Landlords/letting agents you have had your life ruined by

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

Got told a few days ago that the house me and my girlfriend signed a contract for, paid a deposit for and left our respective houses for over a month ago, is fucked. Specifically the floorboards in the bathroom have rotted to the point the contractor has declared them unsafe - they also have no idea how long it will take to fix, and cause of safety shit they can't let us in (or drop off any of our stuff) until it's fixed. Somehow, despite the property being available for 3 months they only noticed this TWO DAYS before we were due to move in. Naturally this means i'm back in with my parents and she'll have to lodgo with her friends in a distant town fuckall anywhere near the city she's doing uni in in two weeks time.

I mean to be fair i'm a privileged little shit enough to be able to actually not be physically homeless cause of this and my life isn't technically over, but I thought this would make a nice counterpoint thread to the other one, given that it's frequently the cunts on the other side that are the real cunts.

So post your demon bastard landlord/letting agents stories here.

[Norton Canes]

Place I lived in with three others for a couple of years after graduating, we got behind with the rent and the landlord 'suggested' we work for three days in his gravel bagging plant to pay off the arrears. So callow were we that afeared of violent consequences, we acquiesced to his demand.

[Edit: No, 'Work in his gravel bagging plant' is not a euphemism]

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Landlord decided that yeah time to knock down a chimney.

Not ideal but fine, whatever, just make sure there's good cover on the fireplace so dust and soot doesn't g.....

Right

Hours of scrubbing. He didn't lift a finger. Should have rubbed the cunt's face in it. Still, I had the last laugh by losing my job and going into rent arrears.

[Noonling]

Nothing terrible, but we were once repeatedly told the mould in the house was our fault, despite the fact we did open windows and put heating on etc, and nowhere before or since has had such awful mould. They eventually had someone come round who confirmed that one wall in particular was badly done (or something, I wasn't paying attention) and after they did some work the mould was much decreased. Still, there were a couple of weeks where we simply fled from the bedroom and slept on the couch because after trying to clean the mould several times it just came back and was slightly terrifying. Threw away many clothes that we had in a spare room because they were pretty much eaten by mould.

In a different flat the roof was once leaking directly above the bed onto my face. Called the letting agency in the morning. And the next morning. And a few days later. Three weeks later they fixed it - although they didn't actually say anything and never told us anyone came round, we just came home from work and the roof had stopped leaking.

Every single landlord or letting agency I've had has let themselves in with less than 24h notice at some point. Sometimes frequently. I can't be arsed to complain and it doesn't really bother me other than the fact that they shouldn't be doing it.

[Icehaven]

Nothing life ruining exactly, but in the last 15 years I've lived in 5 flats and one houseshare and the landlord, letting agent or both at each one have performed plenty of the usual shenanigans, including:
-Not repairing leaks promptly (this has happened in every single place I've lived), leading in the worst cases to dangerous living conditions and causing extensive damage to the property and sometimes to several others below.
- Promising at the viewing that various repairs/alterations would be done by the time you move in which inevitably aren't, including (but not limited to) moving unwanted furniture, mending large holes in the floor, painting, providing white goods which are in the inventory, moving abandoned cars off the drive. 
- Refusing to engage or even have any contact whatsoever with a downstairs neighbour who was waging a noisy war of attrition against us in order to try and get us to pressure him into doing something about the lack of soundproofing between the two flats.
- Thinking a bare lightbulb positioned next to a pipe would be enough to stop it freezing in winter. It wasn't.
- Not doing anything about serious damp and mould, just (literally) shrugging and saying 'well it's an old building'.
- Walking in without any prior notification (I was out but my then boyfriend was in and not very pleased.)
- Not fixing appliances promptly using the excuse that they've had other recent expenses, including a new dishwasher that no one in the house even asked for, wants or uses.   
- Deducting £50 from a £500 deposit claiming the inside of the washing machine door wasn't clean enough when we moved out.
- And my particular favourite, sending a Christmas card with a bill enclosed.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but bearing in mind that's spread over 6 different places, 15 years and no one's exactly died (although I often hope my noisy neighbour has, painfully and alone) compared to some it's not too bad. Thing is though I always read the contract, have a good grasp of my rights and no tolerance whatsoever for being fucked about (I'm also not going to end up on the streets either), but it's worryingly easy to see how tenants in a weaker position (a rapidly increasing number) could be and are being treated like shite in far, far worse ways and are too scared or intimidated to do anything about it. 
Someone I work with currently is moving out of the house she's rented for about 15 years, and the landlady (a terribly posh, patrician sort who has house staff she boasts were doctors in their home country) has given her a list of things she wants done, including new carpets throughout, garden landscaped, new appliances, painting every room etc. Of course my colleague is going to advise her to stick it up her hoop, particularly considering the money it would all cost would come to roughly 3 times the deposit anyway.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

