Let's hear about the craziest, dumbest, most bizarre tenants you've ever worked with...
Seth WilliamsPro Member
Specialist · Grand Rapids, MI · Member since 2012 · 583 posts · 353 votesI'm looking for some entertaining short stories from the Landlords and Property Managers here on BP.
I want to hear about it all. If you've got a bizarre or unbelievable story about some of the tenants you've worked with in the past - let's hear about it below.
Try to keep your posts to a few sentences (i.e. - concise and to-the-point) if possible.
Oh boy, this is great!
Ok here we go.... as noted in my location badge, I live/own property in a summer beach resort area. Each summer an influx of eastern European students descend on the OBX for work opportunities and the local businesses enjoy the "work ethic" of the Euro students. Thus, there are programs in place which match euro students with local businesses for employment as well as summer housing.
One summer a number of years back, I offered one of my rental houses for one of the programs, given the high income potential for summer premium rental rates. From the start it seem sketchy. I was in contact with a mid-20s age eastern euro guy who spoke English well but seem/acted as in a classic TV/movie "Russian mafia" style. His group coordinated students (who often did not speak English) with housing. He set my place up with 6 female students (2 in each bedroom) where I provided all furnishings including bunk beds, and twins. Of the 6 girls only one spoke English, and once they were in, I could only dialog with her regarding rent/activity in the property. Rent was paid weekly and in the first month all went well (though I could only collect rent at 11:00pm when they were all home from work). As the summer rolled though, things started to slide downhill.
The original 6 girls changed, and at times it appeared 6 became 8 or more. I could not really know who was living there or not and though the one girl who did speak English remained and was my main liaison, it was becoming difficult to collect weekly rent. Also, all females there were quite attractive, and many males were always hanging around. At one point when I was there to collect rent, I witnessed a 50-something year old guy coming out of the back bedroom area, and when I confronted him asking "What the hell are you doing here?" he said he was dating one of the girls. Note, none of the girls were over 20 yrs old!
As it simply became too much to handle, we had to threaten eviction (which my wife successfully handled in person, as it was tough for me interacting with young attractive females casually prancing around the house wearing nearly nothing!).
All in all, when my wife threatened eviction due to all conditions, within two days the house was vacated. The place was completely trashed from a cleanliness standard and I was actually surprised that attractive females could live like animals (it was not simply trashed during the two day window from the evict notice, but rather longer term disgust with rotting trash, food, etc... nasty!).
From that experience, I have never rented to summer students again and especially involvement with the "eastern euro programs."
One silver lining for the 80-something next door neighbor. A few months after the euro girls moved out, I heard that the girls would often sunbathe nude on the main deck in clear sight of the 80 yr old neighbor. Apparently he quite enjoyed the view, however, his wife did not!
All in all, the "summer russian girls" rental was my most memorable and crazy rental experience!
not very concise, but it is quite a tale!
I once had to show a guy renting a room in my own house how to clean dried icecream off a countertop. He had no idea how and called me a genius. No joke.
Nothing really crazy though. But lots of liars out there.
One renter I evicted said I was committing fraud...for asking for rent I guess?
Got a call from the water department once asking me if I had a water leak. Checked and no leak. Turns out the tenants were charging friends and family to shower and do laundry.
Early on in my investing I was renting to a newly married young couple. She calls me up and says there's something wrong with the furnace, it's not working. (I'm really worried at this point because I know it's a very old furnace and I'm really tight on money and if I have to replace it I'll be in a VERY tight spot...)
I get over there and she tells me "I don't know what's wrong, but it's really cold up here but boiling down in the basement!"
As you may have deduced already...
all the register vents were closed.
Oh boy, this is great!
Ok here we go.... as noted in my location badge, I live/own property in a summer beach resort area. Each summer an influx of eastern European students descend on the OBX for work opportunities and the local businesses enjoy the "work ethic" of the Euro students. Thus, there are programs in place which match euro students with local businesses for employment as well as summer housing.
