Bad Tenants

[P-E]

These are the people you want to avoid. They lie about everything. They leave your rental property a disgusting mess and somehow it isn't ever their fault.

I've spent the better half of the week cleaning my first floor unit. The basement looks like the show hoarders buried alive. The hardwood floors in the kitchen are black and the refrigerator looks like a port-a-potty. Ahhhhhhhhhhh

 

[matt267 PE]

 

[P-E]

Don't tempt me, I like burning stuff. I'm sure it would go up real fast.

 

[Ramnares P.E.]

Power-Engineer, that's the primary reason I decided against renting a floor in my home in NYC. While I was renting I always had the attitude that I should treat the apartment as I would my own home. The renters directly above me had the attitude of your previous renters. A few times I helped them fix leaks/move furniture and the place was a dump.

Good luck cleaning out your place and getting it back to some sort of normalcy. Did you withhold their deposit due to the condition of the place?

 

[engineergurl]

at least there were no pets?!? We have been extremely lucky with our last two tenants for the house in Alabama, but when we owned the house in North Carolina and rented that out, we ended up having to go so far as to replace drywall due to all the animal "stains and smell".

 

[P-E]

Thankfully no pets. I will end up spending her whole deposit on just trash removal from the basement and garage. So gross.

 

[NJmike PE]

did someone say fire...

 

[matt267 PE]

Calm down probie, put your hose away.

 

[Road Guy]

I have always heard you should look inside people's cars when they show up as a sign if how sloppy they are?

It would bother me too cause i think most people just don't treat a house like it's their own....

 

[engineergurl]

I have always heard you should look inside people's cars when they show up as a sign if how sloppy they are?

It would bother me too cause i think most people just don't treat a house like it's their own....

I have found that if they are a home owner elsewhere, they treat it good because their house is rented out and they know their own level of expectations...

 

[P-E]

I've heard that too. However she didn't buy a car until she had been there awhile.

 

[NJmike PE]

all seriousness, we rented before we bought our home. It was the first few years we were married. We had one dog, same one we currently have. mid-sized black lab. I/we treated that house like our own. In part, out of courtesy and respect for the owner, and in part because it's just the right thing to do. as a matter of fact, our dog had peed on the area rug that we had in the living room which was on hard wood floors. there was no obvious damage done, but I took it upon myself to strip and resurface the floors, again out of respect for the owner.

 

[Road Guy]

It goes both ways, when we rented after we moved to Colorado last year the owner was very nice in the beginning, but then (towards the end of the lease) she made the notion that she wanted to sell her place in the summer. Our lease was up end of August. We moved out in June. Paid for July and then she go all pissy over that last month....she kept our deposit so IMO were even... But had she not talked about selling the place we wouldn't have looked so eagerly.... Most leases the owner can terminate with 30 days notice and that didn't give us a warm and fuzzy...

I even found her a new tenant who paid all but one week of August but she wouldn't give me back any of the deposit.

I never acted on them but I have thoughts of making water balloons filled with round up this summer and driving by at night and tossing one in her yard every other week until she has to replace $2000 worth of sod...

 

[engineergurl]

all seriousness, we rented before we bought our home. It was the first few years we were married. We had one dog, same one we currently have. mid-sized black lab. I/we treated that house like our own. In part, out of courtesy and respect for the owner, and in part because it's just the right thing to do. as a matter of fact, our dog had peed on the area rug that we had in the living room which was on hard wood floors. there was no obvious damage done, but I took it upon myself to strip and resurface the floors, again out of respect for the owner.

Seriously, this. In our current residence which we rent (cause there was no way I was buying ANOTHER house in ANOTHER state), we have installed a chain link fence in the side yard (which we will leave), I've painted the bathroom, laundry room, what we use as our fitness room as well as our kitchen, AND we have ripped up nasty carpet (it was nasty when we moved in) and were going to replace it, but opted to just sand and refinish the floors (which we aren't quite done with yet, but they are coming along). I've also replaced most of the screen on the screened in porch because it was getting tore up, and kept up with all of the minor repairs.

I do not have any respect for the property owner though, the cheap Ba$tarb couldn't get why I didn't want him to contact random repair men that he was paying under the table and give him my phone number (not my husbands, but mine) and expect me to let them in my house with out even their name. (Sorry, I've had a home invasion occur before, I'm picky about who enters my home.) Oh well, Karma's a witch because he put off fixing the leak so long and then hired some guy who didn't know what he was doing, the entire kitchen floor had to get replaced, including the sub-floor.

 

[snickerd3]

my fil has had some nasty tenants. a bedroom was used for garbage, another let the house catch fire because they left clothes too close to the hot water tank

 

[engineergurl]

Our property manager called me today, our new tenants (moved in Dec 5th) want to know if we would be interested in selling the house... this is one of those opportunities that you can't ignore and at least have to check in to I think...

 

[knight1fox3]

We always fixed up the places we rented. And usually left them in better condition than when we first moved in.

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

Our last landlord got pissed that we decided to not purchase the house after renting. We had talked about doing it but we decided there was too much "un-changeable" stuff about the house (tiny garage, only one bathroom, etc). He ended up making things up so that I lost my deposit. One of the few times I was tempted to torch a house.

 

[mudpuppy]

Our property manager called me today, our new tenants (moved in Dec 5th) want to know if we would be interested in selling the house... this is one of those opportunities that you can't ignore and at least have to check in to I think...

I know someone who has a house they can buy!

 

[The Wizard]

• Sorry to hear about your tenant issues. I own and manage many rental properties and would like to give you a tip. You need to do a walkthrough every 2 or 3 months or so to keep an eye on the condition of your property. You could have seen this coming and put a stop to it before it got out of control. After you do two walkthroughs and they are at the 6 month mark, then start going every 6 months if you see they are good people. If you don't feel comfortable saying you need to do a walkthrough (because it shows you don't trust them), then make something up like you need to check/replace the air filter. I do this all the time when I get new tenants. They won't know that you have an alterior motive of really checking out the condition of your property.