Landlord’s Publicly Posted Maintenance “Leaderboard” Singled This Tenant Out as the Most Expensive Resident at over $2k—Leading Neighbors To Blame Him for Imminently Rising Rent: ‘Mine Is at the Top With $2,340'

I feel like this landlord must be a manager somewhere… as this is exactly the type of strategy workplaces everywhere employ with KPI leaderboards to keep staff looking at each other and not at ownership and/or management as the sole cause of poor workplace conditions and stagnating pay… It's so much easier to get away with making decisions that disadvantage them it if you can keep them pointing fingers and scrambling over each other like rats in a bucket, rather than risking them realizing that the entire bucket is actually sinking and forcibly submerged by someone else holding the handle from above.

Do with that metaphor what you will.

Landlords are well known for dragging their feet, taking as long as possible to handle maintenance requests. By delaying maintenance for as long as possible, they can stall out the inevitable cost and actively reduce it by just getting tenants to give up asking and just live with it. Property management companies work well for this, basically existing solely to add a layer of bureaucracy to any requests the tenant might have. That way, the tenant, who only has contact with the property management company, has to submit a “request” to the management company. The company then contacts the landlord and waits to hear back. This somehow ends up taking weeks or months, as the property management company keeps saying “they haven't heard back yet” from the landlord while refusing to do any more about it.

This happened at one property we lived in, a townhouse with a front and back yard. We were told during the viewing and during signing that the place would be cleaned up, inside and out, before the move-in date. 

Yeah… that didn't happen.

Now, I don't mind at all taking care of yard work and external maintenance at places I live in. Gardening, landscaping, and similar tasks are actually something I quite enjoy, so I'm happy to deal with them. But the state of this property's yard and surrounding trees was more than I was willing to contend with. I'd already let them know that I'd happily maintain them after they had put them back to a manageable state.

But despite repeated promises, when we pulled up with our U-HAUL trailer load of furniture and belongings, everything was exactly as it had been some weeks prior. First, they tried to gaslight us into thinking that they had never promised it in the first place. But our lease explicitly stated the exterior and yard maintenance was the responsibility of the landlord. They eventually relented, but every time after that, when we contacted the property management company, they gave us the same answer: “We haven't heard back yet.” That went on for months.

Despite my persistence, the gardens were never taken care of. Though we only lived there for 5-6 months of our 1-year lease, which is a story for another time. 

Maintenance is just part of owning a home, whether you live there yourself or are renting it out. Everyday use and even the constant, wearing march of time alone are enough to cause things to break and wear out. So, even if the home is sitting empty, there are going to be maintenance costs. Still, for some reason, a lot of landlords predominantly seem to think that this is the fault of the tenants themselves, counting every dollar against them in their head.

Still, stalling-out requests wasn't the only trick this landlord had up his sleeve. Instead, he used an unorthodox strategy for attempting to keep tenant maintenance requests down. And, like the tenant who shared the story said, it is truly not one I have seen before either.

This was the story that an apartment building tenant shared with an online renters community.

I live in a small 8-unit building, and our landlord just put up something I've never seen before.

There's now a laminated sheet in the lobby showing how much money he's spent on maintenance for each apartment this year. Unit numbers, dollar amounts, everything.

Story/UnwelcomePorcupine

One day a laminated sheet appeared in the lobby listing how much he spent on maintenance for each apartment, right down to all the personally identifying details.

The tenant's apartment topped the list at $2,340 after repairs to a broken furnace component and a leaking kitchen sink pipe. To make matters worse, the landlord added a warning that those expenses affected everyone’s rent when leases came up for renewal.

Mine is at the top with $2,340. Apparently, replacing a broken furnace part and fixing a leak under my kitchen sink makes me the most expensive tenant in the building.

At the bottom, he wrote that these expenses affect everyone's rent when leases come up for renewal.