One summer a number of years back, I offered one of my rental houses for one of the programs, given the high income potential for summer premium rental rates. From the start it seem sketchy. I was in contact with a mid-20s age eastern euro guy who spoke English well but seem/acted as in a classic TV/movie "Russian mafia" style. His group coordinated students (who often did not speak English) with housing. He set my place up with 6 female students (2 in each bedroom) where I provided all furnishings including bunk beds, and twins. Of the 6 girls only one spoke English, and once they were in, I could only dialog with her regarding rent/activity in the property. Rent was paid weekly and in the first month all went well (though I could only collect rent at 11:00pm when they were all home from work). As the summer rolled though, things started to slide downhill.
The original 6 girls changed, and at times it appeared 6 became 8 or more. I could not really know who was living there or not and though the one girl who did speak English remained and was my main liaison, it was becoming difficult to collect weekly rent. Also, all females there were quite attractive, and many males were always hanging around. At one point when I was there to collect rent, I witnessed a 50-something year old guy coming out of the back bedroom area, and when I confronted him asking "What the hell are you doing here?" he said he was dating one of the girls. Note, none of the girls were over 20 yrs old!
As it simply became too much to handle, we had to threaten eviction (which my wife successfully handled in person, as it was tough for me interacting with young attractive females casually prancing around the house wearing nearly nothing!).
All in all, when my wife threatened eviction due to all conditions, within two days the house was vacated. The place was completely trashed from a cleanliness standard and I was actually surprised that attractive females could live like animals (it was not simply trashed during the two day window from the evict notice, but rather longer term disgust with rotting trash, food, etc... nasty!).
From that experience, I have never rented to summer students again and especially involvement with the "eastern euro programs."
One silver lining for the 80-something next door neighbor. A few months after the euro girls moved out, I heard that the girls would often sunbathe nude on the main deck in clear sight of the 80 yr old neighbor. Apparently he quite enjoyed the view, however, his wife did not!
All in all, the "summer russian girls" rental was my most memorable and crazy rental experience!
not very concise, but it is quite a tale!
It was very early one weekday morning when I got a call from my tenant. He said "Bill, the hot water tank is leaking." I asked how badly. He says "listen" and holds the phone up to the leak and I could hear it gushing. I said I'll be right over....he wasnt kidding either.
Once my tenant called me up and said there was a very awful smell in her apartment. I checked it out and could not find anything but the smell was coming from the stove. I can't recall how we figured this out, but apparently a mouse had become trapped in the oven wall and there was no way to get it out. The appliance guy said the only way to fix it was to put the over on broil all day and turn the mouse corpse into carbon dust.
So my tenant put on the over all day while she was at work and it was horrific smelling but soon afterwards, the smell was gone.
The next week, another mouse died in the same place. I told her she knows what to do!
I love reading stuff like this because at some point I know I'll have my own tenant-drama story to contribute. You can't make this stuff up! Keep it comin' . . . .
Wow! What great stories. The only one I have is that one of my tenants didn't know how to turn the ceiling fan on. I had to show her how to pull the chain to start it and pull a few more times to stop it.
I've got a mildly crazy one. This was my first rental and first tenants. Had a newlywed couple move in, they went to church often so I figured "great, they wont trash the place. Good Christian folk!". Oh how I have learned. They stopped paying rent after about 6 months. Told them to leave and clean up since they cant afford it, they agreed. Wasn't mean or rude at all.
The wife called and said everything was done..I thought "cool that was quick!".
When I got there I just walked around in a stupor for about an hour gazing at all the rotten nasty food in the sink, cigarette butts in the sink and toilet (septic...so that's a no no no) and puke on the toilet seat. The worst was the piles of old torn up computer parts. Thin computer wire in ALL the carpets and tons of computer screws and teeny parts in every room on the floor. I can not stress how many parts and wire I had to dig out of the carpet. Keep in mind they had a small child.
The part that made me laugh however is when I walked in the bedroom. The iron bed frame was against the wall and bent. Not a "little" bent either (Lord I don't want to know how they accomplished that). So whats holding up the bed you ask? Well...old computer towers of course! Six of them! I took pictures. :D I sent them to a lot of people. Took a stroll outside to clear my mind. What did I see? Around 15-20 computer monitors behind the storage shed. Neither of these people worked with computers...I just had to laugh at this point. Its all you can do.
