
He had also started shooting dogs in the apartment complex, just because he didn’t like them.
The land-lady explained everything to the judge, and then the judge turned to the cranky old guy and said ‘Is this true?’ and he started with ‘Listen here, I’ve been paying rent for 20 years–‘ and the judge just slammed his gavel and awarded everything to the landlady. He was evicted, he was court-mandated to pay all of the back-rent, everything. The judge even left instructions for how to press charges for the dog shootings.”
“Why Would I Want To Work With This Guy?”
“I have the lease on a three bedroom but I rent two of the rooms out so I guess I can weigh in on this. I had this one dude, very stand offish. It was getting close to the time where I decide if I am going to renew his agreement or even find out if he even wants to renew his agreement. By this time he would barely speak to me and would outright ignore my other roommate/tenant. So one day as he was leaving I said goodbye to him as usual and as usual got nothing in return. So in exasperation and to try and get a read on this guy I say ‘you know, occasionally a response would be appreciated.’
‘Really, now you want to talk?’
‘Yeah?’
This is when I find out he’s holding a grudge ever since two weeks after he moved in when he passed me on the street and I didn’t say hi back to him.This is because I was reading a book on my phone which is a thing I do because I’ve been seeing the same scenery in my neighborhood for the past 14 years. By the time I pulled my head up he was like twenty yards away and still moving.
At first I try to talk it out with him and see if we can move past it. He puts me off for three days but I keep knocking on his door once a day to see if he is ready to talk to me. By the third day I’ve made the decision to not renew this guys sub-lease because if he’s not going to talk to me for five minutes without me having to be put off for three days why would I want to work with this guy. So finally I talk to him and let him know that and while it wasn’t received terribly well it went into a holding pattern.
A little over a month before the term ended he asks if he can stay and when I start to lean towards no starts trying to neg me into letting him say and then threatens to start squatting. So I lawyer up the same guy from the last time I had a tenant dispute and he changes his tune and only overstays his term by a couple of days. Though he never did pay his last months rent.”
A Large Amount Of Garbage
“My dad used to own a large farm property across the road from us, it was about 100 acres of just empty land with a house by the road. A local buffalo farmer (yes that is a thing apparently) was renting the land for the buffalo while someone else was renting the house to live in.
Mr. Buffalo farmer kept mentioning the general disrepair the tenants were keeping the house in and the large amount of garbage piling up behind the house. Idk how it is now but Canadian law back then was heavily in the tenants favour so we really couldn’t do anything about it, evicting people takes years and they never seemed to be home or answer the phone which made contacting them difficult.
Finally one night the trash pile caught fire and almost burned the house down and the fire department discovered a grow op in the basement when they went in to check the house. They weren’t actually living there they were just growing weed which was still highly illegal back then. The house has since been demolished.”
Laundry List Of Things
“I had to evict my tenant’s significant other because they were:
Throwing roadkill over the fence.
Threatening to burn the neighbor’s house down.
Was without any on the roof.
Put a hole through my wall.
Put all my furniture (it’s a furnished rental) on the lawn. Several times.
Did… something in the master closet. Unidentifiable stain.
Openly did crack in the backyard.
Broke a window.
They didn’t show up to the hearing because no one could find them to serve them. I knew they were sleeping in the abandoned lot next to Walmart but no one asked me.”
Didn’t Seem To Understand
“I’m not a landlord but a property manager, so manage properties on behalf of landlords.
We had a group of tenants that climbed out of their kitchen window to smoke on the flat roof outside, fell through and caused tonnes of damage to the shop immediately below then attempted to have a pop at us as we never informed them that they couldn’t climb out of the window.
Later that tenancy, one of the same tenants (there were four total, two involved in the roof thing) put a pan on the hob then forgot about it which set fire to the kitchen. They complained that the ash aggravated their asthma.
They didn’t seem to understand why their tenancy wasn’t renewed and why we kept their deposit.”
Might Be Time To Switch Professions
“Every tenant we’ve evicted was for not paying rent for 3+ months. And since in our country, the electric bill has to be in the property owner’s name, we get to pay their electric bills as well. (Or the next tenant wouldn’t have electricity). Our second to last tenant abandoned a cat at the apartment, so we had to deal with a cat and cat poop and cat food scattered around the place. The last tenant randomly brought home a huge dog (no yard) that they never walked and just left on the terrace all day and night. The dog destroyed the walls on the terrace, some walls inside the apartment, and the walls on the rooftop patio. We also had to clean the massive amounts of dog poop and pee left everywhere. I hate being a landlord.”