What's Your Worst Tenant Tale?
Fellow BBL's, (Big-Bad-Landlords):
Thought it might be amusing and educational to share the tales we have lived through - we can all learn vicariously through our peers......
Easily, we all know about the lies on applications - but which are the best lies?
And the lies about missing rental payments - what's the best story?
The worst story that I have heard, (thankfully not my own experience), was that an evicted tenant poured cement in the toilets upon his exit. Egads........
My own personal worst experience was having to remove an existing tenant upon purchasing a rehab: garage 3 feet deep in household trash, house overridden by cockroaches, coffee cans filled with bacon grease in all the kitchen cabinets........(it was a great deal and I realized a huge profit after rehab!)
What's YOUR worst tenant tale?
Old owner of a foreclosure that I bought leased the unit to a brand new tenant.
The tenant paid 800 dollars rent and SD to old owner.
Old owner knew he was being foreclosed upon.
After we received ownership we asked the tenant to move out, even offered 100 dollars to as incentive.
The tenant flooded the unit by stuffing a towel in upstairs toilet.
Didn't cause too much damage ($1.5k) , though as we lived at the time right across the street.
Lesson? GET INSURANCE AS SOON AS YOU HAVE OWNERSHIP, MAYBE EVEN BEFORE.
I had to evict my very first tenet in my very first house. That was a horror story for me, not just because she ruined the carpet in my newly carpeted home, but we had just moved out 3 months before and now was faced with 2 mortgages.
Almost killed my REI carreer to 3 months.
(after all that, the tenets still wanted their deposit back)
I had a tenant who asked while moving in if I'd allow an aquarium. I said, sure. After a couple months I received a call about a "urine odor". An inspection revealed 32 aquariums, each with 15 to 20 rats. He was raising them to sell to pet stores. The zoning officer helped remove him. He paid a couple thousand for clean up, deodorizing, etc. But a "horror" none the less.
Went to collect and file eviction papers on inside of door. Knocked and entered and found one of the hispanic tenants asleep on the floor. Did not want to awaken him so we quitely posted notice and left. Came back 5 days later and he was still asleep in same position. His roomates had gone. My partner went thru his pockeps to check for the rent money. Had to replace carpet and clorox the whole place several times. Had trouble renting the unit too to say the least.
Ted Jr
A home needing painting. I purchased paint, and tenant agreed to paint himslef. UPon evicting him several months later, I discovered that he indeed had pinted...but with his own selection of paint...dark purple, bright green. It took cantiners of Kilz to hid that color.
Oh, the dark purple had glow in the dark stars struck all over the walls, too.
Well its not my horror story but it is the worst I ever heard and it was a good friend of mine.
This buddy's company was managing an apartment building for a local institution which had bought it many years before but had now expanded to the point that they wanted to knock the building down and build a building related to their purpose. So they told my friend not to renew or extend any leases and to begin vacating the building figuring it would take a year to get everybody out.
So my friend asks "as long as you want the building empty do you mind if we cherry-pick the best tenants and move them into other buildings in the area?" "Not at all." came the answer, "After all the quicker the building is vacant the quicker we can start our project."
So this very nice lady who had been a tenant for many years rents an apartment in my friends building a few blocks away. Perfect deal, right? I mean how much more pre-screening can you do?
Only problem is the lady moves her nephew the drug dealer into the apartment with her. All of a sudden the place is like grand central station. Traffic at all hours of loud, obnoxious people, making rude comments to the rest of the tenants and fighting in the hallways with girlfriends, etc.
So my friend files for eviction, puts the drug tac team on the case and starts explaining to the other tenants whats up but its going to take some time to get the guy out. The tenants organize themselves and start showing up at court talking about what an ass this guy is and how THEY want him evicted too.
The bad guys kill the leader of the tenant group and leave the body in the lobby of the building.
Occupancy goes from 100% to 25% in less than a week. Tenants are moving out in droves. As I recall it was like a 60 unit building. Took two more months to get the drug dealer out and then months and months after that to re-rent all the vacant units.
WHOA! My eyes were wide opened reading THAT one!
On move-in day for our very first tenants on our very first rental property, my husband and I were reveling in our new status as landlords! As we passed by the back of the property that day, we heard a sawing noise. We were extremely curious so we poked our heads in the open kitchen door to find our tenants sawing the side of our kitchen cabinet because their refrigerator didn't fit in the space alotted! :-o
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Im glad this little incident didnt happen to me, but my buddy had quite an experience with one of his tenants.
There were tenants complaining of a foul odor coming from the room next door for about a week (Keep in mind, this tenant had only been there for a week). To make a long story short, when my buddy finally got into the unit, he noticed that this man had defecated all of over the place (sink, coach , walls, floors. etc.....).
It doesn't get much worse than that...I think.
that is bad tj.....km