'We moved out without telling them': Intrusive landlord enforces monthly inspections, tenants move out, forcing him to scramble

Author image for Ben Weiss
Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
May 3, 2024 2:00 PM EDT

Apartment drama is one of the few conflicts we can all relate to. Most adults starting out in their early twenties have had to deal with abysmal living situations. That could be nightmare roommates, noisy neighbors, unlivable conditions, and actively counterproductive landlords. 

The thing about landlords is they are never present when you need them to be but they are ever-present when they need more money from you. These tenants certainly learned the hard way what can happen when you're living under the roof of an intrusive landlord. He started enforcing mandatory monthly inspections, not because of anything the tenants were doing but because of other tenants in a different unit. Why should these guys have to suffer as a result of their landlord's total negligence with regard to someone else? 

Just when this landlord thought he had control of these Redditors, they remembered that at the end of the day, they could just leave, which is exactly what they did. Keep scrolling below for the full story. For more stories like this, here is one about another tenant's revenge on their neighbors.

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  • 01
    FOR RENT
    via Chris Robert
  • 02
    Sign to continue lease LOC I've lurked here a long time and never thought of something I could post but remembered this gem from about 14 years ago.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 03
    This starts when my (now) wife and I decided to move in together and rent a house. We were in our early twenties, it was our first time renting and we had fairly low income so our options were limited.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 04
    Luckily we found a place that was in a less desirable area but had recently had some basic renovations. We signed a lease and life went on. Our first 12 months went by with a rental inspection from the agent every 3 months or so, never got any feedback and being new to renting figured everything was ok.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 05
    We had a couple items that needed repairing in that time so I met the landlord and got his details for organising repairs. He seemed like a decent bloke, probably early forties, reasonably handy and did some repairs himself.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 06
    The first year went by, the lease came to an end, they increased the price and we signed on for another 12 months.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 07
    Then it happened...about 2 months later the agent came to inspect along with the landlord's wife. The wife turned her nose up at absolutely everything and made a number of insulting comments about our furniture when she thought I couldn't hear. We got an inspection report after that gave us a huge list of items to rectify and 2 weeks to do it or they'd initiate proceedings to evict us.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 08
    Naturally after never hearing any feedback from any other inspections we were shocked. The items were mostly minor nitpicks with the worst things being to move our cats outdoors, clean the oven and poison weeds on the path in the backyard.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 09
    We were fine copping it on the chin and doing what they asked... except for the cats. Initially when signing the lease it said no pets. but we requested and got acceptance for our indoor only cats. It was noted on the lease...
    via u/Xenoun
  • 10
    but not on the copy I had. I was kicking myself for not having it in writing and knew I had no chance if they wanted to push the point.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 11
    So I called the landlord rather than talking through the agent. He explained that tenants in the other house they owned had been using it as a drag lab and the agents had never picked up on it. So when they found out his wife insisted on going along to our inspection,
    via u/Xenoun
  • 12
    hence why we got a bad report. I talked it out with him, and although he was very patronising towards me, he agreed we could keep the cats inside as long as we kept everything clean and the next reports went fine.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 13
    So we did as they asked and they increased the inspections from once every 3 months to once a month which is the minimum period they're allowed. We had a list of things to fix after every inspection. It made our life h, we felt like intruders in our own home, we grew to hate living there and it put a strain on our relationship.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 14
    Luckily our unluckily depending on how you look at it my father passed away around that time, so I ended up with inheritance money from his super fund and the sale of his house. My wife and I used the inheritance as a deposit to buy a house of our own, sorted out a loan agreement and found a place we liked.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 15
    Now this is where I finally got my chance to repay them for making us feel like indentured servants that only existed to vacuum carpets and scrub walls in our home. By some miracle of luck I negotiated the settlement date for our new house to be one week before our lease was due to end.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 16
    This meant that we wouldn't have to break contract and be stuck footing the bill while they found new tenants! Better yet, they sent me a letter saying our lease was due to end and included a new lease agreement (with a large jump in rent). The letter said we had to either sign the new lease
    via u/Xenoun
  • 17
    and send it back to them by a date that was 2 weeks before end of lease or consider the contract ended, move out by the end of the lease term and hand over the keys.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 18
    It said nothing about telling them we didn't want to renew the lease... so I didn't. I didn't want them booking open inspections and intrude further on our lives to show the place to new tenants and decided they didn't deserve extra notice.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 19
    The days ticked by, a couple weeks went passed and my wife and I were busy getting ready to move. I didn't get contacted by the agent again... until my phone rang one week after the new paperwork was due, literally the day before we were moving out. It was the agent of course.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 20
    They greeted me nicely and said it was just a reminder that we needed to sign the new lease and get it back to them. I told them, oh we aren't signing it, we bought a house and we're moving out tomorrow! The other end of the line went dead silent for a good few seconds while my face got stuck in a grin. The agent quietly asked why we hadn't told them
    via u/Xenoun
  • 21
    and I said the paperwork only said to let them know if we were extending the lease, nothing about moving out so I assumed they knew. She said goodbye pretty quickly and the panic in her voice was glorious, she was sc knew it. and
    via u/Xenoun
  • 22
    I wish I got to hear more of the fallout but my wife and I moved out, cleaned the house over the remaining week and I handed the keys over. They never booked any open inspections in that final week so the house sat empty for a while waiting on new tenants and the landlords missed out on some rent payments. We also checked the listings and saw they advertised it at a lower price than what they were going to gouge us for.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 23
    As a bonus - a couple days after the lease ended the agent called me and said our contact stated we had to have the carpets steam cleaned and they were going to take the cost from our bond. I told her we'd had them steam cleaned and she said we didn't, the carpets smelled like garbage! After me telling her again that we had she demanded a copy of the receipt. I emailed it through and never heard from them again...I didn't mention that there was a cavity
    via u/Xenoun
  • 24
    under the house and the couple bags of rubbish I chucked under there as we were moving out because the bins were full. I guess the floor wasn't air tight.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 25
    tldr; Paperwork says to sign a new lease and return by 2 weeks before end of current lease otherwise we had to move out. Agent assumed we were extending, we moved out without telling them. They ended up with an empty house and missed out on rent payments.
    via u/Xenoun
  • 26
    Ok-Thing-2222 +1. 4 hr. ago Never in my life have I heard of a landlord coming in every 3 months for an 'inspection', let alone 1 month. In what country is this allowed?! They even opened your oven door? How intrusive!
    via u/Xenoun

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Tags

landlord malicious compliance malicious-compliance-reddit tenant landlords petty revenge reddit thread Reddit apartment
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