Discussion: Nightmare Tenant Stories
In yesterday’s discussion of brownstone tax increases, there was a request for a thread on tenant horror stories. We’ll kick it off with a nightmare scenario described by an anonymous reader: A couple years ago, I found out too late that I’d rented to a serial tenant; everything else checked out, but she’d never paid…
In yesterday’s discussion of brownstone tax increases, there was a request for a thread on tenant horror stories. We’ll kick it off with a nightmare scenario described by an anonymous reader:
A couple years ago, I found out too late that I’d rented to a serial tenant; everything else checked out, but she’d never paid rent for more than a couple of months, then claimed the apartment was uninhabitable, changed the locks, and played the LT system for all it was worth. There were no judgments against her. But a litigation check would have revealed multiple settlements with previous landlords who had paid her to get out, as after she quit paying rent each time, she made life so unbearable for everyone in the building (screaming at the top of her lungs all night, accusing neighbors of being peeping toms, threatening to poison pets, etc.) no landlord could wait for months in LT court to wend through the inspections and evictions – all the rest of their tenants would have left in the meantime. And every settlement had a clause compelling the landlord to give her a recommendation to her next victim. She actually owed her previous landlord $16,000 at the point I rented to her; he was just grateful she’d disappeared and never bothered to enforce the judgment because he was afraid she’d kill him if he tried.
This is why we are going to try to lease or rental unit to a friend! Anyway, please share your renter horror stories and tips for avoiding them below.
Hi All: As an LL with about 20 years of “experience” under my belt, let me offer the following: I have had great luck over the past few years with insisting on co-signers, preferably parents, to leases. Here’s the typical scenario….the T moves in..all is well and good…a few months pass and, well, they find “problems” with the apt. (meaning: they can’t pay the rent or don’t have all the rent or have drug problems and no cash or whatever their mental illness happens to be)..suddenly, I’m not getting paid. What to do? Don’t bother with the psycho tenant; pit the co-signer against tenant by sending a stern letter to co-signer. This works like a charm, gang. The check arrrives and all is well in the world. See, the start of a tenancy is like the start of a marriage…it’s all sweetness and light. That’s when you move in for the co-sign kill. That’s your opportunity and don’t blow it..nobody moves in until the papers are signed and the due dilligence is done. Get everyone’s ss# and credit report. Don’t half-ass it; get a good lawyer top draft an agreement you can use over and over again. The co-sign is key as you now have an individual totally on the hook and you can bypass asshole needy moron tenant to get what you deserve…money.
I am one of five tenants currently renting out an awesome four-level townhouse in D.C. . Me and two other guys rent out the top four levels and two girls rent the basement.
I located the house in May with a good, trusted friend and coworker. My friend was renting a basement and I had been living in the same one-bedroom for four years.
He and I signed the lease with a thirty-four year old doctor who seemed to have his life in order. He was a GW grad, with a Phd and a career. My friend had met him living in the house where he was renting the basement . My friend and I just being two humble twenty-something retail sales geeks, we had this idea he’d prove responsible. Cue the horror.
All was well the first five months, rent and bills were being paid and we generally got along. My friend and I swiftly found our older, more established housemate to be a flamboyant queen who would throw histrionic fits over minor cleanliness issues, but he at least paid his end (or so we thought).
At the very height of this loser’s anal-retentive fussing, in September, we recieved an email from our landlord detailing $3200.00 in unpaid rent.
Our landlord set up our payment process so that we would simply deposit our checks directly into his bank account at the start of each month. The landlord had noticed in August that one of us had been SKIPPING payments for two months and traced it to Mr. Professional.
Upon discovering the good doctor was the deadbeat, our kindly, patient and friendly landlord bargained with him not to tell myself and the other guy of the nonpayment, as long as he got the money by a certain deadline. This never happened, and we were all soon emailed about our situation…
The email we were all sent was also forwarded with the emails the landlord and the loser had been sending each other. All of his responses to the landlord’s inquiries were peppered with total lies and fake tales of woe to excuse his negligence.
He was also a shockingly terrible liar. I can post my edited versions of the emails (names left out, etc.) here on this site if anyone is interested. Quite the nauseating reality show.
When my friend and I confronted our housemate on his little con job he got infuriated we would even have been infromed. He said it had nothing to do with us and it was between him and the landlord!
We explained, with no shortage of condescension, that we had all signed a little three-way contract and all of us were screwed because of HIM. He refused to hear this and stormed out of the house in an infantile rage.
Doctor deadbeat was now in a tight spot. He now had two livid, hate-filled housemates to come home to, and the only thing keeping us civil was his flimsy promise to pay it asap.
Our landlord, by the end of October, could wait no longer. The old eviction threat was thrown and it didn’t matter WHO paid it, it just had to be paid. I was sick with rage, now. Sure, I had the money. But it was my goddamn tuition for the semester and I’d worked very hard to save it. My friend had no money. Bottom line, I paid it. I went right from the bank to the bar, got wasted, came home and kicked this scumbag’s door in for spite. Yeah, I know, smooth one.
