Your worst renting stories

[AViking]

Lets hear them. It can go both ways, either you were renting or the renter. Lets face it, some people are just not cut out for living around other people.

My worst:

When I transferred to University I found an apt very close to campus that was dirt cheap. Lived there for 4 months. Here's some of what went wrong:

1. Had a call girl living behind me who left her windows open while serving clients and taking it in the ass.

2. Little kid set the building behind mine on fire.

3. All the mailboxes could be opened with a pair of pliers so all the mail was constantly on the ground.

4. Next door neighbor played music at all times of the night too loud to sleep.

5. Neighbors in the building that eventually got set on fire partied each night and then beat up the bums who lived in the bushes and would drink their left over backwash.

6. Fire alarm was pulled nightly.

7. People walked into neighbors apt and robbed them at gun point.

 

[DesiPower]

I had some some "bad" experiences but after reading OP I am humbled

 

[gorcorps]

I rented a video from blockbuster once and it broke and ruined my rewinder

fuckers charged me for it too

 

[nageov3t]

never really had any awful stories.

the worst was probably my last apartment... I was on the first floor of a 4-apartment building (2 apartments on the first floor, 2 on the second). the upstairs apartments were a lot larger than the downstairs, since they included some attic space and had extra floor space while the first floor had to make room for the shared porch and back entryway.

about a year into living there, I found out that both renters on the second floor paid $300/month less then the first floor. told the apartment owner to get bent as soon as my lease was up.

edit: I must have blocked it out... totally forgot about the second apartment I ever lived in. at the time, I worked second shift (4 pm - 12 am) and my usual sleeping hours were 4 am - 12 pm. I can understand that's a bit outside of the norm, but like clockwork, at 8-9 am in the morning, the guy downstairs from me would start blasting techno music. on weekends, he'd also have super loud sex in the early morning hours to the point where I'd wake up because my apartment was shaking. of course, he was also the owners son, so I couldn't exactly complain or ask him to keep it down till a more reasonable hour.

 

[Newbian]

1. Had a call girl living behind me who left her windows open while serving clients and taking it in the ass.

If she was hot that sounds like a bonus. :awe:

 

[smackababy]

I rented Judge Dredd for SNES from a local video store and it was so bad, I decided it was a public service to "lose". They charged me 30 days late fee and called it even.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I rented Navy Seals, and inside the case was Earnest Goes to Camp.

I'm not sure if I'm gonna count that a win or a loss, though.

 

[NetWareHead]

about a year into living there, I found out that both renters on the second floor paid $300/month less then the first floor. told the apartment owner to get bent as soon as my lease was up.

Why did you take it personal? This is business. If you liked the place you should have used that as a bargaining point to negotiate a different rent instead of moving out all pissy.

 

[nageov3t]

Why did you take it personal? This is business. If you liked the place you should have used that as a bargaining point to negotiate a different rent instead of moving out all pissy.

I didn't like the place, which was the thing. it just made me realize that I could either get a lot more or pay a lot less by moving.

 

[sixone]

I unknowingly moved into a Roach Motel.

And then they decided to fill the empty apartments with teenage kids, as a kind of halfway-house type of a deal. I finally had to take the cordless phone out into the stairwell, pretending to call 911 about the noise. That went a long way to solving that problem.

 

[AViking]

If she was hot that sounds like a bonus. :awe:

Yeah I never actually saw her. She would regularly have people over and regularly be gone on these week long trips where she would in her infinite wisdom set her alarm for 4-6am to catch her flight but not turn the alarm off. Yeah she was a glorious neighbor.

 

[NetWareHead]

I moved into an apartment that became infested with bedbugs. For 2 years, no problems and then in the last few months of my third year, I moved out. I had to endure inspections every few weeks where the exterminators needed access to each unit and looked in our couches, required me to strip the bed of linens so they could look under it and boxspring as well as remove drawers from dressers so they could look through clothing. It was a total invasion of privacy and since I stash money etc... in my clothes drawer, there was absolutely no way I was going to let them inspect it while I wasn't home. We are not talking about a fire alarm inspection or changing a light bulb, this was a gross invasion of privacy. I ended up setting up a camera to record if anyone came in when I was not home coupled with a notice on my front door advising that I will contact police if anybody enters. I fought tooth and nail with the management office and ended taking days off of work to accommodate the inspectors. I was never found to have bedbugs but I moved out of there and sold my mattress for cheap ($300 not bad for a 10 year old mattress) in case it was infested.

There was also a couple that lived upstairs from me that had some pretty bad domestic violence problems and I called police on them when the fighting escalated to physical violence, destruction/throwing of objects and waking me up at night.

A minor issue with living there was the shared laundry room where I made enemies with a neighbor because I moved his finished laundry out of the machine after waiting forever for him to come and retrieve it.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I lived in an apartment in Massachusetts for a brief spell (5 or 6 months). The neighborhood was nice enough for Springfield, which meant that people were only getting stabbed outside our building once a month or so, and you'd be hard pressed to walk three blocks in any direction without some kind soul offering you sex or drugs, or one for the other. You would think that this sort of thing would be more uncommon, as our building was directly between the police and fire stations, but all that did was meant we'd get alarm bells going off like clockwork, if your clock was programmed to randomly generate alarm bells throughout the night.

So the building we were living in apparently rented to "special needs" people as well, special needs being the operative term for "batshit insane lunatics who we can't legally have committed." It turns out that our downstairs neighbor happened to be one. His rent was being paid for by a mental hospital on the condition that he stay on his medication, but they took a very liberal policy towards monitoring that condition. He would take to banging on his ceiling (our floor) at random hours, whether we were walking around, sitting quietly, or not even at home. It was clear that he was nuts, but basically harmless.

