Having your landlord contact you to let you know they're moving into your spare room in a few days sounds like a great premise for a sitcom… but it would be a nightmare to live out in real life. But let's be honest, living with your landlord is never an ideal situation, especially when they go ahead and invite themselves into your living arrangement when you've signed a lease and made a legal agreement that the place is yours to live in for the duration of the agreement. Obviously, there are pr…

When you make the decision to brutally and strictly enforce the rules of a written agreement—almost to the point of spite—you'd better make darn sure that you've thoroughly reviewed that agreement yourself. If you want a strict interpretation of something, you'll get it, and anything that wasn't intended to be in there in the first place is fair game. This is your game, don't fault your intended victim for playing it too. Predatory practices from landlords are incredibly common in certain commu…

Insisting on adherence to process when it does nothing but create an inconvenient obstacle is a tactic that the power-hungry love to wield like a fork at Sunday dinner—and I'm not saying they only use it once a week, but rather that they do so with ravenous vigor. It's silly, really, that someone should make such a big deal out of nothing—but trust anyone who is desperate to justify their existence in this world to do so. When this couple moved from their apartment complex, they received a foll…

One of the best parts about renting is when you wind up trapped in a terrible house with a useless slug-like landlord, contractually obligated to continue paying a real-life Jabba the Hutt a (significant) portion of your paycheck. At the same time, they do little to ensure they're delivering you a marketable and inhabitable product. In most places, there's only an escape from this entrapment with arduous process or extreme circumstances. Since the landlord often holds a hefty security deposit o…

Ah, the wonders of Christmas morning: Family gathering around the tree, coming from near and far in order to enjoy a day filled with mirth and cheer — all to the tune of the landlord's new concrete driveway being poured and leveled. What a wonderful time of year.

This landlord threatened legal action against their tenant if the tenant refused to let them show the apartment while they were still living there. The tenant did not want the grief of going through a legal process with their terrible landlord, so they caved under pressure and allowed the apartment viewings to occur.

Don't even get me started on landlords thinking they can DIY paint jobs...