Stories from a landlord

[WildRover]

I had a tenant who called the board of health on me. His complaints: His apartment had fleas, his carpets were old and smelled bad, he didn't have a refrigerator or a shower and the toilet didn't work.

The board of health did the inspection and found two minor violations: as a missing screen on a window and a smoke detector that had the batteries removed. I re-screened the window and replaced the batteries that same afternoon.

It really burned me up because right in the lease it said that the tenant is responsible for providing the fridge. He KNEW it didn't have a shower and only had a tub when he moved in and he was fine with it (a shower is not a board of health requirement anyway as long as you have a tub). He never told me there was a problem with his toilet, and he wouldn't have fleas if he didn't have three cats and a dog!

The best thing is that I had already bought a shower unit to add to this apartment as an improvement but after he called the board of health, I just kept the unit in the basement and refused to install it until after he left. There was no way I was going to reward that sort of behavior.

The health inspector had a good laugh about it. She even fixed the toilet for him during the inspection and showed the tenant how to reconnect the chain to the handle. She also wrote him up for several "tenant violations" for not keeping his second egress clear and for not maintaining sanitary conditions.

[CozInCowtown]

I own some commercial properties and my wife owns some duplexes.
I have made much more money flipping properties, buying cheap and reselling, than being a landlord.
DC

[hikingprincess]

We are landlords and we spend the better part of 3 days scrubbing our rental last year when the tenants moved out. They called us once saying the furnace was broken and it turns out they just didn't light the pilot. (This was after a long summer when they restarting it.)

[wvbreamfisherman]

My Dad had a duplex when I was growing up. My brother and I spent a lot of time cleaning (and some unbelievably nasty stuff at times), repairing and maintaining the place.

My favorite story is coming in to the bottom unit after a tenant moved out stiffing us for a month's rent to clean up. I walked into the kitchen, flipped on the light and it looked like someone was rolling up a carpet as the roaches ran away. It took three applications of bug bombs and a bunch of direct spraying to get than one under control.

I have no idea how many times we had to eradicate fleas...