Sorry, i've just realised that OP makes me sound like a bit of a dick. The situation has fucked us both off a lot tbh (and if it had happened to two other people it could have very easily resulted in the homeless count going up by 2) but having not seen the actual bathroom there's every chance it was just some guy/lady's honest mistake rather than outright cold hearted cuntitude, and to be fair the lady at the agency passing on the info has been genuinely helpful in trying to fix the situation. So feel free to just read the OP from the 2nd paragraph onwards if you like.

[Flouncer]

...we were once repeatedly told the mould in the house was our fault...

This is standard practise with councils and cunty arms-length housing associations who don't want to spend money on maintainance and repairs. I've heard tales of people with kids who have asthma and the mold is making them really unwell, just being stonewalled and blamed for their own predicament when they're doing exactly what they're told to do, as well as spending money on dehumidifiers, when it's obviously a building maintainance issue.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

One of the little things that has really simmered my urine as the BTL class has grown is TV adverts targeting them. One that specifically springs to mind had a landlord spying on her tenants with binoculars and barking orders into a phone to someone so they could stop them committing some minor infraction. The Harvey Keitel ones giving advice to a bloke about how Direct Line can help him while he kicks out his tenant also grates.

[bgmnts]

DING DONG! LANDLORD HERE!

My landlord is thankfully an absolute peach of a landlord. Understanding, friendly and even makes us jams at christmas. Lucked out big time.

[canadagoose]

This is standard practise with councils and cunty arms-length housing associations who don't want to spend money on maintainance and repairs. I've heard tales of people with kids who have asthma and the mold is making them really unwell, just being stonewalled and blamed for their own predicament when they're doing exactly what they're told to do, as well as spending money on dehumidifiers, when it's obviously a building maintainance issue.

Happened to me too. They wanted to charge us for redecorating the mould-affected room after we left, but we managed to convince them we shouldn't have to pay it. We were renting the flat for £725 per month until spring 2017, and it was being advertised at £850 per month a month or two ago. Gits.

[mothman]

That sucks, ALW. Can your girlfriend not move in with you at your parents'?

[Camp Tramp]

We didn't have any pets in our house but that didn't stop our letting agency accusing us of hiding dog poo under the carpet.

[Attila]

The landlady of the house I rented as a post-grad student is a legend. This was (or had been) a lovely bungalow, built probably in the 1950s, in a quiet cul-de-sac street in Charlottesville. Most of the houses were owner-occupied; my ladyland (Ginnie) owned my house and the one next door. We were told by older neighbours that Ginnie had bought the houses about 15 years before we rented from her, and in that time, through her cheap nature and neglect, what had been lovingly cherished homes had become disaster areas.

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0472254,-78.4894966,3a,75y,192.79h,84.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1siMttBhoJYTr-xruGfL83GQ!2e0!7i3328!8i1664

It still looks like a bombsite, I see, thanks to the magic of Google streetview. The previous owner, who'd been the original owner (the houses were built in the late 1940s) apparently had beautiful garden/landscaping all around the house -- shrubs, flowers, &c.

Ginnie dug up every single flower, shrub, decorative tree, everything. Everything that framed the house. Every plant, flower, shrub in the back garden. When we were there, I planted bulbs and flowers; even tried to put in some azaleas and little flowering shrubs. Every time I planted something, about a week later, they were gone. Ginnie would swing by the houses on a regular basis and take any plants that were growing there -- HER house was apparently a showplace of everything she'd taken or stolen off her properties for years.

When I lived there, there was a heck of a lot of English ivy growing alongside the house and back garden. I came home from teaching one day to discover her and her two daughters in the side yard, cutting and gathering as much ivy as they could, so that they could decorate the church where one of ther daughters was getting married that weekend. She left the place looking like a wreck.

