Trying to wrest your deposit back from a surly landlord is like trying to convince a dog to give you a share of his dinner. It's not like your landlord is going to growl and potentially bite you… but it's also not entirely out of the question. Regardless, good luck getting much from either; your landlord considered that “deposit” to be his as soon as it hit his bank account. Never mind the fact that the place was in a state and no cleaning was done before you moved in… or the fact that he proce…

Renting a home is a challenging experience, living in a place that isn't really your own under some degree of scrutiny from a landlord whose asset you're paying off for them… and that's the situation in the best of circumstances. There are plenty of landlords who won't uphold their basic obligations of maintaining their property to liveable standards, charging you more and more in rent—yet, regarding their tenants as an unfortunate inconvenience to their “investment”—refusing to fix anything wh…

Being a renter feels like you're perpetually stuck under the foot of the 1%. As you watch your paycheck drain from your bank account into your landlord's every month, it's tough not to feel a certain resentment and resistance to their wealth, since it's you who's paying their restaurant bills, buying their cars, and giving them the means to install indoor pools in their second home in Tahoe. But what if there was a way to get back at your greasy, slime-ball of a landlord?

If there's one thing that can wreck a homeowner's day, it's bamboo. I had a coworker way back who bought a house where—unbeknownst to him—the previous owner had planted bamboo next to the house alongside their deck. From the day I got to know him until the day I left that job, he was constantly battling that blasted plant, having to crawl in and under their low-lying deck structure to keep it from spreading and out of the foundations of the house. The bamboo was his nemesis, the Joker to his Ba…

There are few people you can truly trust in this world… and none of them are real estate agents or landlords. Two groups of people who make a name and a living for themselves by carving the flesh off of the unsuspecting. They'll stop at nothing to ensure they always walk away on top and with some extra coin in their pocket. So, it's unsurprising that a real estate agent who also landlords their own properties might be a little unethical and uncaring when it comes to profit-seeking and the fatte…

For some odd reason, realtors and landlords seem to think that everyone is sitting around at home all the time. Because they like to think we're loafing around the house at all hours, it means that they can simply pop by at any moment, expecting us to be ready to greet them at the entryway. Newsflash: Tenants have lives and we are not waiting on your beck and call.

One of the penultimate joys of renting a home is having random strangers traipsing through your house; it will happen on a near monthly basis during your tenancy—or on whatever duration for inspection is dictated in your agreement. Still, whenever this occurs, you'll feel like you've been transported into Shawshank Prison and are awaiting an inspection from a corrupt and hostile warden who may take issue unpredictably at any little thing. Sure, in most cases, the inspection isn't nearly so insi…

Not all heroes wear capes. This time, the hero is just a faceless voice heeding a helpful warning. It all started three years ago when this Redditor lived in a complex that was run by an incompetent landlord. You know, the kind that never responds to you when you have an issue, never fixes anything, and the place gets constant violations because they refuse to do anything they're supposed to when keeping the place up. When you get this kind of landlord, usually you find out too late and have to…

That's right, these neighbors seemed so entitled, we had to combine rude and obnoxious to make rudenoxious and we're not even sorry about it. Every now and then we come across a Reddit story where someone feels bad about what they did, but the further you read the more you realize the truth. That this person is just considerate and the person or persons making them feel guilty is actually the guilty one(s). Poor Redditor u/HJEANS was feeling remorseful for finding out that her 2 neighbors were…

We talk a lot on here about terrible, predatory landlords, and that's only a small part of the constantly ongoing discourse on the topic around the wider internet. And, to be fair, they're an easy group to hate... There's a lot to be said about a group of wealthy investors who bank land and real estate, which pushes up prices for everyone else, who are then forced to rent and service the mortgages of the very same places they were priced out of in the first place, all the while contending with…

Just the knowledge that our landlords probably bought our apartment for 1/10th it's current value and are living fat off of our rent check every month is enough to grind every tenant's gears, but if a landlord has the audacity to wring out a single cent more than our rent amount at the end of the month, we feel the back of our throats prickle with rage.

Renting is always some sort of chaotic show when the owner changes from private to large corporation. Providing a basic need to humanity should not be left in the hand of faceless corporations with zero empathy. Unfortunately, that is what happened to the mobile park lot that this Redditor had been living in. They had only been there about a year before the independent owner sold it to a huge money-hungry corporation. Because of this, nothing got fixed, so their driveway was deteriorating. OP's…

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…

It's not often you'll find people rooting for landlords; there's not exactly anything about a group of people who have a reputation for milking their tenants for cash, increasing rent for improvements and repairs that they never actually completed, and taking deposits with little-to-no justification, that inspires people to root for them. It's worth recognizing, though, that this generalization doesn't remotely cover every landlord out there. There are plenty of landlords out there who are rent…

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…

There's always that one kid who is extremely picky about eating their vegetables, refusing to touch anything green in color, or that has the remotest possibility of being somewhat healthy. This was not helped in our childhood by the sheer amount of media depicting kids refusing to touch vegetables like it was cool. Still, you would expect that at some point during all those years between eight and thirty, there would be some maturing and growth and that, even if vegetables still aren't your fav…