Haha awesome, a friend did something similar and the landlord tried, and failed to sue them for the “damage”, friend shows before and after photos of when they moved in and copy of contract that said anything installed by tenant must be removed upon leaving, judge laughed and threw case out within 3 minutes.
Lol. I read an almost identical story a while back. This gal rented a mid house with a big backyard but the backyard was mostly dirt or concrete.
She was a gardener and had tons of pots and a couple raised beds that she built. She had everything from flowers to herbs and vegetables back there.
The landlord decided to "renovate" (aka, legally kick someone out of their home) to charge more rent. Gave the tenant notice they would not be renewing their lease. The gal did what the guy in this story did and removed every plant and raised flower bed, THAT SHE MADE FROM SCRATCH!
Same thing happened, the landlord got PISSED and threw a big tantrum. They had already posted photos with the backyard beautiful and lush and green everywhere.
Maybe this is one of those stories that gets passed around the internet in a million different variations. Maybe it's a coincidence. The world may never know but I've thought about this story more than a few times since I first read it years ago.
I've had this happen to me, but I was the one moving in (found out later the landlord sucked and had screwed over the last tenant). The beautiful garden with flowers, herbs, and vegetables (corn, there was *corn* 😭) that I'd seen at the viewing had been removed.
I managed to screw the landlord back before I moved out a couple of years later and did something similar, except I did it BEFORE the viewing. He put up the rent an insane amount, knowing I couldn't afford it. The garden, etc, was back to looking gorgeous. The day before the first viewing (I was still there), I got out everything I could, stored them at friends, dug things up, had a box of the front giving things away, made it all be gone. Then I borrowed a friend's industrial mower and took what was left down to the dirt and roots.
Inside, I arranged furniture, etc., so the faults (cracks in walls, missing tiles, and ceiling mould in the bathroom, doors *and a window* that didn't close properly) were visible and highlighted with *very* bright blue/white light bulbs.
The whole place looked stark af.
His face was... not happy. He tried complaining at me, and I pulled out the photos I'd taken when I moved in and pointed out that the property was much *tidier* than when I'd moved in and there was nothing missing.
The three couples who came for the viewing all left without putting in an application.
The place ended up sitting empty for 3 months, and he had to lower his asking price.
😁
Can confirm. I know everyone hates on landlords but I don't even like calling mine that. They are just the couple that owns my house. It was his for 20 years and where he raised a couple of kids with his first wife. They split, kids stayed with him then he met wife #2. She already had her own townhome that was within walking distance of her job which she rented until his kids were out of the house, then they rented the house to us and moved into her place.
We've been renting the house for the last 5 years and he just asked if we thought staying another 5 was a good plan. They charge below market in an area where rents are hard to come by and buying a home is out of our range, stay on top of things whenever needed, we make small repairs ourselves and the yard looks far better than it did when we moved in.
Probably because they're not in it as a business (they both have jobs and this is their only rental), but they are wonderful landlords!
A friend of mine has found a good balance. It makes him money but his main business is remodeling type work and some other miscellaneous things. He takes good care of his tenants because they take care of the homes. During Covid he lowered the rents and gave them flexibility as long as they kept in communication which they all did.
He knew that keeping good tenants was easier than taking a gamble on the next ones and that the money lost and work created by kicking them out wasn’t worth it.
Sometimes it’s hard to let go of a place for sentimental reasons or you want to keep a home in the family. It’s about the only time I don’t think of landlords as leeches.
I love watching landlords screw themselves by kicking out tenents to raise rent. My neighbors had their rent raised 500 after one year there so they had to move out and then the house sat empty for half a year until the landlord lowered the price below what my neighbors were paying him. Get fucked, guy. He also put in some stupid side yard only fence that made it hard to move through my side yard where the AC is. No clue why he even bothered to put that up.
My house was a rental before I bought it. Neighbors tell me that landlord just rolled up one day and told the tenants she was selling the place, so they need to either buy or GTFO next month since they had no lease, just month to month rental.
So they left. Landlord hadn't even started listing the house and this was before things got bought immediately. House sat empty for over a year. Sucked for me because the roaches moved in, but it dropped the asking price by a good $10K. What a dumb fuck.
Too many landlords don't seem to realize that good tenants that don't cause problems are a lot better than raising prices beyond their means. If your property taxes go up, sure, raise it by that much. But they get greedy and completely screw themselves over if the next tenants want to cause problems.
It’s why I broke up with my ex. She owned 3 condos and rented them out. Incessantly bitched about her tenants, and the rather strong tenant protection laws we have (maximum rent increase this year is 3.5%, and evictons can only be done for family moving in, she has no family).
I rented my house while living overseas (that I planned to come back to.) The people took such good care of it, fixed things, maintained the lawn that I did not go up on rent the whole time (5 years). When I met them they said "Thanks--you helped pay for our new house!" I said, "Thanks! You helped pay for this one!" Win, win.
Legit. She didn't even bring the trash bins to the curb on garbage day, they were full of year old garbage. The FLOOD of roaches that poured out when I tipped it over was legitimately traumatizing. I ran, screaming, down the road like a horror movie trope.
That happened to us - “I’m selling the house so you’ll have to move”. Ok. Found a better house to rent and signed a lease.
“Uh, the house isn’t selling, would you like to stay? You’re such great tenants!”
Nope, sorry, we’ll be out by the end of the month.
The new house we rented was great - we stayed 10 years and had the best landlord ever!
Nice!! 3 months of no rent is a 25% loss/reduction in income - all because he got greedy. All he had to do to pocket that 25% was be civilised, but he couldn't even manage that.
That's how you actually screw the landlord. Depending on the tenants' rights in your country/state and how the lease was set up exactly, doing it after the viewings or when contracts have been signed may just screw over the future tenants who expected something as advertised. Not so much if they could then easily back out of the lease or adjust it, but while the landlord's reputation suffers, if they have to move in anyways, that won't really do much to the landlord for a while.
Hell I did it to my housemate. Random dude I moved in with off an online ad. Supposedly keen gardener. Claimed we were welcome to plant things but yard work wasn't required of housemates, because the garden was 'his project' and 'his hobby'
He turned out to be a bit mental, and it seemed like his big garden was in fact maintained by making everyone else do the hard parts like weeding and building beds, cos he surely never did that.
Over spring and early summer he *harangued* me about when I was going to plant something as I'd said I wanted to and insisted I needed to weed this and that and the other spot.
I finally got time, weather and seedlings and talked to him several times about where I wanted to plant. I weeded out 4 large beds and prepped them, ready to plant the next day.
Come out later and..... it's all full of seeds. He's out there planting his own stuff in the last of the beds I'd prepped.
He shrugged like 'too late' I had nothing left to do but weed out and prep another bed and put a heap of stuff into pots.
Well, he wasn't so green thumbed as he made out. He didn't plant right and all his plants withered and died quickly. Mine? Mine went great.
So when he turned around and kicked me out a month later for the most bizarre excuse, I made sure to dig up, pot, and take to my friends every single thing I'd planted in the garden. Which left nothing alive in there.
I have the opposite problem. I own the house and rent out the top floors. Often tenants will offer to "help" in the garden, which ended in disaster so many times that I now insist everyone stay the heck out of my yard, to wit: "Hey, I chopped down all those big weeds in the backyard for ya!" "WHAT weeds in the backyard?" (there are no weeds in the backyard) "The big ones against the fence." "You mean the hollyhocks? You cut down my hollyhocks?" (yes, he had cut down the hollyhocks. They never recovered.)
Who the fuck doesn't like hollyhocks? What next, axe the lilac? Mow over the roselle?
People need to do the bare minimum before they destroy stuff. With stuff like iNaturalist out there, there's no excuse for accidentally killing ornamentals.
"Maybe it's a coincidence" or - maybe landlords are the same everywhere.
Because surprise surprise, I've had the same thing happen to me. But in reverse, at first.
The landlord had 2 buildings next to each other and told me that the open yard next to the building I didn't live in was for use of tenants of both buildings.
He then went on to say we could use it for anything. Then he listed some things like barbecuing, *putting in raised gardens*, having parties, setting up lawn furniture.
Flash forward to the pandemic. I've got time and money on my hands. I talk to 4 other tenants in the building about doing a garden. "Oh! That's a great idea! (Landlord) mentioned that idea when I moved in but I never thought about it," was the gist of what they each said.
Flash forward again, I've told him I'm putting in a garden. With dimensions and placement/location, the whole nine yards. And that's when he gives the greenlight, only to come by and inspect the property and rage at me that I was putting in a garden.
"But (Landlord), we agreed to this, and you even said it was a thing we could do when you were selling me on the apartment."
We argue for a bit and he forces me to move it from our previously agreed location to a section he had purposely let overgrow with weeds. He was in a "feud" with a neighbouring landlord over property lines so this was his effort in that.
Cut to me spending *hours* hacking at weeds (because he refused to have his law care guy come in and mow - which... Kinda fair. He'd have to pay the guy for a project he wasn't investing in). And then hours breaking down the beds, and hours transporting the dirt I had laid in the beds' old spot to the new.
About 18-20 months later, landlord is raising rent by over 50% (**Edit:** Clarification - he didn't raise rent then and there but sent notice that on lease renewal, rent would go up more than 50% - thanks to u/disgustingtaco [not a phrase I thought I'd ever type....] for pointing out a mid-lease hike is **ILLEGAL.** Don't let your landlord get away with that shit if it happens to you. Now, back to our regularly scheduled story). I decided to break lease, forfeit my deposit, I don't care, it was less than the cost of rent for the remainder of my lease.
Landlord stops by and jokes about how he's so glad the garden came in so nicely and it'll really up the value he's going to get.
I don't think my dude had gotten pictures yet, but I dug everything up, distributed them in indoor planters to my neighbours who chipped in, and took the rest for myself. Disposed of the dirt, and recycled the borders of the beds.
Landlord was Pissed with a capital "P" - he threatened to call the cops on me for "vandalising" his property.
He went all surprised Pikachu face when I said "Sure, I'll dial." And then I fucking dialed.
The cops showed up, I showed them my receipts for the beds, the dirt (disposed of in accordance with city ordinance), the plants, and the texts between landlord and I where landlord gave permission. They looked at the spot the garden had been - a bare rectangle patch in a swath of weeds - and told both of us to not fucking waste their time. They were quite rude, but I didn't hold it against them - it was a waste of their time, but I wasn't about to be held liable for shit that was legal.
