- Landlord-tenant relations can sometimes be frosty, but these situations really take the cake...
Every landlord has dealt with at least one challenging tenant, but some landlords have had some pretty strange experiences. Here are ten of the strangest things landlords encounter with their tenants.
1. Hoard cats
Nobody knows why some people collect Lego sets, while others collect cats. It’s okay to have a few cats. Some people can even take care of six or eight cats. However, a collection of 100 or more cats is a problem big enough to condemn a building in Houston, Texas.
Most cat hoarders don’t keep enough clean litter boxes so their entire house becomes a litter box. You can’t mistake the smell of cat urine and it’s impossible to remove from the carpet and padding.
Unfortunately for landlords, hoarding is considered a protected disability. Landlords are required to make reasonable accommodations for a hoarder to allow them time to fix the problem before being evicted.
If you’re a landlord, hopefully you have a great property management company that will handle cat-hoarding tenants legally. You really can have too many cats.
2. Collect literal trash
It’s not just hoarders who collect trash. Sometimes people are just lazy and let their trash pile up around the property. Trash attracts rodents and other animals when there’s food involved.
It’s expensive to handle a property full of trash, especially if some is located inside the building. For some reason, some tenants don’t want to put their trash in the trash can, take it to the dump, or call a junk hauling service.
3. Let their kids color on the walls
Kids love coloring, but there is a difference between a coloring book and their bedroom walls. One is appropriate for coloring and the other is not.
It’s every kid’s dream to color all over their walls, but most parents would never let that slide. However, some parents let their kids color on the walls and figure they’ll just paint over it when they move out.
However, more often than not, those good intentions fall flat and landlords have to repaint the entire room.
4. Keep dangerous, exotic animals
Tenants who love animals can go too far, like keeping a baby tiger that starts biting their neighbors as it gets older, forcing police to tranquilize it through a window while repelling down the side of the apartment building.
5. Call at 3am for non-emergencies
Sometimes tenants call their landlords at 3am to tell them the closet door came off the track or the bathroom screen fell out.
Nothing drives landlords crazier than emergency calls that aren’t emergencies.
6. Make bizarre requests
Has a friend ever invited you over for an indoor ziplining party? Believe it or not, some tenants install a zipline on their apartment ceiling. They get caught quickly when neighbors complain about the noise.
7. Paint the house bright colors
Some tenants love being obnoxious and they paint their home loud colors to give their landlord (and neighbors) the middle finger.
Some tenants paint their home bright purple, pink, orange, and sometimes go with rainbow stripes. Often, it’s to insult a neighbor they’re feuding with, but sometimes it’s a direct hit to the landlord.
8. Defecate on the carpet before moving out
When a tenant isn’t happy about getting evicted, they could just pack up and move on with their life. That’s not good enough for some tenants who feel like they need to leave their mark before leaving for good.
9. Attempt to sell the house
It sounds crazy, and it is – some tenants attempt to sell their landlord’s house. It’s not just tenants who run this scam. The “fake landlord” scam is real and it’s prevalent, especially in Detroit.
While most scammers aren’t the tenant, there have been tenants who ran this scam and “sold” the house to an unsuspecting victim. When the tenant is the one scamming new “buyers,” they’re usually caught because at some point, the landlord will realize their original renter is no longer occupying the unit.
10. Run a drive-thru from the garage
Have you ever just wanted to grab some tacos while you’re cruising around your neighborhood? Some tenants have made that a reality for their neighbors. One mortgage broker told Apartment Therapy that he had a tenant set up a taco stand in the house and created a drive-thru in the garage.
Tenants do strange things
If you own property, hopefully you won’t have to deal with these situations. When you’re a landlord, you really have to be prepared for anything.