Amongst other things in the two years I lived there:

*The previous student renting the place had left behind roomsful of broken and dirty furniture, dirty, moldy rugs. Ginnie promised to have them removed when we moved in. Nope. We ended up having to haul them all away. We couldn't move in any of our stuff for all of this crap and before we cleaned the five or so years of accumulated filth and dog shit out of the house, so our stuff had to go into storage for about a week while we lived in a hotel -- as poor students, this was a magical time, I can assure you.

*The house was absolutely rank, too, because the previous student tenant had hated Ginnie so much she'd done the 'hide open tins of sardines inside the heating vents' trick -- we moved in in August (or tried to) so that house was utterly foul with the stench of rotting fish.

*The previous tenant had fancied herself an electrician and carpenter: the house still had very old electrics in it, and very few power sockets. So this woman had created new 'power outlets' by plugging an extension cord into an outlet, then punching a hole in the wall, threading the socket through the wall and then out through another hole she'd punched through the wall in another part of the room. There were also rando live, bare wires sticking out of the walls in various rooms.

*The back garden was criss-crossed with numerous 'fences' made of chicken and barbed wire that the previous tenant had crafted as 'dog kennels' for the four or five German shepherds she owned. Ginnie promised to have all of that hauled out, and the brambled and weeds in the back garden cut down. We evntually had to do that ourselves.

*The house was gas heated/gas cooker, ok, no probs. I prefer that. But I also prefer a cooker with an oven that actually works. You could use the stove top, but if you turned on the oven the auto-pilot did not light the oven as it should have. We complained about this, as it was rather dangerous and leaky (the cooker was extremely old). Ginnie asked us, 'You're students -- can't you just eat fast food or something?' So the entire time I lived there, I cooked either on the stovetop or in the microwave. The cooker was never replaced, even after we got the city to come in and inspect the gas lines to the house (I never saw someone move as fast as that city guy when he came barreling back out of the house, and got on the phone to the landlord saying that the cooker needed to be replaced at once).

*Constant problems with the hot water in the shower because the seals on the hot water pipes were made of plastic rather than the 3 cent more metal ones -- as a consequence, we ended up with our front room flooding when the pipes burst. We called a plumber, but he had to go through Ginnie to do any work -- she refused to authorise the 'more expensive' replacement seals (again, like a 3 cent difference) -- the guy went ahead and did so anyway, feeling sorry for me, I think.

*The house was full of bugs because of a huge hole that the previous tenant had cut into one of the walls and only half-assed repaired.

*The bathroom window couldn't be opened (it's that small, narrow window you can see on the front of the house if you look at that link) because the frame was so old and rotten, if you cranked the window open, the whole thing would fall out of the frame.

*The house was full of mold; there was ivy growing through the walls (it covered the bricks on the side of the house, so had worked its way in through the mortar and then through the plaster. The bricks are under that hideous siding.)

*The pipes for the plumbing were so old that they were made of red clay -- and when we lived there, there were a lot more trees on that corner lot. Yep, the pipes were so root bound that our sink, tub, and toilets never drained properly; you'd flush the toilet, and you'd get sewage coming up through the tub and sink. Calls to Ginnie went unanswered -- eventually she got plumbers out there and told them to clear out the pipes. The informed her that as soon as they tried, the pipes just fell apart -- and that everything would have to be replaced with PVC anyway to bring it up to code. She was furious, and tried to blame us, and the plumbers were like, 'Lady, I doubt she was here in 1950 when these pipes were originally laid down.'

*The last winter I was there, the furnace finally broke down. This was the original late 1940s furnace. It had never been particularly efficient, but it was something. In houses of this type, the furnace was in the attic, lying on its side. I called Ginnie to tell her that the heating was out. This was in late November/early December during a particularly brutal winter in Virginia. She showed up with a kerosene heater and told me to use that. I refused (because I wasn't particularly keen on dying of carbon monoxide poisoning) and she said, 'well, t hat's all you're getting, because I'm not paying for a new furnace! Do you know how much those things cost?!'

I lived with the neighbor for a while, and then my then-partner came home for the weekend (he worked in another part of the state and would come spend the weekends with me), threw a fit, phoned up the landlady and ordered Ginnie to get the goddamned furnace replaced or we'd be going to court with her.