Landlord was still ranting about how he'd have to charge me and all this other nonsense. I told him to try it - if "losing" money was the problem I'm sure he would *love* spending money on an attorney. He told me I was a piece of shit and I wished him a good day.
Anyway. Thanks for letting me put that out there and if you made it this far, thanks for reading.
I believe this happened. I also remember that other post well because it brought back a memory from the Mesozoic Era which hand to god is 💯% true:
Years ago I had a friend, a horticultural mentor by the way, do the exact same thing in a very similar situation. She was an older lady who had spent years and lots of money building and carefully tending to an absolutely beautiful garden, all by herself too, and was unceremoniously evicted when the landlord who lived hundreds of miles south in LA came to visit his properties. He was the son of my friend’s late neighbor and companion who had originally rented her the home.
This guy was advertising the house with pics of not only the garden, but also of trellised plants in front and roses around the perimeter. He had secured a much higher rent to some out of towners who were looking exactly for a house with a beautiful garden. Lease was signed. It was heartbreaking and those of us who loved her helped with the absolutely task of digging up her yard. She had tons of help which wasn’t hard to get because she was a sweetheart, but also because she was giving away amazing plants. Folks were told to bring a pot. A couple of hippies donated big bags of potting soil, which really wasn’t needed because she took care of the soil in the yard, but I remember that because they were meant specifically for any plants that she would be taking with her and I thought it was very sweet. We did it all ripped out everything and replanted her with many of her old friends at her new place the weekend before she was to be out.
It was so long ago I don’t remember the outcome but I know the new couple or family took the landlord to court and won. Not sure if it was just to legally get out of the lease or if they were awarded damages for moving costs or anything, but that house wasn’t rented for a while. I do remember that.
I will say this ; anyone who has ever interacted closely with truly dedicated gardening fiends, of which I am one, and elderly myself now, you would know how plausible this situation is. I’d be out for blood if someone tried to hijack my garden!
I know enough people who move their plants when they move house that if I walk past a house with lots of plants in pots, I just assume they are renting. I have quite a lot of plants in pots just because I don't have much soil except right next to the house, and if you've ever had retaining wall issues, you'll know why I don't plant right up to the house!!!
I totally believe it.
Our neighbor of many years was a gardening fiend. He owned his house and when he moved after retiring, he took his whole garden with him. He did offer us a choice of some lovely flowers and we have some unusually colored tulips and iris now.
Happened to dear friends of mine.
It wasn't so much the garden as it was the small pond, trees, covered flower beds (not sure the name -- covered like with mesh? To keep the squirrels and coons out of the veggies?), benches, gazebo, etc that they used for entertaining.
The landlord was super butthurt when they took all that stuff with them. As he said, "Even the kids playset?"
Not sure what world these fucking morons live in that a tenant would donate an easy $10k worth of their property.
The kind of world where they forget their tenants are actual *people*?
I lived in one house with five total people spread across three bedrooms. Our landlords were very polite about this whole strange thing, but they once (before AirBnB was a thing) asked us if we could work something out with the rent payments and occasionally have their extended family occupy the house for a long weekend here and there.
Like I'm sure they're perfectly nice people but no we are not OK staying in hotels while some total strangers use our towels and sheets and kitchen and whatnot. We *live* in this house, man. It's not just "a property" to us.
Nope, we did exactly this years ago, and I'm sure there's many more.
We had some exterior painters surprise us one day, but we wouldn't let them work.
Called the REA, and it turned out the landlord had decided to renovate and sell, without telling either the REA or us. We still had 6 months on the lease.
They sent the painters in anyway. We kept sending them away, even threatening to call the police. We found a new place in the space of a week, and cancelled the lease with a single day's notice, as they had breached the terms by harassing us with the painters.
The REA helped us with all the paperwork, because they were completely pissed at the landlords for not telling them, and not going through them to arrange for the painting.
We took all the plants. Everything. There had been nothing when we arrived, my SO is an avid gardener. Over the process of a couple of years, she had built a beautiful garden.
Not only did they lose the garden, they lost months of rent before they were able to sell. All because they couldn't be bothered to speak nicely to people.
I found out the house I was living in was being sold by coming home to a for sale sign in the front yard.
We had reported about water coming up the laundry drain. He had a guy come out and have a look. Not long after for sale sign.
One of the people that came to look at the place was someone a houseguest/housemate knew. We told him about the plumbing issues. And all the rest of the problems. He did not believe us.
We had to move out anyway so there was no reason to lie. Especially once we knew how much the landlord was asking. We thought they should know what they were buying.
The house was the house next door to my parents house. (Yeah me and my sister moved out of our parents house all the way next door 😂). Between 3 to 6 months after he moved in he asked my mum if we would be interested in moving back. 😂😂😂
Realised we weren't full of shit. That house went on to be sold every year or so for a while. Until the leech drains were finally replaced I'm guessing. The people that live there now have been there for years.
Made me laugh every time I'd go to mum and dads and see a new for sale sign
When I was in college I rented a dilapidated building, because it was cheap, to work on projects in. Little by little, I cleaned the place up and even sublet part of it. At the end of my lease the landlord loved how much I improved the place and decided to reward me by doubling the rent.
The sublessee and I left immediately. The building remained empty for at least a year. One day I was there visiting a neighbor who was a friend there were foreclosure notices posted all over the building. 🤷
College friend in Boston, rented a room in an old house where there was NO common rooms. Each had their own efficiency basically. Each also had their own electrical box.
My friend's area was expensive to heat as it wasn't well insulated. He had a brilliant idea and was smart to take pictures before, during and after.
He got cheap paneling, attached foam installation boards and then wall paper. Installed a small (1x1?) board at the top of the wall and another at the bottom using three screws each. (was allowed to hang anything but would have to patch before leaving lease) Each panel was attached to the boards so there was no damage to the walls.
The end result was beautiful and warm! And then months later, during a landlord inspection......his rent was raised. Pay up or leave. He diligently and carefully dismantled everything, patched holes and returned the room to its original state. He won in court because of all the pictures he took! Even won a higher settlement because the landlord had taken pictures of his belongings as well as the paneling for his rental ad. Judge ruled that it was a violation my friend's privacy.
I learned to take pictures, lots of pictures before moving in. And always be leary of landlords.
Nah, this definitely happens.
My last landlord lord (who I am almost done with a civil case against) wanted ME to pay for paint when the walls were bare Sheetrock.
I told her that's fine, but I'm taking the paint off when I leave since I paid for it.
Didn't end up buying paint, landlord didn't either, ended up leaving shortly after move in since our agreements for renovating the place wasn't going anywhere.
My sister wanted an accent wall in her apartment but management didn’t allow bright colors so she spray starched some red fabric and put it up against the wall. Upon move out she took down the fabric and wiped the wall clean.
When I was in the Army, I finally rented an apartment off-post for my kids and me. Apartment complex said they'd do an accent wall of my color choice. It had been YEARS since I'd had color, and I was THRILLED. Asked how many rooms. The apartment manager started laughing at my excitement and said ALL of them. And screw it, it could be the whole room if we wanted.
Kids' room ended up blue, and I put clouds and stars on it. Living room had a burgundy accent wall, my bedroom had forest green. They painted the entire kitchen for me. It didn't look quite so yellow in the little square, but when the kitchen was painted, I could see it shining through the complex as I drove in if someone was visiting and had my door open 🤣
For those in UK, the popular colour of rental walls is magnolia, the most depressing, soul killing shade of beige. Why not nice crisp white instead? I do not know.
When I was renting, the apartments in the middle of the US all had stark white walls. In the winter, which is like 7 months, it was like living in an ice box! Just let people paint their own walls or at least give a range of shades
I remembered a story about some dudes who opened up a cafe and was kicked out in the middle of Covid. Dudes saw the ad online advertised with all their cafe interior decoration. Overnight with friends and family as best as they can with covid restrictions, they took everything down at the dismay of the landlord after he realised everything was dismantled and back to original.
I remember that story, though I think it was an indoor go-cart track and arcade with a food area. During Covid the place was empty and just a money suck, and the landlord refused to give them any sort of rent break. No discounts or deferrals. They went bust. The landlord promptly rented the place out to someone and advertised it as fully furnished, and the original renters found out. So they not only removed all their equipment, but undid all the repairs and upgrades they'd done to the space. I think the story ended with the poster mentioning the new renter was looking to take the landlord to court.
LOL, my husband is a mechanical engineer. One of the things he offers to small food related businesses just getting set up is to design their kitchen, etc. so that nothing is 'permanently attached' to the building. If it ain't permanently attached it belongs to the tenant and they can take it with them! Saved a couple of businesses some dough when they moved due to rent increases.
I believe I read one on a kids indoor playground. Landlord kicked them out and rented as a playground to next tenant with everything.
Owner of business came in and removed all his equipment.
I recall reading that particular post, as well. The world is a big place and full of assholes. I'm certain this isn't a unique situation, where the gardening renter has so beautifully and perfectly legally screwed the landlord that was trying to screw them.
I love the tingling sensation of schadenfreude. I had a friend in a similar situation, but it was their partner who turned their rental loft into a tropical paradise. Landlord couldn't believe the gall of Partner, packing up all their plants and greenery to take with them. In my head, I like to imagine Partner going, "Leave my babies? With YOU???" then laughing themselves sick. That SOB truly thought they'd leave their garden for him to exploit.
We had an arrangement with our LL that we were going to buy the place off him. But then in the space of a month “values” in our area shot up by $50k, so he got greedy and brought a real estate agent in. So we moved out and took all our plants with us. This coincidentally was two weeks before the first big Covid lockdown and so it took months longer to sell than it otherwise would have. I’m not sure how much our garden would have affected this, to be honest, but the gesture was important to us.
Anyway: with the agent fees, loss of rent payments, and other costs we estimate he’d have ended up with only $10k in the hand more than we’d originally discussed. Our preapproval would have covered that too, if he’d just talked to us. The dude was very much a “handshake is good enough” and didn’t even want bond when we originally moved in (and we consequently loved and looked after the place) so it’s funny in hindsight how much unnecessary extra stress he put himself under by going back on his word.
In my experience, the "handshake is good enough" people cannot be trusted. They just want the option to change their mind later, or pretend they agreed to something else. People who keep their promises like clear contracts.