Thirty to thirty-five BIG trash bags later...the place was starting to look OK again. Cool news is I got a bunch of free DVDs and 3 laptops they left. I probably threw away $3000 worth of clothing and random crap they left. Easily 20 or more pairs of women's shoes. I guess they had to have those. Oh..did I mention the rats?? :)
Surely I left something out but all in all it could have been much worse. No real damage...no real cost but my time. Just a good wake up call to the novice landlord.
Seth,
Just today I had a Porn star call for a house. She was an African American that targeted Rednecks that liked offloading and made her living shooting sex scenes in the bed of muddy trucks. LOL!
I was fascinated by the target niche marketing!
Not a tenant yet, but I may let her in if she claims income on her "job"
One that comes to mind is just last winter. Super cold in wisconsin. (Like -10 degrees cold)I was working with my plumber spliting the water lines in the duplex to have separate meters. Anyway we get done for the day and we both start taking out supplies and bringing them across the st loading up. We get it all loaded after 10 minutes or so. We both light up a cigarette and as we are finishing up I say, you know the lower tenant has had her front door open the whole time here, just storm door closed. I walk in and let her know we are done and reminder her to keep the door closed. She is walking around in shorts and a tank top and had the impluse to ask me if I could replace the front picture window because she could feel a draft (wood paned non insulated double pane window where as the rest of the house is updated vinyl windows). I just responsed that if you can keep the doors closed and heat at a reasonable level I can do that. Never had to do that and now she is gone.
On an interesting note, I always find that folks that are slobs and have a hard time managing money also leave about $10 in change throughout the property when they leave...
My mom rented our old house to this one guy. He seemed like a perfectly normal person. The only problem is he didn't live in the house! Rather, he'd park his car outside and sleep in it at night. He'd shower outside using the water hose. Weird guy. Then one day, he disappeared and was never to be seen again. Luckily, the house was well kept, mainly because he barely stepped a foot in it.
Lol - that's a good one @Henry Le
Probably the craziest story I ever heard was from a colleague of mine. He had to serve his tenant an eviction notice, and so the tenant proceeded to urinate all over the carpeted floor throughout the entire house.
...I guess he just pushed his tenant over the edge by expecting to collect rent on time.
I'm sure there a far-weirder stories from other landlords, but that just happens to be the weirdest one I know of.
I had a Contract-for-Deed buyer turn my 4 bedroom 2 bath house into a grow house. I stopped in on him 2 months after closing to find the large open front yard walled by a 7' fence with a greenhouse peaking through. It had 8 wine barrel halfs supporting the 2 1/2" trunk of his plants. It was so full of 'greenery' that you could only walk in if you crawled along the bottom between the barrel halves. In the garage there were 2, 10' diameter, floor to ceiling plastic clam-shell growing units. Upon opening each clam-shell you saw an huge 8' center light that provided light for the 999 planters that ringed the periphery of the clamshell unit. Each unit produced $30-40k in sproutlings every 3 months. He had a grafting workshop in the back yard and an off duty Deputy-Sheriff that provided security after hours.
He assured me it was all legal according to California Law.
We inherited tenants at our 8-plex, husband and wife. He was paranoid about drafts and had sprayed "Great Stuff" foam around the outside of window frames and inside the unit he had taken off the outlet covers and light switch covers and sprayed the foam into those as well, even those that were in interior walls! At one point he passed away and she continued to live in the apartment.
She started to have mental problems and opened her home to homeless people who used drugs and who were taking advantage of her. Her social workers and I worked to get her into a more suitable housing situation, low-income assisted living for seniors. She had a fiesty and defiant streak in her, at times sweet and kind, at other times quite belligerent. Quite a handful. Social services did most of the work in getting her moved, but were unable to completely clear out her apartment within the time frame, so we packed up the rest of her things and took them to her new apartment. I even had to catch her cat and transport it! We were glad to see her go... She told the social workers and us that she owned the 8-plex property, and told an imaginative tale about how it had been handed down to her through her family. She said she felt good about leaving the property now and told us to take care of if for her while she was "away". She was at peace that is was left in "good hands."