One night, we're sleeping (fitfully, as firetrucks get exponentially louder the later it gets) when we hear a knock on the door. It's 3:20AM or so and we know exactly nobody in this city, not to mention we live in a top floor apartment in a locked building; something is amiss. I throw on some sweats and an undershirt and groggily throw open the door to be greeted by two uniformed police officers.

"Sir, we've received a complaint from your neighbor. He tells us that you've been... dropping feces on him?"

Come again?

"He tells us that you've torn up the floorboards in your closet and are throwing human waste on him. You want to tell us what's going on?"

Well, sure. He's crazy. He pounds on his ceiling with a broom handle to chase away the ghosts who apparently jump around in this apartment when we aren't home. My girlfriend and I are college educated professionals; we don't have time to go pulling out floorboards to fling poop at crazy people. Didn't you think it was slightly odd that someone would ever think to do that?

"Do you mind if we come in and have a look around?"

So they walk through, and, satisfied that we are not actively dropping our feces on our neighbors, tell us to have a good night, and, bizarrely, to try to ignore the crazy person downstairs. OK, but how do I ignore the police who show up at his request in the middle of the night? Could YOU guys try ignoring him? That might prevent this little episode from occurring more regularly...

Anyway, that apartment wasn't bad. It was cheap and it was warm, with a decent amount of space. But the neighborhood sucked, the city sucked and our neighbor sucked. That's the makings of an apartment from hell.

 

[AViking]

I unknowingly moved into a Roach Motel.

And then they decided to fill the empty apartments with teenage kids, as a kind of halfway-house type of a deal. I finally had to take the cordless phone out into the stairwell, pretending to call 911 about the noise. That went a long way to solving that problem.

Those kids beating up the homeless guys were so bad that I called the cops until all 3 of them got evicted. The problem was that it took over 3 months and I gave my notice and was gone on the 4th so I didn't get much for it. Either way I had the cops on speed dial. I must have called them between 50 and 100 times since it was almost nightly. Of course they only came out about once a week since they don't put noise disturbances and homeless people very high on their list in a major metropolitan area.

 

[AViking]

"Sir, we've received a complaint from your neighbor. He tells us that you've been... dropping feces on him?"

ROFL great story!

 

[Puppies04]

1. Had a call girl living behind me who left her windows open while serving clients and taking it in the ass.

and this is a problem because?

 

[AViking]

and this is a problem because?

Might sound great on paper but in reality it's disturbing. She liked to scream about how much she loved it and with her windows open this was not cool. Plus I was living with my girlfriend so it was just awkward.

 

[D1gger]

We rented an apartment in Kitsilano when we moved to Vancouver and our house was still under construction. It was a great neighbourhood, but the building was built with twigs and paper thin walls. We had a couple who lived next door who were constantly fighting. Yelling and screaming at all hours of the day, and it even sounded like dishes being thrown at each other.

When they weren't fighting, they were playing bad disco music at horrendous volume.

It was hell for the four months we lived there.

 

[JManInPhoenix]

Not that I had to pay for it . When I was in the navy I worked 2nd shift (3pm to 11pm) and was off duty the rest of the time. They came in to inspect my barracks room at 9am and failed my room due to an unmade bed. I happened to be sleeping in it at the time.

 

[FeuerFrei]

In Cincinnati I lived in a top-floor (4th) corner apartment with a great view.

Kids playing football in parking lot bumped my car with the football, setting off the alarm, on multiple occasions.

Someone tore my bumper sticker off the rear window of my car.

A ball found its way onto the roof and into the drain pipe directly over my window. During a hard rain the spout couldn't drain properly and a huge torrent of water gushed onto my window sill. The windows were rain-proof, but not hose torrent-proof. I tried to stanch the influx of water with towels on the inner window sill.

One time I decided to head outside with an empty box for the dumpster. The front door opened into a inner hallway. When I opened the door, box in hand, there was a SWAT guy in full regalia standing a few feet away with his pistol out, aimed downward. He put a finger to his lips. I turned, stepped inside, and shut the door quickly. Then went and told the rest of the family to keep away from the door. He put a square of black electrical tape over my door's peephole. Guess they didn't want to be observed. Down in the parking lot was a mass of police vehicles. AFAIK it played out without much drama.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Campus living in a 4br apartment with a common living area. One of my roommates had a lot of lady friends....and a few of them brought their kids over and let them roam around the apartment while they were visiting my roommate. We were on the 4th floor and I had to pull one of these runts (under 2 years old) off the railing of the balcony. I basically saved his and his mother's life and waged an all out war on my roommate over the issue.

I used to rent an apartment out....the only bad things that happened was people moving out and only giving me 1 day's notice, breaking their lease. But I got to pocket their deposit and all 3 times it happened I was able to rent the apartment the following week.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I once rented a duplex about a block and a half from the University of New Mexico. It was a nice place with wood floors and a nice young couple who lived in the other half. It was also right next door to a crack house with double reinforced doors. No one actually lived there they just showed up during "business hours." I regularly called the police when customers showed up but nothing was ever done. A week before I moved out, my gas can disappeared and the place mysteriously burnt down when no one was home.

 

[Newbian]

Might sound great on paper but in reality it's disturbing. She liked to scream about how much she loved it and with her windows open this was not cool. Plus I was living with my girlfriend so it was just awkward.

If you didn't try to get your gf to be even louder then you failed as a man to use that situation.

 

[MrPickins]

A week before I moved out, my gas can disappeared and the place mysteriously burnt down when no one was home.

 

[TangoJuliet]

I got a thread around here about mine.......