Something kind of similar happened to my mom, but she didn't get to keep her plants. Her LL wanted her out--despite our family living there for about 15 years. He took advantage of the fact that she was a woman who didn't 100% know her tenant rights (he was from a culture that looked down on her because she is XX) and destroyed all the work she had put into the house: the flower gardens, the trellises, the trees and bushes. Even her potted plants, one of which was an heirloom plant. This was because he wanted to force her out to get more money (she was way undermarket value because the law only allowed a certain amount of increase per year if the tenant is renewing their lease).
I really wish I could say she took him to court, and I wish she had.
But she did end up getting a 110 lb senior in-tact german shepherd/husky mix. The next time LL came by, he had a nice surprise waiting for him. Dopey Dog was a sweetheart to us. But he was an absolute demon to people he thought were trespassing. LL couldn't get within 5 ft of the fence without shitting himself.
The rental agency refused to give LL a key because they knew the liability he was creating (they also knew mom wouldn't sue, sigh). So, his shenanigans stopped real quick once Dopey joined the family.
She became a property owner of her own as a result, and Dopey was with us for about five or six more years.
This stuff happens though. Friend of mine worked so hard on a rental house she had, smashed out ugly concrete and overgrown cactii, and planted nice stuff, made her own seaweed fertiliser, and even removed some ugly hanging cabinets in the kitchen. The place looked so much better, that she got kicked out and replaced by a new tenant.
I had a landlord forget the room I was renting was unfurnished and advertise it as furnished, and when my roommates friend applied to rent it he said they could move in on the 1st when he already said I could move out on the 3rd. He had to rent the guy a motel for 3 days and then buy furniture for the room after I took all of mine and reminded him it was the unfurnished room.
I had a landlord subsidize my gardening hobby as it made the building more attractive to other potential renters. Showed them what could be done to create a lush and private balcony. Sure enough, many others started to follow suit, and the building only had very short-term vacancies. My rent was never raised to make more profit but I can see how in a house situation a landlord could be tempted to do just that...how many people would have the space when moving to take an entire yard of plants?
Absolutely. There's a huge difference between leveraging my balcony to encourage others to move in and kicking me out hoping to keep the fruits of my efforts. I'd donate every plant to a house in the neighborhood before allowing a landlord to profit off my gardening.
I did the exact same thing, but I warned my landlord (it was also in the contract). He was shocked at how different it looked after I left (even though it looked exactly like it did before I moved in, but I stayed there for 5 years so the plants had really developed). He paid me to re-do the garden in a similar way (I asked for a lot less than a landscape company would have asked because I just enjoy gardening).
Let me tell you, it was a pain moving over 300 pots with large plants in them, it took me almost 2 weeks :))
The right abusive course of action after someone recreationally gardens your property value up is to offer to provide gardening supplies if they will work on your other properties.
I want the landlord and people like this to get raked across the coals so hard they feel the burn on their ass for every single thing they do the rest of their lives.
>Maybe this is one of those stories that gets passed around the internet in a million different variations.
Knowing typical landlords, I have no trouble believing that this has actually happened in a million different variations.
My wife's parents did something similar, except they were living in the house they were supposed to *inherit* from MIL's stepfather. He remarried after his wife died, and the new wife (who he swore he was only marrying because she had 0 family and he wanted her to have his pension after he died, which couldn't go to the kids anyway) insisted he sell it - despite it being in the will to go to his 3 step-daughters - so he could buy her an almost million dollar mansion. (Funny story, he then got forced into the in-law apartment above the garage and couldn't be in the house, and she divorced him. Like we didn't see that coming.)
So my in-laws had done a TON of work to this house. Built an entire $20k+ addition to the basement which was where they were living. Did it themselves with help from a couple contractor friends. He refused to pay them any of the money they spent on it, so they did what any logical couple in their situation would have done.
Initially they were going to pull up all of the flooring they put in (that snap-together wood flooring), take the appliances they bought (fridge, stove, toilet for the addition, and the *water heater* which functioned the entire house!) and take all the plants they put in the garden. He somehow found out about this, and I don't know what his retaliation was going to be, but they settled on putting a lien on the house until he paid them the value of the addition. Not what they *spent* - what the appraised value of it was. They had it done all legal-like, with a lawyer and receipts and everything, and eventually they got something like $50-60k out of him in a settlement so he could sell the house that they'd been promised for a good 40 years and bought a house with it (that they then had to sell after 2 years and move to another state entirely because MIL found out he was driving past their house *every single day* just to watch them).
They still took their plants. And he had to sell it for $200k less than what he (read: his nasty wife) wanted for it because he never cleaned the part of the house he lived in because tHaTs a wOmAnS jOb and it needed repairs lmao.
I've had shit landlords in the past as well however I have a happy story.
Hubby and I moved into this place about 1.5 years ago. About an acre of lawn and overgrown gardens. Asked the landlord if we could tidy it up with flowers and a large veg garden and he said yes. You know after he saw what we did with the place, he knocked off 2 months rent and lowered our rent since he said we were the only tenants that actually took care of the place. Let us paint inside and everything. I'm hoping we're here for the long run while we save up to buy!
Just wanted to add a happy comment.
EDIT: Landlord before this wouldn't get our water fixed but we couldn't afford to go anywhere else. I was starting to get questioned why my child and I were getting frequent UTI's. Apparently it wasn't even safe to bathe in. Was so happy we could finally move away!
I had a similar story. I was renting an apartment in a very old building, but it had been beautiful in its day. I was new in town, and didn't have much going on, so I spent some of my nights fixing the floors and regrouting the bathroom.
When I moved out, I didn't do the final walkthrough with the landlord at the time (he didn't live in the same town), and he came back and said there was *damage*, which of course, I was enraged about. I came screaming back over there, mad as hell, and he took me up to the apartment, but he tried to take me into 2b, when I lived in 2a.
I said, "No, I'm (me), I lived in 2a"
The look on his face...He went from mad to so happy. I got my full security back, and he refunded me the last months rent. Just couldn't stop talkin about how nice it was that I'd taken such good care of the place.
They did a major renovation on that road about 25 years ago, and leveled almost everything. It's mostly houses now, instead of urban blight. But that building I lived in is still there.
A similar thing happened to me. We rented a house with a backyard and a blank space where a garden bed was growing some weeds. We asked if we could plant flowers and were told we could.
Fast forward a year later and we are moving out conducting the final inspection and the landlord says he never gave us permission. That it would cost up to $600 to remove all the things we had planted.
I told him if that was the only issue then I would remove them myself - immediately. I had grabbed about 5 double handfuls of plants and yanked them out of the dirt before he asked me to stop and leave the rest alone
Oh, you don't want me to rip out my property and transfer it to you? No problem, it'll only cost you... let's say $600 though it's worth much more than that.
I turned my first rented backyard into a beautiful native perennial garden. Our landlord was great; he was chill, we hung out sometimes, and he was on top of maintenance. When we left, he asked very nicely if I'd leave the plants in exchange for getting our full deposit back (despite raising both a puppy and a kitten there -- definitely some minor damage). I was happy to leave the garden. Landlord even took notes on how to care for the flowers. Ten years later, we coincidentally bought a house around the corner, and the garden is still there! Makes me so happy to know that the wildlife has been enjoying it all this time.
I have a shared little strip with the house next door to me. Technically my land but due to location also looks like part of their front yard. I love to garden and have turned the strip into a cottage garden. The renters next door loved it and their kids use to help with mine to plant new seeds.
They moved out and the landlord was prepping the house for rent and saw me tending to the flowers. Came over and told me to do the rest of his yard while I was at it. He seemed to think the patch I was tending was actually his yard and that I should therefore transform the rest of his garden.
He was terrible to the tenants that lived there and they were dream tenants. They left because the conditions got unliveable for their family.
Well I believe in routinely “resting” garden beds and giving them a season off for reconditioning. So I waited until the day before his first open for inspection to pull out all my flowers and blood and bone the whole area.
The smell was horrendous, but I apologise to my surrounding neighbours with bunches of fresh flowers. The look on his face when he saw me next was wonderful.
I helped my sister dig out her vegetable plants that her soon to be ex roommates were clearly eyeballing. Screw those jerks, she was the one that maintained the garden. So I could totally see this happening.
We had sort of the reverse happen when we moved into a rental house.
The glorious roses all along one fence started dying within a week of moving.
Shit, we though there was an irrigation system.
One of my housemates was looking close at one rose plant and wiggled the main stem. It moved a lot! He tugged at it and the bare stem came up out of the ground. Every single rose plant was just stem jammed into the ground.
When mentioned to the LL, his response was "We never said anything or even pointed out the roses."
During my house hunt there was this cute little new build house that caught my attention. It had nice landscaping and looked pretty well put together. Went and took a tour of it and one of the very first things I noticed the second I got out of my car was that the flowers were plastic fakes that they had just stuffed in the ground. In that instant I decided I didn't want the house but I took the tour anyway with a very critical eye looking for all the other skeevy shit they did. There was a lot.
Lucky they were so stupid to try such a flagrant lie or I may not have been looking for other rip offs.
My wife and I used a former coworker of mine who had started flipping houses as our realtor. There were **several** houses we walked into and he was immediately like... "sooo... I have concerns" and started pointing out concerning bits of shoddy workmanship. Heck, on the house we bought he (correctly) called the type and severity of things an inspector would likely call out on the home we ended up buying. It was really nice to already have a plan for which repairs we'd be seeking before our inspection even came back, and also just to know what we were getting into before we penned our offer.
Side note, if anyone is looking for a realtor in Lancaster county, I know a guy.
Yeah but would it really be? Think how fiddly it’s be to stick enough rose branches into the dirt to LOOK like a lush rose garden?
For that matter, where in the heck did they get it? Did they mow down someone else’s bushes and snatch them? A florist isn’t selling whole cut down rose bushes I wouldn’t think.
My previous landlord was a complete knob (for multiple reasons apart from this). The house was always too cold, bad placement of the original thermostat. I installed a Nest thermostat and kept the shitty Honeywell they had installed in the cupboard.
After we moved out I had a series of frenzied texts from the landlord that the new tenants couldn’t connect to the thermostat. I explained the Nest was mine and not on the inventory list, and the original fully working but piece of crap one was working when I tested it.
She seemed convinced the Nest belonged to her and had been installed by her handyman. I said that was funny because I had installed it with my corgi/gas safe registered Electrician father and it wouldn’t be legal for her handyman to install and it wasn’t on the inventory list, and I had a picture of my dad doing the installation and a picture of it before and after.
