'The judge ruled in our favor': New landlord demands existing tenants revert house and garden to original state, tries to sue them when he sees the barren wasteland of his own making

Some people's pursuit of unchecked control and profit causes them to make shortsighted blunders. At least their own greed and stupidity are holding them back because these people's constant manipulation of legal loopholes and leeching off societal virtue means that they otherwise are getting a leg up on the rest of us.

Enter stage right: Landlords—a group infamous for their corner-cutting, profit-seeking, and below-the-belt tactics. It should be no surprise that a landlord made such a decidedly short-sighted demand as they did in this story shared by Redditor u/AccurateInstance96 to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit.

Anyone who lives in a rental—which, let's be honest… in 2023, most of us probably do—has probably experienced this with a landlord at some point… paying a premium to live in a dilapidated structure with white, sterile interior paintwork—slapped haphazardly over every surface and wall fixture: outlets, light switches, sometimes even door and cabinet handles. All painted white, as if the Rolling Stones visited the place but had a change of heart in their choice of color.

Yards have a similar charming aesthetic, either untended and overgrown or barren like the Australian outback.

Any changes you make to improve their careful design work will come out of your pocket. You'll often have to return it to its original state when you're eventually forcibly evicted. Fair is fair–I suppose. But what happens when your landlord sells the home by leveraging the state of your improvements to the place?

Well, that depends entirely on the new owner. If the new landlord demands your departure and the place returned to its original state—well, they might get more (or less) than they bargained for.

That's what happened in this story of malicious compliance that was shared on Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by Redditor u/AccurateInstance96, who shared their story to the popular subreddit. Keep scrolling for selected screenshots of the story that inspired our commentary on the subject, or see the original thread here. For more like this, check out this landlord who tried to charge a tenant over the value of their deposit and lost in a countersuit.

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Posted by Brad Dickson