@Keith A.
6 weeks ago, 18 DEA and FBI agents raided one of my single family homes here in Jacksonville Florida. The used the battering ram on the doors and windows to gain entry. The cops caused more damage then the tenants...anyway they found like 20 pounds of weed and other drugs, machine guns etc. Tenant tried to flush all the weed down the toilets, it clogged my septic tank and drainfield... getting that repaired now..story was all over the local news....not helpful for future renting...LOL
And 3 years ago tenant burned another house down when using a fry daddy for 10 pounds of chicken...why didnt they just go to KFC???
I had a run of the mill loser "artist" (in quotes because he liked people thinking he was one, but apparently was unable to follow through on when he actually got commissioned) who had a major chip on his shoulder about "authority" and thought everything was some sort of conspiracy to take away his rights. He made a huge mess, stopped paying, got evicted. Of course this was a huge insult to his independence so he came back and turned on some water taps outside to try and run up the bill.
That was my costliest disaster yet (repairs + water bill) but what I later heard through the grapevine made me almost feel sorry for him.
After he was evicted, I was talking about this guy to the other tenant. They went to school together and had actually been friends at one time.
Apparently this guy was as much a loser in having a functional love life as he had in his professional life. One day his girlfriend told him she wanted to have a romantic kayak trip down a river about 100 miles south of us. So loaded up into her car and drove down.
Once they arrived, she took his shoes, phone and his wallet, announced she was fully aware of something he did [secret unknown, I suspect it was cheating], they were now broken up, and he could hike his dumb a-- back to the city. With that, she left him in the dust.
Apparently he arrived over 24h later, exhausted and sunburnt, and refused to talk about what happened. My good tenant had mutual friends with bad tenant who filled him in, and apparently this was only one of many times this guy's bad behavior bit him hard. No wonder he had a victim complex.
Most expensive tenant turnovers have been in the 10-12k turnover range. Many of these were inherited tenants so a large percentage of them may have been deferred maintenance / bringing units up to standard.
I did have one tenant who in retrospect I think may have been running an AirBnB scam out of the unit because she was there 1 year and it looked like it had 10 years worth of living in it afterwards, and was 10k to fix up after having just been fixed up before she moved in.
Recently, another house of mine a tenant progressively went crazy and started getting violent / lots of run-ins with police. Beat up his girlfriend (who he moved in and did not notify to put on lease), smashed up the side of my rental house with his car backing out of the driveway in a fit of rage. We ultimately evicted this tenant and on his way out (I think just before his court date) he smashed multiple windows out, punched holes in walls / doors, other damage, and left the property wide open front and back doors totally open. He also managed to knock the garage door off the track and had it sitting on its side in the doorway it was really comical to get that picture... I found out about because a neighbor called the cops who called me to let me know it was wide open. Cop was really cool and nice, let me know they had become really familiar with dude over the past however many months and all the neighbors were really happy he was gone. That ended up being close to a $9k estimate which is just being rehabbed now.
Not our most costly but our most unique. We had a tenant turn the yard into a mud pit for women to wrestle in.
We had a deck placed over most of the yard so any future mud pit would be much smaller.
One of our most costly was a preacher who had 5 kids, his wife and him in a small 3 BR. The kids were home schooled and clearly out of control. In less than 12 months they not only destroyed the inside, including the tub, but they knocked down the front fence (neighbor indicated the kids used the gate as a ride), banded many trees, destroyed the shed (crushed from climbing on it), and never watered anything in the back (grass was largely dead and they were surprised that I was charging them for sod).
We have a tenant moving in tomorrow of a unit we did not renew the previous tenant’s month to month due to multiple rule violations. They had a dog and multiple cats in a no pet unit. There was heavy damage but the worse was the smell. We pulled out all carpet, ozoned, sealed foundation and walls, new paint and carpet. It still smells but is much improved.
I have seen a lot over the past 15 years. Have had situations where Tenants have killed themselves in the homes, a house where they found a grave site next to the home, one where they found a body part, a few drug arrests, a unstable guy that showed the judge he was unstable he was at a court hearing and the judge ordered up the swat team to help the local cop with possession. The craziest one I'm thinking the one where they found the grave site next to the home when they were doing landscaping. This is from me managing portfolios of around 4,500 homes, 4,000 homes, 2,000 homes at a time with teams of people.