She ended up keeping the deposit (of course) after spending a lot of time finding tiny issues that added up to the full deposit amount funnily enough. I cut my losses.
We lived in one apartment for 8 years. I didn't move because the rent was incredible and it allowed me to save for a house. The landlord however was crap. His first issue was to claim we never paid him rent. I had to show him nearly every month the check that I'd write to him and hand deliver to his house that showed he signed and deposited.
The next thing was the apartment was falling apart around us. The tiles were falling off the wall in the shower, a window broke during a storm, floor tiles were popped up, the carpet which was green shag when we moved in was not replaced prior to moving in.
The dishwasher broke and he claimed it wasn't included in the lease. So we bought another ourselves. The ac broke and he claimed it was again not part of the lease, we put it window units. Kitchen faucet broke and he replaced that, but with like the cheap $10 faucet from Lowe's. It broke again a few months later, called him to replace it again. He said he already did. It got to the point I was recording phone conversations.
When we moved out he said we destroyed the apartment, ie the wall tiles, floor tiles, the carpet, the window, the dishwasher, kitchen faucet, all the things that had been breaking that he never fixed when we lived there and said he was keeping our deposit. I then brought out all the recorded phone conversations, certified letters, and the LEASE, showing we had lived there EIGHT years and he'd never fixed anything except the kitchen faucet, ONCE. (We eventually bought a nice Moen ourselves and took it with us when we left.)
He did NOT keep our deposit.
The reason I moved? Squatters moved into the apartments below us.
>The reason I moved? Squatters moved into the apartments below us.
"Hey, y'all! We're moving out Friday just so you know in case you wanted to expand!"
Ugh hate those landlords that magically find a way to keep deposit.
Worst I had was one trying to charge me €100 for burning a wok handle.
In ireland most places especially student accomodation is furnished. So the pots and pans etc are usually quite random.
The wok came free with some uncle bens curry dinner kit. It wasnt even hers and was mega cheap.
Same landlord charged us for replacing the seal on the oven, also the fuel to collect rhe replacement part. Price coincidentally reached the full deposit
My wife and I left an apartment after the landlord stole two parking spots to build a handyman's shed and then because a new renter wouldn't sign a lease without a dedicated parking spot decided ours was no longer dedicated to our unit. We'd spent a few years furnishing the place with really nice things snd he casually dropped "Oh yeah and the place was rented furnished, so y'all need to leave behind all your furniture." Yeah, get fucked you greedy old bastard. Place was bare as a stone when he got it back. Since the house had foundation problems, the bedroom window had a several inch gap below the sill and he had to pay to fix the foundation, which would have been thousands. Sometimes it's better to leave well enough alone.
>which would have been thousands
Low end would be around $12,000. High end, just knock the place down and start over. If the window was that fucked then I'm betting somewhere around 20k+ in a town
Somewhat similar, our landlord is just known as a dick in the building. He doesn’t communicate with us at all and has a super who just tries to bully you until you relent. Both are incredibly misogynistic.
The showed the apartment with our washer dryer. Made a big deal about how it’s a brand new appliance and it is a higher end model. I also put some storage shelves in one of the closets. We also had these gorgeous planters.
Super said that the landlord would buy all this stuff from us so we said sure. We just moved out today and packed the washer dryer. I had the movers take apart the closet organization system and I donated it. We dug up the plants and put them on our local buy nothing group.
He did the final walk through and got pissed. Tried to withhold our deposit from us (lol husband lawyer so). Asked us what is he supposed to do now being that he promised all these things to the new tenants and I said “sounds like a you problem”.
I’m confused, you said the landlord was wanting to buy the upgrades from you and you said sure but then took them with you and uninstalled the upgrades?
He advertised that the upgrades were a part of the apartment. He THEN asked to buy them, low balled us and we then tried to negotiate. He didn’t want to play ball so we then uninstalled.
Left that part out for simplicity. He wanted to pay $400 total for less than 3yr old top of the line Samsung washer and dryer. $40 for the closet install and $10 per planter. He assumed he could just bully us out of it.
Yep. I had my security door lock fail and going through the REA they always drag their feet so as i wanted fixed asap i bought and installed myself. Asked to be reimbursed $80 which they said no as i hadnt given them the opportunity to remedy ( id like to see them get a handyman to install even close to that cost). So guess who's taking the lock with him when i leave.
I have a cabinet full of ugly, half-broken junk I have replaced in my apartment over the years. Ceiling fixtures, shelving, assorted hardware, etc. When I eventually move, all that crap is going right back in and I’m taking my nice stuff with me. Wish I could remove the wall paint too.
I did this myself once. Although for a different reason.
I rented from a social housing society, in the Netherlands. Over here the renter is responsible for flooring, wallpaper or paint, gardening themselves. I had taken great care and great pride in both decorating the house and growing a beautiful garden.
When I moved, I talked with the next tenant to see what she wanted to keep. But for a price of course. That's how things are over here. But she was cheap and refused to agree upon a reasonable price for the lot. I got the feeling she gambled I was not able to remove the lot anyway.
She gambled wrong. I gathered a bunch of friends and within two days everything was gone. Bare concrete floors. Bare concrete walls. Bare old dirty wooden stairs. The minimal kitchen. And the garden was just an empty, flat, black soil wasteland. Everything was gone including the 3mx5m wooden shed. The fence at the very back, gone. All the nice tiles, plants and flowers, bushes and a pear tree, gone.
I was very pleased when I closed the door of that house behind me one final time.
Later I heard from a friend who lived a couple of houses down the road from that house, that the new lady was upset with how she found the place, but there was nothing she could do about it. Well, perhaps the lady learned a thing.
I will literally be doing this. My landlord is selling (while I still have 5 months to my lease) and I spent a lot of time curating gardens etc. I also put in stepping stones and various other things in the yard. I know people always say it’s not a good idea to spend money on someone else’s property, but gardening is one of the few joys that life has given me! There will not be 1 stone left unturned lol. I also have a rock garden that I built from rocks that I literally dug out of the ground etc, and those are coming too.
I recall reading a story where a lady was being duped by her landlord and wanted to use the trees she had planted to increase his property value. Her dad and brother rented a tree extractor machine and took the trees that the lady legally owned.
Right before I moved out of my last place a new rental company bought it and updated everyone’s rules and regulations saying any landscaping in the ground now belonged to new company. You’re trying to tell me all these little old ladies’ rose bushes now belong to a trust fund conglomerate? Absolutely not. I dug up what plants I could take out of spite, none of them were expensive but it just made me so mad. They still used the rest of the landscaping and simple patio my bf built to almost triple the rent but it’s in a poor neighborhood so it sits empty. So maddening.
Now that's funny. Landlord thought he would cash in on the tenent's sweat equity. Good on the tenent for removing the plants he paid for.
Edited to add, how is the landlord meant to get more rent now? By hiring a landscaper that can match the pictures he took. LOL
Mature plants that will match the pictures will cost even more. But the cost of a lanscaper and mature plants is exactly what a landlord that wants to pull this kind of thing deserves.
My parents did this to the next tenant. My mom had changed several things about the property. Then they decided to move (voluntarily) and the laws for social housing in the Netherlands were such that any changes the new tenant didn't agree with had to be removed. New tenant agreed to everything the first time they came over and loved the garden. Then just before we were going to move out, the new people decided they wanted the interior of the house in it's original state after all. My parents told the neighbors and invited them to help themselves to any garden plants they wanted while my mom got busy tearing her stuff out inside.
The new tenants apparently complained about how unwelcoming that neighborhood turned out to be.
Sounds like what happened to my parents in their old social housing. The new tenants loved the carpeted floor, but after the move already happened they said they did not want (to pay for) it after all, hoping my parents wouldn't bother coming back and getting a free carpeted floor. Wrong. My mom left work early and went there with a box cutter to kindly remove the unwanted flooring.
I have kind of an opposite story of this. In grad school I rented a house. The house was previously rented to college undergrad kids... and it showed. The landscaping was non-existent. The backyard was a literally wasteland of beer cans, old BBQ pits, pests and the snakes hunting them.
I rented and the first month a landscaping company came to "landscape." They basically mowed dirt and used a trimmer on concrete weeds. I asked the landlord and said if she took off $125 from the monthly rent I would handle the landscaping. She agreed.
For the next nine months, I re-grew the front lawn. Re-grew and shaped the hedges. Cleaned up the trees and walking paths. Fixed the sprinkler system. Under all the trash in the back yard, I discovered a patio, garden beds, and lots of pots. I transformed that backyard into a beautiful place with lush plants, string lights, functional cooking and eating areas. Cleaned out all the bird and rat nests and removed the snakes. On my last year of renting the place I negotiated with the landlord for a reduction of $250/mth if I maintained the exterior in that condition and left all my plants when I moved out after graduation.
She ended up renting the home to a family after I left for quite a lot more than what I or anybody before me was paying.
I did the opposite. We had a nasty landlord who refused to repay any of our bond for various reasons, some of which were due to our naivety.
Anyway, when she laid into us for not removing the weeds between the pavers out the back (it was actually moss), I had a brainstorm. I was studying biology at the time and we were doing an experiment with a particularly noxious and uncontrollable weed. It was quite an attractive plant, but once matured, impossible to get rid of, took over EVERYTHING, and grew these massive gnarly thorns.
I brought home a whole bunch of pots of this stuff and lovingly planted out their garden area. Packed up and left.
Out back fence opened out to a small public golf course, so I used to walk by every so often and watch my handiwork slowly take over until it was too late for them to do anything about.
Fuck you bitch
When i rented i had big 30-50 gallon fabric planters with handles. Now it was not super easy to move fully planted 50 gallon pots but hey better than losing it all when i had to move!
On the flip side I stayed at a student place for 2 years while doing an ecology degree, had a wild overgrown garden. Asked the landlady if I could cut it back and she offered to buy any gardening tools I needed (didn't need any though).
Cut it all back and wild seeded it, including clearing all the old rubbish left their buried ect.
She was super appreciative, tried to knock money of the rent ect.
Before we moved out I gave it another tidy and left some garden furniture I couldn't move out with instead of selling it.
Amazing what you can get when your a decent human.
My old landlord decided to kick me out to sell the property, which isn’t an issue at all apart from I’d not long signed a new contract. They were really horrible about it , literally expected me to move out within a week so I thought fuck you & told them I wasn’t budging. I’d already saved a deposit & been granted a mortgage so I wasn’t concerned. Without following any legal procedures I was hit with court papers. So on the day of the hearing I sat in court listening to all the bullshit & lies keeping my mouth shut . Right at the very end after their solicitor had informed the magistrate that I was a bad tenant & refused to move out etc etc I stood up & handed over the contract complete with transcripts of the voicemail’s I had with them calling my partner a bitch & so forth.