The guys came out to fit the new furnace -- they told me that the vent-piping on the old one wasn't properly joined up, which is why we never seemed to get much heat in the house; it was all leaking out through the gaps in the vent-piping. The furnace was so old that the lead worker called his dad, who was long-since retired and close to 80, so he could come out and see this antique furnace (Ginnie originally wanted them to repair rather than replace it). Dad came out, took one look at it, and just started laughing. The new furnace was so efficient, sometimes I'd just go up in the attic and sit on the steps to marvel when it came on.

The heating fiasco was the last straw; we demanded that I be allowed to break my lease, and she threatened to sue us for breach of contract and for trashing the house. She brought a contractor out to inspect the house and to make a report on everything 'we' had done to it -- and she showed up deliberately around 8pm on Christmas Eve with the guy. He stood there, dumbstruck, as she tore through the house listing everything she wanted him to inspect that we had 'trashed' -- the highlight was her taking our little tabletop Christmas tree and throwing it to one side, so she could show him this badly patched hole in the wall from the previous tenant.

He did walk through the house and told her that he wasn't going to do a full inspection on Christmas fucking eve, but even he could tell that the issues with the house were bore of years of neglect on her part, and that the place was so far gone that there was no way we could have done all of that in two years. He also informed her that we had a far better case to lodge against her in court, and that she should seriously consider allowing us to break the lease. She agreed, and gave us 48 hours to get out -- in other words, by 26th December.

We did manage to get all of our stuff out, and I moved down to the house that my ex had bought in central Virginia. About a week later, we got walloped by one of the worst ice-storms to hit Virginia and North Carolina in years.  Happy New Year!

The coda: I kept in touch with a couple of the neighbours for a little while after we'd moved. Apparently the house inspector reported her for gross neglience and for breaking a fuckton of city housing codes. In order to bring the house up to spec, the guy she hired just moved in and lived on-site, as it wasn't worth going back and forth home every day. There was just too much work. He lived there about 8 months working on his own and with a crew to bring it up to code.

The guy across the street, who owned his house, had been approached by Ginnie many, many times, with her asking to buy it. He told her he'd burn it to the ground before he let her get her mitts on it. I can see from Google St View, though, that he must be long gone (this was in the early 1990s) -- his house had been beautifully landscaped, too, and it looks as if all of the trees, shrubs, and flowers that he used to have in front are gone -- you can generally tell when a house in Charlottesville has been turned over to students.

It was a shame, as we'd moved from crappy student apartments with roomates from hell to what was a really quiet street, good neighbours, good price and location. The house had just been neglected by this horrible woman. Older people in the street told us that the original owner would have just cried to see what Ginnie had done to her little house.

[mothman]

Jesus. It looks, as you say, like it's be a really nice, woodlandy place to live, too.

[holyzombiejesus]

DING DONG! LANDLORD HERE!

My landlord is thankfully an absolute peach of a landlord. Understanding, friendly and even makes us jams at christmas. Lucked out big time.

I'll make jam for you if you pay my mortgage for me.

[Attila]

Jesus. It looks, as you say, like it's be a really nice, woodlandy place to live, too.

It was fab -- it was near enough UVa to walk if we wanted to, but far enough away from the main frat row and student housing to be quiet. Super close to Rt 29, which was the main drag through the city. That the house was crumbling by degrees over such a length of time was a testament to how sturdy it actually was -- visiting Gary, the guy who lived opposite (not a legend, but one of the librarians at the university), we had an idea of just how beautiful our little house probably had been and could be.

There was at least another big oak in the front garden, but it's gone now -- the house was very shaded, which is nice in the hot and humid summers there. The back garden had been the owner's showplace, too, as she'd built it up into several terraces connected by stone steps and that.

Ginnie did not have the oaks maintained, however, and there was one magical day when the dead branch on the oak out back finally cracked off and fell, bringing down a load of powerlines. The branch itself was as large as a fully grown tree, and I had several live wires dancing and snapping around in the back garden -- had to call in the fire dept for that one.

[mothman]

Can we nominate Ginnie for the "What is the biggest/gravest unpunished crime committed by anyone alive today?" thread?

[Icehaven]

My landlord is thankfully an absolute peach of a landlord. Understanding, friendly and even makes us jams at christmas. Lucked out big time.

I suppose that's one way of looking at living with your Mother.

[Attila]

Can we nominate Ginnie for the "What is the biggest/gravest unpunished crime committed by anyone alive today?" thread?

She was in her 50s at the time, so she may not be with us any longer.

Yep -- bit of a search on Google, and looks as if she passed on to the landlady's Valhalla about 7 years ago.