To make a long story short, I explained what triggered my episode both to the housemates and the landlord. I apologized sincerely to Dr. Con and things were tensely levelled out.
I offered to let the him take his time repaying me and stay current on all future obligations. His rent the month after that, while a week late, was paid.
Enter December. I’m not holding my breath to see a reimbursment from this creep and I’ve paid his rent again this month.
We’re keeping this a secret in hopes he will soon pay, but he won’t. We HAVE managed to shorten the lease by getting an addendum with all three of our signatures.
If anyone knows of a means by which I can serve him court papers of any kind, whether it obligates him to repay me or just make his life difficult, kindly message me.
Can I have the address and telephone No of Mr Halls who was connected with the Gramercy International Investment Trust/ Published: 01 – 23 – 2005 , Late Edition – Final , Section 11 , Column 4 , Page 2
I had a tenant just like that. She would accuse me of having people parked outside watching her. She accused other tenants of peaking through small holes to look at her naked in the bathroom and would boil something in her apartment that was absolutely horrendous. What a nightmare that was. Glad you got rid of her
Renting is a crapshoot no matter how many checks you run. I once rented to a tenant whose credit and criminal check came back clean. After we were in L/T court for nonpayment and I’d discovered a gory history thereof, I hired an investigator. Turned out the tenant had done jail time just before arriving on my doorstep. It was plea bargained down to a misdemeanor and the file was sealed as part of the plea, so it didn’t come up on the criminal check. The offense? Three guesses – yup, assault with a dangerous weapon on…the previous landlord.
Here is the link to the full NY Times tenantn nightmare story.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03EFDA1430F93AA25751C1A9629C8B63
I’ll post the link to this story update that was in the NY Times RE section on the nightmare tenants in Harlem:
UPDATE; Landlord’s Nightmare Gets a New Landlord
By JOSH BARBANEL
Published: January 23, 2005, Sunday
AFTER an extraordinary court fight including three bankruptcy filings, five eviction orders and $87,000 in back rent, Peter Hall, a former professional football player who is a financial consultant, has moved out of the $5,500-a-month triplex apartment he rented in a brownstone on West 90th Street — but not before skirmishing with his next landlord.
On Jan. 11, Mr. Hall, his wife, three children, two dogs and several birds packed up their belongings and moved on to a $9,500-a-month rental apartment with river views, bringing an end to a 15-month legal conflict with his landlady, Berryl Fox, a psychologist, who lived in the two lower floors of the brownstone, near Riverside Drive.
During their eviction battle, Dr. Fox learned that Mr. Hall and his wife, Anne Torselius Hall, had a long history in housing court, including prior eviction proceedings at high-rent apartments and multiple bankruptcy filings that automatically delayed eviction orders.
Mr. Hall, who is now in his 60’s, played one season with the New York Giants in the 1960’s. He had been accused in the past in civil cases and one criminal case of orchestrating a series of investment frauds, but the criminal charges were dropped. He also pleaded guilty to fraud charges in Detroit in the 1970’s in connection with a housing project built with federal and state funds, and paid a $2,000 fine, according to newspaper accounts at the time.
After a third bankruptcy filing delayed an eviction yet again late last month, the Halls moved only nine blocks away, to a large corner apartment on the ninth floor of a rental building at 270 Riverside Drive. The apartment has four bedrooms and a maid’s room, sweeping river views, a Wolf stove and a Sub-Zero refrigerator. The building owners had recently restored the facade, bought out some long-term rent regulated tenants and, at a recent open house, offered some vacant apartments that had been renovated for monthly rents from $3,500 to $9,500.
Officials at Goodstein Management, the management company that runs the building and rented the apartment to the Halls, declined to discuss the case and would not explain how they missed the Halls’ troubled rental history.
But after the lease was signed and after an initial account of the Halls’ rental troubles appeared in The New York Times last month, the building’s owner, William G. Montgomery, sued the Halls in Housing Court seeking to evict them even before they moved in. Court papers filled in some missing details.
The suit, filed on Dec. 30, indicated that the apartment was not rented directly by the Halls. It was rented in the name of a private trust used by Mr. Hall, the Gramercy International Investment Trust. At a hearing several days later, the Halls, the trust and Mr. Montgomery filed a settlement agreement. Under the deal, the Halls agreed to waive many of their rights to fight evictions in housing or bankruptcy courts, and to pay a $57,000 deposit, a $9,500 rent check and $2,100 in renovation costs. In exchange, they were allowed to move in under a two-year lease.
Meanwhile, Dr. Fox is still trying to collect the back rent that the Housing Court ordered the Halls to pay. JOSH BARBANEL
Published: 01 – 23 – 2005 , Late Edition – Final , Section 11 , Column 4 , Page 2
i’m currently embroiled in a horrid tenant dispute but i don’t want to write about it because this guy is very slippery. it has dragged on for three months and will probably last another three. until he’s out all i feel comfortable saying is: never rent to your broker.
reminds me of that movie Pacific Heights…yowza