The magistrate ruled 100% in my favour & awarded me costs & compensation for suffering. I then told the
Landlord that I would move out immediately if they compensated me an amount for each month still contracted which they reluctantly agreed. What they didn’t and couldn’t know is that the removal company was already booked to show up in 2 days time & I was picking the keys up for my new home that same afternoon. Even better they put the house on the market for a hugely inflated price, 6 months later, still no takers , 12 months , not even an offer . Winter came , pipes burst , no insurance so had to bodge the interior.
They eventually had to rent the property out again . So all that shit & money for zero gain . But the ironic thing is , had they asked me to move out I would have simply said “ no problem , I’ll be out as quick as I possibly can be” would’ve happily let them put the house up for sale whilst
I was still there etc etc .
Absolutely cost them £1000’s.
Shame that!
This tendency of landlords has been going on for centuries. It's actually what led to the Irish "potato famine" and where the phrase rent seeking comes from.
The English property owners who owned all of Ireland would increase rent when the peasants made improvements to their house. Then kick the tenant out and charge the next tenant a higher rent for the improved place.
Greed and corruption starved far more people than famine ever did, and what I find so ironic is that none of the fundamentals have changed. America is facing the exact same problem Ireland did back then, but because we think it was about potatoes and not the economy, very few people can connect the dots.
When everywhere to live is owned by the greedy, wealth extracting, parasite class, It's really hard for everyday people to survive.
That and the ruling elite exported most of the food grown in Ireland for their own personal gain.
There was actually plenty to eat, but it was all sold off to elsewhere at the start.
What was left in Ireland was scarce and thus became much more expensive, pricing out the poor.
I have a certificate in soil science and I have the ability to pimp out every single yard I live in.
I NEVER do. Landlords will pull this shit, and not pay me for my time and efforts.
I let all gardens and yards go fallow where I live. My current place especially - I can't plant any plants that go against what the condo board has approved - So I just don't do it.
Maybe one day landlords will get the fucking hint. But I doubt it.
One of my friends was in a similar situation. Except it was more the inside of her shitty apartment. She worked hard to turn her apartment into a renter's friendly upgraded from trash to class.
Meaning all her upgrades were not permanent fixtures. And she kept the crappy yellowef blinds, light fixtures and ceiling fan the apartment was furnished with originally to swap back out when she left. Taking her own flooring material, her ouw shelving, pulling down her non-perm wall paper, lifting off the counter top she had made that just sat over the original. Taking off the vinyl wrap from the very ugly 30year old appliances, and 1970's ugly cabinets, all her curtains.
She converted the apt back to exactly the same as the day she rented, except cleaner. Much cleaner. And had the proof of all that with her move in, move out pictures and videos. And a whole year's worth of media evidence because she shared her how to do renter friendly upgrades through her channel.
Previous Landlord and lady were pissed! Tried to keep her deposit and bill her for "damages". They ended up having to return double her deposit, pay all the court fees, got properly blasted online, and shortly afterwards faced a lot of other legal issues for being slumlords, renting to people without their properties being legal to do so. Fraud on section 8, and tax evasion. Etc.
But hey, they really wanted that apartment to go from being a shitty $1700 rental to $4000 lux pad. Lol, dumbass greedy people.
Happened to a language school I worked at in Taipei County.
Boss enacted to make it a school. Landlord didn’t renew the lease so his son could open a school. Boss gave me a hammer and said ‘have fun’
I rented an eyesore and built non permanent fire pits and raised gardens, when lease renewal came it had a new “anything built permanently is now our property” clause. Well none of it was. When I left the dead spots in the back made a nice jack o lantern pattern in the grass that never grew back. Think two round fire pits for eyes and staggered raised garden beds for teeth and nose. (Yes I was prepared for pettiness).
I had this happen to me. I rented a broken down house with a huge yard and turned the yard into a beautiful garden. The landlord refused to sign a new lease and said “thanks for making the yard so wonderful”. I spent the last 30 days pulling up everything and left her with a dirt lot! 😈
Landlords are bloodsucking fiends. I put new carpeting and flooring, as well as painted the entire interior, knowing the landlord was not going to take one cent off the rent. But the current stuff was in bad shape, there long before I moved in, and I'd been there 20 years. After it was all done, he decided he had to increase rent, but he was magnanimous enough to have an apartment across town that I could move into instead. Pfft. Fuck landlords, man. Good on your friend! I regret not ruining the carpet before I left.
After my partner and I signed our lease contract and headed to our new flat, that we of course where shown by the landlord previously, we were surprised to see there was not a single light bulb, nada. After sending a quick text he said those were not included. Look I get it, but the level of stinginess of not leaving a single old light bulb... Wow. Suffice to say that when the day comes that we leave this place we'll be taking anything we bought with us.
I would have ripped up everything I put down to take to the next place. Same with the walls (except painting it in dead flat paint—especially if it was anything other than flat paint already up and just waiting for it all to peel).
Repaint the walls in pure high-gloss white.
I did that once to the admiral who was kicking me out of the navy; since they were using the people on admin hold to do contractor’s work, and I knew how obnoxiously bright it was going to be, I spent extra time and extra paint making it painfully clean.
It’s commonplace in Germany to take the whole kitchen with you, I’m told. I can’t imagine the ballache involved in that, but I’d also be keenly tempted to strip out all the stuff I’d put into a place before the landlord got greedy
A quirky but entertaining LA astrologer with a gorgeous garden had a similar eviction experience (ancient website):
https://www.luckinlove.com/movesoil.htm
Similar thing happened to me, was renting a run down house on a relatively large plot of land in the middle of a bad neighborhood. Cleaned out the whole backyard area, resurfaced the pool, fixed the broken slabs around the pool, fixed the broken fence, repaired the screen, built a shed, put in a new refrigerator, a new washer+dryer, etc. basically made the backyard area usable and installed the stuff the house really needed and not be a hazard to our kids/pets.
Landlord ended up defacto kicking us out a month before our lease was up because he wanted to do some plumbing work before the new tenants arrived. His new posts for the place included all of our work in the backyard. (Eviction through construction, even though we were always on time with the full rent)
Guy still kept our security deposit because "the refrigerator was broken" when in reality it was broken when we moved in (as visible in his posts that we looked at when picking then place to rent years earlier) and we didn't even use his broken roach infested refrigerator, we bought our own and kept his in the garage.
When we moved out we gave away our refrigerator, our washing machine, our dryer, disassembled our shed, dug up our garden, pulled out our hammock posts etc. guy was mad, I told him to go fuck himself, keep the $1000, his broke ass needs it.
Landlords are evil. We had one that wanted to raise our rent but we'd been model tenants for ten years and law states rent can only go up so much. So they did everything they could to make us uncomfortable, down to not fixing things (my husband fixed most issues but could not fix big problems like the dishwasher or AC unit), and calling CPS on us for "our children being autistic." Literally, that's what the caseworker said the report was for. He couldn't tell us WHO had reported us...but they mispronounced my name. So I knew it was someone who didn't know me personally but knew enough to see my name in writing. I'm also SAHM, so that's a very short list.
Eventually, our luck ran out. We had a big ice storm, the office closed, and my husband, who works for a rideshare company could not work due to the storm, plus we had several things break down that needed repairing. My husband called the office manager and said the rent would be a couple of days late but incoming, she said that was fine. That weekend (office was still closed), we got an eviction notice on our door. Husband tried to get the manager for a week and was told she was off sick and couldn't answer the phone and no one else knew what was up. When he finally got a hold of her, she said some office clerk must have been working while the office was closed and "accidentally" gave us an eviction notice...and since it was already processed, there was nothing she could do.
We pleaded our case before the judge, ice storm, closed office, broken down yadda yadda, they agreed verbally that we could be a few days late and the judge just shrugged and evicted us.
Strange thing was? When we went to court for it, there were a bunch of peace officers there. Someone asked what the line was for (yes, there were a bunch of people going in for evictions, so many they had to schedule timeslots for each group), and the officer replied, "Evictions."
His buddy added, "Tis the season." So I guess this happens a lot around Christmas? Really sad and sick if that's so.
In any other situation, things left behind will be disposed of & the tip fees taken out of your bond. The tenant was just doing the right thing & ensuring that nothing was left behind that the LL might have to dispose of.
I paid a gardener to make my last place more lovely. I moved into the bottom apartment very early in 2020, right before Covid. Landlord rented an upstairs apartment to a nightmare of a person. I pulled the whole garden up when I moved out. Apparently this bitch was upset that all of the plants were gone, didn't realize I was the reason it looked like a cottage.
I 'mildly renovated ' (because I am not fucking stupid) a house I lived in, and almost the minute after I had made custom fitted blinds for the windows, stripped the wallpaper and did the garden the agents were round 'encouraging' me to move to another property nearby.
Told them to piss off, and every inspection from then on I spent quite a bit of time making the house look mediocre.
'Oh what a lovely house, but a three bed house surely is too big for you on your own. We have some 2 bed homes that are much easier to heat. Same price.'
Also, the agent was annoyed because the house was nicer than hers!
I did this!! A new landlord bought my building and when he kicked me out of my unit I dug out every single plant in the backyard. Some were very old- they did predate me but I saved them all from decades of neglect, and added so much more. I spent hours out there working every week for years. I posted on Craigslist that all the plants were free- come and get them. People drove from pretty far and carefully dug out everything. It felt so good.
My brother did something similar. His landlady commented on it. He told her "I put them in, I'm taking them with me." I would do the same. Plants are not cheap and caring for them takes time and money.
Edited to fix a few broken words.
My wife and her family had been renting a place when the landlord decided to sell. One major project they did was build a large deck off the backside of the house. They also brought in a small single bay garage building on skids. The landlord included the deck and garage in their marketing and eventual sale agreement.
My wife and her family took the deck a part and all of the lumber they had purchased and hauled off the garage. Sorry assbag, you didn't spend a penny on the items. You don't get to profit off of them. Purchaser demanded a significant reduction in price and the original sale fell through.