[bgmnts]

Moved back home this week to save money to go abroad next tear and I am sure my landlord is trying to screw me out of my deposit, without their being anything wrong with the house, I left it in the condition it was in at the time, literally a few days before she showed someone round the place and said it was fine and yesterday she said my deposit would be in my account last night. Now this morning she is saying she wants to inspect property first and then give me deposit back.

Twat.

[tookish]

I wouldn't go so far as to say she ruined my life, although it certainly felt like it at the time, but I had a landlady who absolutely destroyed my mental health for the time I lived in her house, and a good while afterwards.

It probably sounds fairly minor, but she came and went in the house constantly, and without prior consent. I would come home from work to find her poking around in my room, or going through the kitchen cupboards. She frequently commented on how I needed to reorganise my desk drawers or my wardrobe. She sunbathed in our garden while we were out, and frequently stole our things - I put it down to my own paranoia until my housemate actually caught her pocketing a set of novelty coasters he'd been given.

I felt watched constantly even when she wasn't in the house - I called in a suicide note written by a teenager that I'd found walking home from university, and some police and CPS came to the house to take information. Later on, she called to ask what I'd been arrested for (??) and later spread it to all her other tenants that I was a criminal.

[Blinder Data]

Someone I work with currently is moving out of the house she's rented for about 15 years, and the landlady (a terribly posh, patrician sort who has house staff she boasts were doctors in their home country) has given her a list of things she wants done, including new carpets throughout, garden landscaped, new appliances, painting every room etc. Of course my colleague is going to advise her to stick it up her hoop, particularly considering the money it would all cost would come to roughly 3 times the deposit anyway.

Am I reading this right? The posh landlord is asking the tenant to do up the flat before she leaves?! Fucking hell

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

What a fucking prick. It's almost like the rent money is already supposed to be paying towards the maintenance and upkeep. They weren't renting an empty fucking room, and even if they were, any furnishings would be the tenants property. Some of these people need an East End Thug round to tell them what's what.

[flotemysost]

Fucking hell, there are some knobs out there.

Previous landlord was a lovely old Nigerian man who would calmly refute the greedy lettings agents every time they tried to increase the rent. Then he died :(

Then in my most recent place, neither the landlord or agency could give two hoots about whether we lived or died.

Electrical circuit constantly tripping and sparks coming out of the sockets? No biggie.

Black mould in my room, walls actively dripping with moisture, even with windows open and dehumidifier on all day? Standard mate.

Ants swarming the kitchen, despite us scrubbing it spotless? Arsed.

When the landlord did occasionally come over, he had the temerity to ask us to take headshots of him for his acting portfolio, as if he couldn't afford professional photos from what we were paying for him to nearly kill us in our sleep.

[Sebastian Cobb]

What a fucking prick. It's almost like the rent money is already supposed to be paying towards the maintenance and upkeep. They weren't renting an empty fucking room, and even if they were, any furnishings would be the tenants property. Some of these people need an East End Thug round to tell them what's what.

Reasonable wear and tear is usually exempt from deposits, after 15 years you'd expect painting and carpets to fall under that.

[Noonling]

walls actively dripping with moisture, even with windows open and dehumidifier on all day? Standard mate.

Oh god I'd forgotten about that...

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Every single landlord or letting agency I've had has let themselves in with less than 24h notice at some point.

Yes this is pretty much routine isn't it.

[Stoneage Dinosaurs]

That sucks, ALW. Can your girlfriend not move in with you at your parents'?

Technically yes, but they live miles away from any public transport and neither of us drive, so it's fear from ideal - she'll probably end up having to for the meantime anyway. Also feel kind of bad for my parents cause it's all kind of an imposition on them.

To reiterate my previous post though, there's every chance this fuckup wasn't down to deliberate neglect, and in any case it's fuckall compered to the other ridiculous shit you lot have posted in here - The stuff in Atilla's post was fucking jaw droppinly insane. So yeah it probably doesn't belong in this thread which I created.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

I've had good landlords over the years, apart from a german guy who was a swinger. 

I'm a landlord myself now, i don't have any direct contact with my tenants as the place is fully managed by a letting agent. 

I recently asked the letting agent to ask the tenants if they wanted a new cupboard or a wardrobe, but the agent suggested I not bother, unless they request something, presumably as they may take the piss?!

[Dr Rock]

My current landlady has told me she loves me.