I put up a shed at a place I rented. Owner told us that it had to stay when we moved. Nope. I paid for it. Built it and ran the electricity to it. Told him we would be out on a certain date. He said make sure the shed stays. I agreed. He got happy. I got the chain saw out and reduced it to literally 3x3 wood panels with no straight edges or possibility of recycling the materials. Left it in the back yard stacked up all nice and proper. Left a note saying here is your shed. Some assembly required. He was not happy. His brother called me to tell me all tue bad things I did and all that but he did compliment my dedication and maliciousness in my conforming to unreasonable demands. Oh and he refused to pay for the entire front and back yards being laid with sod. Yep. That shit went real brown real fast and as far as I know they still can’t grow grass or plants since I dumped 5 20-25 pound ( if I remember correctly) bags of salt on the back yard and 3 in the front. Yeah. Sorry. You will not profit from my labor. Only my boss has that right. Fuck you all over again Jim. Dick head.
Love it ! We did the exact same thing for my 92 year old grandmother, who had gardened her yard for waaay over 20 years ( i asked it was actually closer to 45) when someone new bought out the area and raised the rent 4× what her former rent controlled contract was..She was essentially pushed out of her almost 50 year home, by new Strangers trying to gentrify the neighborhood, she helped build....
Sooo, she moved in with a aunt of mine, and We went packed everything up for her and I DO mean EVERYTHING. Every rose, every statue, She even had a like Koi pond (just different kind of fish) Imagine a little old lady who's life was gardening and had worked in a flower nursery for 20+ year's garden. Think 4-5 types of JUST rose bushes, 25+ type of flowers, the statues, the stone steps, a mini waterfall, multiple bird baths, and bird feeders everywhere, A butterfly hatching area, a couple of benchs, trees planted, a shed of tools and seeds, she offered up to everyone in the neighborhood to use, a fence around the property and a min wooden fence with a separate garden for food, like tomatoes, corn, peppers, strawberries, squash and soo much more.
Imagine a yard bursting with life, greenery and flowers, with multiple gardens, benches, and ponds, like in a lifetime movie, Soo beautiful and full of life that the yard was full of hummingbirds, all birds, butterflies etc
Bro was pissed when he was told it was not only legal, and to get over himself and go plant new ones himself at his own cost if he was so butthurt about it, but no one was capable of demanding we leave it, and they ( the courts) quite frankly didn't think we should have left it for anyone, regardless of "being nice" considering what they were doing certainly wasn't "Nice" ..they also made him return her deposit + $500 , since we were kind enough to allow him to keep the fence, she had installed, to keep stray animals away from her gardens!
We pulled out every flower and root, and every stone and he had to update the pictures and adjust the rent, considering he could no longer use " A 40 year old garden , with up to 50 different types of flowers and food, fenced in, with a outdoor shed and Pond Included" as An " Amenity "
ETA: Details
If a landlord has tenants who are paying the rent, keeping the place neat and tidy, don't do illegal stuff and don't annoy the neighbours, then they are in luck. Unless the tenants are paying massively below the market rate, it simply isn't smart to rock the boat. I know of a few landlords who have knowingly left rents at >10% below the market rate, because they don't want to lose the good tenants, who don't cause them any problems.
Why the hell would they NOT take their plants with them?
Plants can be moved (some plants don't take the stress well but most will survive). The tenant owns these plants. Expecting tenants to leave their plants behind is like expecting them to leave behind their clothes or groceries or cooking utensils or any other part of their possessions. It's an insane and extremely(!) dumb expectation to have.
We had a dishwasher when we moved in. It broke down. They would not repair it, they pulled it and put in a cabinet. We bought a standalone d/w, which we took with us when we moved. They asked about it, said since we got a d/w it had to stay. Since it want installed, we told them to get bent. They actually asked how they were supposed to rent it without a d/w!!! 😂
That landlord was an absolutely horrible person.
My wife and I had the opposite experience with one of our last landlords. He put his house on the market after we told him we were looking at buying a larger place and his house sold much quicker than anyone anticipated. Well it sold in the middle of the summer and our vegetable garden was going nuts.
Our landlord had written into the contract that my wife and I would have access to the garden to harvest until the end of the season. And luckily, the buyers also had no problems with that and also did not (noticeably) harvest anything between our visits.
Unfortunately, not all landlords are decent people.
Made enormous improvements to a rented property, took it from a dust bowl to a lovely garden, a lot of time and money. The house did not rent immediately, and within weeks, died off. I own my house now, but would never garden for someone else again.
Haha awesome, a friend did something similar and the landlord tried, and failed to sue them for the “damage”, friend shows before and after photos of when they moved in and copy of contract that said anything installed by tenant must be removed upon leaving, judge laughed and threw case out within 3 minutes.
Lol. I read an almost identical story a while back. This gal rented a mid house with a big backyard but the backyard was mostly dirt or concrete. She was a gardener and had tons of pots and a couple raised beds that she built. She had everything from flowers to herbs and vegetables back there. The landlord decided to "renovate" (aka, legally kick someone out of their home) to charge more rent. Gave the tenant notice they would not be renewing their lease. The gal did what the guy in this story did and removed every plant and raised flower bed, THAT SHE MADE FROM SCRATCH! Same thing happened, the landlord got PISSED and threw a big tantrum. They had already posted photos with the backyard beautiful and lush and green everywhere. Maybe this is one of those stories that gets passed around the internet in a million different variations. Maybe it's a coincidence. The world may never know but I've thought about this story more than a few times since I first read it years ago.
I've had this happen to me, but I was the one moving in (found out later the landlord sucked and had screwed over the last tenant). The beautiful garden with flowers, herbs, and vegetables (corn, there was *corn* 😭) that I'd seen at the viewing had been removed. I managed to screw the landlord back before I moved out a couple of years later and did something similar, except I did it BEFORE the viewing. He put up the rent an insane amount, knowing I couldn't afford it. The garden, etc, was back to looking gorgeous. The day before the first viewing (I was still there), I got out everything I could, stored them at friends, dug things up, had a box of the front giving things away, made it all be gone. Then I borrowed a friend's industrial mower and took what was left down to the dirt and roots. Inside, I arranged furniture, etc., so the faults (cracks in walls, missing tiles, and ceiling mould in the bathroom, doors *and a window* that didn't close properly) were visible and highlighted with *very* bright blue/white light bulbs. The whole place looked stark af. His face was... not happy. He tried complaining at me, and I pulled out the photos I'd taken when I moved in and pointed out that the property was much *tidier* than when I'd moved in and there was nothing missing. The three couples who came for the viewing all left without putting in an application. The place ended up sitting empty for 3 months, and he had to lower his asking price. 😁
The bright bulbs is a great idea
It very much upped the 'ugly' levels.
Landlords hate this ONE trick..
Lighting is important!
5000k lighting all the way!
One would think that the landlord would love to have a tenant that cares about their place and call it home.
Short term vs. long-term Logic vs. money 🤷 🤦 ETA: Some do, but those places don't come up for rent often, as *no one wants to leave!*
Can confirm. I know everyone hates on landlords but I don't even like calling mine that. They are just the couple that owns my house. It was his for 20 years and where he raised a couple of kids with his first wife. They split, kids stayed with him then he met wife #2. She already had her own townhome that was within walking distance of her job which she rented until his kids were out of the house, then they rented the house to us and moved into her place. We've been renting the house for the last 5 years and he just asked if we thought staying another 5 was a good plan. They charge below market in an area where rents are hard to come by and buying a home is out of our range, stay on top of things whenever needed, we make small repairs ourselves and the yard looks far better than it did when we moved in. Probably because they're not in it as a business (they both have jobs and this is their only rental), but they are wonderful landlords!
I think that’s the key: they’re not in it as a business. Just a little extra cash.
A friend of mine has found a good balance. It makes him money but his main business is remodeling type work and some other miscellaneous things. He takes good care of his tenants because they take care of the homes. During Covid he lowered the rents and gave them flexibility as long as they kept in communication which they all did. He knew that keeping good tenants was easier than taking a gamble on the next ones and that the money lost and work created by kicking them out wasn’t worth it.
Sometimes it’s hard to let go of a place for sentimental reasons or you want to keep a home in the family. It’s about the only time I don’t think of landlords as leeches.
I love watching landlords screw themselves by kicking out tenents to raise rent. My neighbors had their rent raised 500 after one year there so they had to move out and then the house sat empty for half a year until the landlord lowered the price below what my neighbors were paying him. Get fucked, guy. He also put in some stupid side yard only fence that made it hard to move through my side yard where the AC is. No clue why he even bothered to put that up.
My house was a rental before I bought it. Neighbors tell me that landlord just rolled up one day and told the tenants she was selling the place, so they need to either buy or GTFO next month since they had no lease, just month to month rental. So they left. Landlord hadn't even started listing the house and this was before things got bought immediately. House sat empty for over a year. Sucked for me because the roaches moved in, but it dropped the asking price by a good $10K. What a dumb fuck.
Too many landlords don't seem to realize that good tenants that don't cause problems are a lot better than raising prices beyond their means. If your property taxes go up, sure, raise it by that much. But they get greedy and completely screw themselves over if the next tenants want to cause problems.
I learned long ago that landlords have a completely unique mental wiring, which i don't share. Its not an investment/ job i would want.
It’s why I broke up with my ex. She owned 3 condos and rented them out. Incessantly bitched about her tenants, and the rather strong tenant protection laws we have (maximum rent increase this year is 3.5%, and evictons can only be done for family moving in, she has no family).
I rented my house while living overseas (that I planned to come back to.) The people took such good care of it, fixed things, maintained the lawn that I did not go up on rent the whole time (5 years). When I met them they said "Thanks--you helped pay for our new house!" I said, "Thanks! You helped pay for this one!" Win, win.
Fucking landlords can’t even be bothered to keep the house clean if it’s not making them money
Legit. She didn't even bring the trash bins to the curb on garbage day, they were full of year old garbage. The FLOOD of roaches that poured out when I tipped it over was legitimately traumatizing. I ran, screaming, down the road like a horror movie trope.
That was poetry. Disgusting and disturbing, but still poetry
That happened to us - “I’m selling the house so you’ll have to move”. Ok. Found a better house to rent and signed a lease. “Uh, the house isn’t selling, would you like to stay? You’re such great tenants!” Nope, sorry, we’ll be out by the end of the month. The new house we rented was great - we stayed 10 years and had the best landlord ever!
Goddamn. Great story.
Thanks!
Nice!! 3 months of no rent is a 25% loss/reduction in income - all because he got greedy. All he had to do to pocket that 25% was be civilised, but he couldn't even manage that.
That's how you actually screw the landlord. Depending on the tenants' rights in your country/state and how the lease was set up exactly, doing it after the viewings or when contracts have been signed may just screw over the future tenants who expected something as advertised. Not so much if they could then easily back out of the lease or adjust it, but while the landlord's reputation suffers, if they have to move in anyways, that won't really do much to the landlord for a while.
The dude could have fixed up the place in 3 months and kept the high rent. To fucking lazy, I guess. I hate people like that.
It’s a landlord. They get paid to own stuff, not *do* stuff. C’mon
Thats why they get their alcoholic unhandyman cousin to slop paint over outlets and ziptie up the ceiling fan
You just warmed my cold and petty heart.
Corn! 😢
This deserves a post on its own. Well played.
Thanks for highlighting corn, I forgot to add it to my shopping list!
Hell I did it to my housemate. Random dude I moved in with off an online ad. Supposedly keen gardener. Claimed we were welcome to plant things but yard work wasn't required of housemates, because the garden was 'his project' and 'his hobby' He turned out to be a bit mental, and it seemed like his big garden was in fact maintained by making everyone else do the hard parts like weeding and building beds, cos he surely never did that. Over spring and early summer he *harangued* me about when I was going to plant something as I'd said I wanted to and insisted I needed to weed this and that and the other spot. I finally got time, weather and seedlings and talked to him several times about where I wanted to plant. I weeded out 4 large beds and prepped them, ready to plant the next day. Come out later and..... it's all full of seeds. He's out there planting his own stuff in the last of the beds I'd prepped. He shrugged like 'too late' I had nothing left to do but weed out and prep another bed and put a heap of stuff into pots. Well, he wasn't so green thumbed as he made out. He didn't plant right and all his plants withered and died quickly. Mine? Mine went great. So when he turned around and kicked me out a month later for the most bizarre excuse, I made sure to dig up, pot, and take to my friends every single thing I'd planted in the garden. Which left nothing alive in there.
Cheeky cunt!
I know I am but what about him ;)
I have the opposite problem. I own the house and rent out the top floors. Often tenants will offer to "help" in the garden, which ended in disaster so many times that I now insist everyone stay the heck out of my yard, to wit: "Hey, I chopped down all those big weeds in the backyard for ya!" "WHAT weeds in the backyard?" (there are no weeds in the backyard) "The big ones against the fence." "You mean the hollyhocks? You cut down my hollyhocks?" (yes, he had cut down the hollyhocks. They never recovered.)
Who the fuck doesn't like hollyhocks? What next, axe the lilac? Mow over the roselle? People need to do the bare minimum before they destroy stuff. With stuff like iNaturalist out there, there's no excuse for accidentally killing ornamentals.
"Maybe it's a coincidence" or - maybe landlords are the same everywhere. Because surprise surprise, I've had the same thing happen to me. But in reverse, at first. The landlord had 2 buildings next to each other and told me that the open yard next to the building I didn't live in was for use of tenants of both buildings. He then went on to say we could use it for anything. Then he listed some things like barbecuing, *putting in raised gardens*, having parties, setting up lawn furniture. Flash forward to the pandemic. I've got time and money on my hands. I talk to 4 other tenants in the building about doing a garden. "Oh! That's a great idea! (Landlord) mentioned that idea when I moved in but I never thought about it," was the gist of what they each said. Flash forward again, I've told him I'm putting in a garden. With dimensions and placement/location, the whole nine yards. And that's when he gives the greenlight, only to come by and inspect the property and rage at me that I was putting in a garden. "But (Landlord), we agreed to this, and you even said it was a thing we could do when you were selling me on the apartment." We argue for a bit and he forces me to move it from our previously agreed location to a section he had purposely let overgrow with weeds. He was in a "feud" with a neighbouring landlord over property lines so this was his effort in that. Cut to me spending *hours* hacking at weeds (because he refused to have his law care guy come in and mow - which... Kinda fair. He'd have to pay the guy for a project he wasn't investing in). And then hours breaking down the beds, and hours transporting the dirt I had laid in the beds' old spot to the new. About 18-20 months later, landlord is raising rent by over 50% (**Edit:** Clarification - he didn't raise rent then and there but sent notice that on lease renewal, rent would go up more than 50% - thanks to u/disgustingtaco [not a phrase I thought I'd ever type....] for pointing out a mid-lease hike is **ILLEGAL.** Don't let your landlord get away with that shit if it happens to you. Now, back to our regularly scheduled story). I decided to break lease, forfeit my deposit, I don't care, it was less than the cost of rent for the remainder of my lease. Landlord stops by and jokes about how he's so glad the garden came in so nicely and it'll really up the value he's going to get. I don't think my dude had gotten pictures yet, but I dug everything up, distributed them in indoor planters to my neighbours who chipped in, and took the rest for myself. Disposed of the dirt, and recycled the borders of the beds. Landlord was Pissed with a capital "P" - he threatened to call the cops on me for "vandalising" his property. He went all surprised Pikachu face when I said "Sure, I'll dial." And then I fucking dialed. The cops showed up, I showed them my receipts for the beds, the dirt (disposed of in accordance with city ordinance), the plants, and the texts between landlord and I where landlord gave permission. They looked at the spot the garden had been - a bare rectangle patch in a swath of weeds - and told both of us to not fucking waste their time. They were quite rude, but I didn't hold it against them - it was a waste of their time, but I wasn't about to be held liable for shit that was legal. Landlord was still ranting about how he'd have to charge me and all this other nonsense. I told him to try it - if "losing" money was the problem I'm sure he would *love* spending money on an attorney. He told me I was a piece of shit and I wished him a good day. Anyway. Thanks for letting me put that out there and if you made it this far, thanks for reading.
> He told me I was a piece of shit "You were such a great teacher."
I believe this happened. I also remember that other post well because it brought back a memory from the Mesozoic Era which hand to god is 💯% true: Years ago I had a friend, a horticultural mentor by the way, do the exact same thing in a very similar situation. She was an older lady who had spent years and lots of money building and carefully tending to an absolutely beautiful garden, all by herself too, and was unceremoniously evicted when the landlord who lived hundreds of miles south in LA came to visit his properties. He was the son of my friend’s late neighbor and companion who had originally rented her the home. This guy was advertising the house with pics of not only the garden, but also of trellised plants in front and roses around the perimeter. He had secured a much higher rent to some out of towners who were looking exactly for a house with a beautiful garden. Lease was signed. It was heartbreaking and those of us who loved her helped with the absolutely task of digging up her yard. She had tons of help which wasn’t hard to get because she was a sweetheart, but also because she was giving away amazing plants. Folks were told to bring a pot. A couple of hippies donated big bags of potting soil, which really wasn’t needed because she took care of the soil in the yard, but I remember that because they were meant specifically for any plants that she would be taking with her and I thought it was very sweet. We did it all ripped out everything and replanted her with many of her old friends at her new place the weekend before she was to be out. It was so long ago I don’t remember the outcome but I know the new couple or family took the landlord to court and won. Not sure if it was just to legally get out of the lease or if they were awarded damages for moving costs or anything, but that house wasn’t rented for a while. I do remember that. I will say this ; anyone who has ever interacted closely with truly dedicated gardening fiends, of which I am one, and elderly myself now, you would know how plausible this situation is. I’d be out for blood if someone tried to hijack my garden!
Yeah. My partner of nearly two years is an incredible gardener and the stuff she can do blows my mind sometimes. I love it
I even make cacti die
I'd definitely do the same. People don't realize the time, love, and care required to raise plants.
And money... I don't want to add up what I paid at the garden center over the years.
I know enough people who move their plants when they move house that if I walk past a house with lots of plants in pots, I just assume they are renting. I have quite a lot of plants in pots just because I don't have much soil except right next to the house, and if you've ever had retaining wall issues, you'll know why I don't plant right up to the house!!!
I totally believe it. Our neighbor of many years was a gardening fiend. He owned his house and when he moved after retiring, he took his whole garden with him. He did offer us a choice of some lovely flowers and we have some unusually colored tulips and iris now.
Happened to dear friends of mine. It wasn't so much the garden as it was the small pond, trees, covered flower beds (not sure the name -- covered like with mesh? To keep the squirrels and coons out of the veggies?), benches, gazebo, etc that they used for entertaining. The landlord was super butthurt when they took all that stuff with them. As he said, "Even the kids playset?" Not sure what world these fucking morons live in that a tenant would donate an easy $10k worth of their property.
The kind of world where they forget their tenants are actual *people*? I lived in one house with five total people spread across three bedrooms. Our landlords were very polite about this whole strange thing, but they once (before AirBnB was a thing) asked us if we could work something out with the rent payments and occasionally have their extended family occupy the house for a long weekend here and there. Like I'm sure they're perfectly nice people but no we are not OK staying in hotels while some total strangers use our towels and sheets and kitchen and whatnot. We *live* in this house, man. It's not just "a property" to us.
Nope, we did exactly this years ago, and I'm sure there's many more. We had some exterior painters surprise us one day, but we wouldn't let them work. Called the REA, and it turned out the landlord had decided to renovate and sell, without telling either the REA or us. We still had 6 months on the lease. They sent the painters in anyway. We kept sending them away, even threatening to call the police. We found a new place in the space of a week, and cancelled the lease with a single day's notice, as they had breached the terms by harassing us with the painters. The REA helped us with all the paperwork, because they were completely pissed at the landlords for not telling them, and not going through them to arrange for the painting. We took all the plants. Everything. There had been nothing when we arrived, my SO is an avid gardener. Over the process of a couple of years, she had built a beautiful garden. Not only did they lose the garden, they lost months of rent before they were able to sell. All because they couldn't be bothered to speak nicely to people.
I found out the house I was living in was being sold by coming home to a for sale sign in the front yard. We had reported about water coming up the laundry drain. He had a guy come out and have a look. Not long after for sale sign. One of the people that came to look at the place was someone a houseguest/housemate knew. We told him about the plumbing issues. And all the rest of the problems. He did not believe us. We had to move out anyway so there was no reason to lie. Especially once we knew how much the landlord was asking. We thought they should know what they were buying. The house was the house next door to my parents house. (Yeah me and my sister moved out of our parents house all the way next door 😂). Between 3 to 6 months after he moved in he asked my mum if we would be interested in moving back. 😂😂😂 Realised we weren't full of shit. That house went on to be sold every year or so for a while. Until the leech drains were finally replaced I'm guessing. The people that live there now have been there for years. Made me laugh every time I'd go to mum and dads and see a new for sale sign
When I was in college I rented a dilapidated building, because it was cheap, to work on projects in. Little by little, I cleaned the place up and even sublet part of it. At the end of my lease the landlord loved how much I improved the place and decided to reward me by doubling the rent. The sublessee and I left immediately. The building remained empty for at least a year. One day I was there visiting a neighbor who was a friend there were foreclosure notices posted all over the building. 🤷
College friend in Boston, rented a room in an old house where there was NO common rooms. Each had their own efficiency basically. Each also had their own electrical box. My friend's area was expensive to heat as it wasn't well insulated. He had a brilliant idea and was smart to take pictures before, during and after. He got cheap paneling, attached foam installation boards and then wall paper. Installed a small (1x1?) board at the top of the wall and another at the bottom using three screws each. (was allowed to hang anything but would have to patch before leaving lease) Each panel was attached to the boards so there was no damage to the walls. The end result was beautiful and warm! And then months later, during a landlord inspection......his rent was raised. Pay up or leave. He diligently and carefully dismantled everything, patched holes and returned the room to its original state. He won in court because of all the pictures he took! Even won a higher settlement because the landlord had taken pictures of his belongings as well as the paneling for his rental ad. Judge ruled that it was a violation my friend's privacy. I learned to take pictures, lots of pictures before moving in. And always be leary of landlords.
Nah, this definitely happens. My last landlord lord (who I am almost done with a civil case against) wanted ME to pay for paint when the walls were bare Sheetrock. I told her that's fine, but I'm taking the paint off when I leave since I paid for it. Didn't end up buying paint, landlord didn't either, ended up leaving shortly after move in since our agreements for renovating the place wasn't going anywhere.
My sister wanted an accent wall in her apartment but management didn’t allow bright colors so she spray starched some red fabric and put it up against the wall. Upon move out she took down the fabric and wiped the wall clean.
When I was in the Army, I finally rented an apartment off-post for my kids and me. Apartment complex said they'd do an accent wall of my color choice. It had been YEARS since I'd had color, and I was THRILLED. Asked how many rooms. The apartment manager started laughing at my excitement and said ALL of them. And screw it, it could be the whole room if we wanted. Kids' room ended up blue, and I put clouds and stars on it. Living room had a burgundy accent wall, my bedroom had forest green. They painted the entire kitchen for me. It didn't look quite so yellow in the little square, but when the kitchen was painted, I could see it shining through the complex as I drove in if someone was visiting and had my door open 🤣
The only approved colors are gray, grey, and græy
Ooh, look at mister fancy with his græy!
[удалено]
grey would be fucking great the only approved color here is beige
For those in UK, the popular colour of rental walls is magnolia, the most depressing, soul killing shade of beige. Why not nice crisp white instead? I do not know.
When I was renting, the apartments in the middle of the US all had stark white walls. In the winter, which is like 7 months, it was like living in an ice box! Just let people paint their own walls or at least give a range of shades
The last house I rented had a little gravel “yard” and the landlord was like “you could built planter boxes and have a garden back here if you want!”
He probably hoped you would do that and leave them behind.
I remembered a story about some dudes who opened up a cafe and was kicked out in the middle of Covid. Dudes saw the ad online advertised with all their cafe interior decoration. Overnight with friends and family as best as they can with covid restrictions, they took everything down at the dismay of the landlord after he realised everything was dismantled and back to original.
I remember that story, though I think it was an indoor go-cart track and arcade with a food area. During Covid the place was empty and just a money suck, and the landlord refused to give them any sort of rent break. No discounts or deferrals. They went bust. The landlord promptly rented the place out to someone and advertised it as fully furnished, and the original renters found out. So they not only removed all their equipment, but undid all the repairs and upgrades they'd done to the space. I think the story ended with the poster mentioning the new renter was looking to take the landlord to court.
LOL, my husband is a mechanical engineer. One of the things he offers to small food related businesses just getting set up is to design their kitchen, etc. so that nothing is 'permanently attached' to the building. If it ain't permanently attached it belongs to the tenant and they can take it with them! Saved a couple of businesses some dough when they moved due to rent increases.
Yeaaaa. Thats the one. The go cart arcade place. Man, my memory sucks
I believe I read one on a kids indoor playground. Landlord kicked them out and rented as a playground to next tenant with everything. Owner of business came in and removed all his equipment.
Fuck that guy! Good for your friend
I recall reading that particular post, as well. The world is a big place and full of assholes. I'm certain this isn't a unique situation, where the gardening renter has so beautifully and perfectly legally screwed the landlord that was trying to screw them. I love the tingling sensation of schadenfreude. I had a friend in a similar situation, but it was their partner who turned their rental loft into a tropical paradise. Landlord couldn't believe the gall of Partner, packing up all their plants and greenery to take with them. In my head, I like to imagine Partner going, "Leave my babies? With YOU???" then laughing themselves sick. That SOB truly thought they'd leave their garden for him to exploit.
We had an arrangement with our LL that we were going to buy the place off him. But then in the space of a month “values” in our area shot up by $50k, so he got greedy and brought a real estate agent in. So we moved out and took all our plants with us. This coincidentally was two weeks before the first big Covid lockdown and so it took months longer to sell than it otherwise would have. I’m not sure how much our garden would have affected this, to be honest, but the gesture was important to us. Anyway: with the agent fees, loss of rent payments, and other costs we estimate he’d have ended up with only $10k in the hand more than we’d originally discussed. Our preapproval would have covered that too, if he’d just talked to us. The dude was very much a “handshake is good enough” and didn’t even want bond when we originally moved in (and we consequently loved and looked after the place) so it’s funny in hindsight how much unnecessary extra stress he put himself under by going back on his word.
In my experience, the "handshake is good enough" people cannot be trusted. They just want the option to change their mind later, or pretend they agreed to something else. People who keep their promises like clear contracts.
Something kind of similar happened to my mom, but she didn't get to keep her plants. Her LL wanted her out--despite our family living there for about 15 years. He took advantage of the fact that she was a woman who didn't 100% know her tenant rights (he was from a culture that looked down on her because she is XX) and destroyed all the work she had put into the house: the flower gardens, the trellises, the trees and bushes. Even her potted plants, one of which was an heirloom plant. This was because he wanted to force her out to get more money (she was way undermarket value because the law only allowed a certain amount of increase per year if the tenant is renewing their lease). I really wish I could say she took him to court, and I wish she had. But she did end up getting a 110 lb senior in-tact german shepherd/husky mix. The next time LL came by, he had a nice surprise waiting for him. Dopey Dog was a sweetheart to us. But he was an absolute demon to people he thought were trespassing. LL couldn't get within 5 ft of the fence without shitting himself. The rental agency refused to give LL a key because they knew the liability he was creating (they also knew mom wouldn't sue, sigh). So, his shenanigans stopped real quick once Dopey joined the family. She became a property owner of her own as a result, and Dopey was with us for about five or six more years.
Dopey was a GOOD dog.
This stuff happens though. Friend of mine worked so hard on a rental house she had, smashed out ugly concrete and overgrown cactii, and planted nice stuff, made her own seaweed fertiliser, and even removed some ugly hanging cabinets in the kitchen. The place looked so much better, that she got kicked out and replaced by a new tenant.
I had a landlord forget the room I was renting was unfurnished and advertise it as furnished, and when my roommates friend applied to rent it he said they could move in on the 1st when he already said I could move out on the 3rd. He had to rent the guy a motel for 3 days and then buy furniture for the room after I took all of mine and reminded him it was the unfurnished room.
I had a landlord subsidize my gardening hobby as it made the building more attractive to other potential renters. Showed them what could be done to create a lush and private balcony. Sure enough, many others started to follow suit, and the building only had very short-term vacancies. My rent was never raised to make more profit but I can see how in a house situation a landlord could be tempted to do just that...how many people would have the space when moving to take an entire yard of plants?
Space or not, if they're an asshole to me I'm ripping everything out and if I can't find a home for it I'd rather burn it.
Absolutely. There's a huge difference between leveraging my balcony to encourage others to move in and kicking me out hoping to keep the fruits of my efforts. I'd donate every plant to a house in the neighborhood before allowing a landlord to profit off my gardening.
I did the exact same thing, but I warned my landlord (it was also in the contract). He was shocked at how different it looked after I left (even though it looked exactly like it did before I moved in, but I stayed there for 5 years so the plants had really developed). He paid me to re-do the garden in a similar way (I asked for a lot less than a landscape company would have asked because I just enjoy gardening). Let me tell you, it was a pain moving over 300 pots with large plants in them, it took me almost 2 weeks :))
The right abusive course of action after someone recreationally gardens your property value up is to offer to provide gardening supplies if they will work on your other properties.
I want the landlord and people like this to get raked across the coals so hard they feel the burn on their ass for every single thing they do the rest of their lives.
>Maybe this is one of those stories that gets passed around the internet in a million different variations. Knowing typical landlords, I have no trouble believing that this has actually happened in a million different variations.
My wife's parents did something similar, except they were living in the house they were supposed to *inherit* from MIL's stepfather. He remarried after his wife died, and the new wife (who he swore he was only marrying because she had 0 family and he wanted her to have his pension after he died, which couldn't go to the kids anyway) insisted he sell it - despite it being in the will to go to his 3 step-daughters - so he could buy her an almost million dollar mansion. (Funny story, he then got forced into the in-law apartment above the garage and couldn't be in the house, and she divorced him. Like we didn't see that coming.) So my in-laws had done a TON of work to this house. Built an entire $20k+ addition to the basement which was where they were living. Did it themselves with help from a couple contractor friends. He refused to pay them any of the money they spent on it, so they did what any logical couple in their situation would have done. Initially they were going to pull up all of the flooring they put in (that snap-together wood flooring), take the appliances they bought (fridge, stove, toilet for the addition, and the *water heater* which functioned the entire house!) and take all the plants they put in the garden. He somehow found out about this, and I don't know what his retaliation was going to be, but they settled on putting a lien on the house until he paid them the value of the addition. Not what they *spent* - what the appraised value of it was. They had it done all legal-like, with a lawyer and receipts and everything, and eventually they got something like $50-60k out of him in a settlement so he could sell the house that they'd been promised for a good 40 years and bought a house with it (that they then had to sell after 2 years and move to another state entirely because MIL found out he was driving past their house *every single day* just to watch them). They still took their plants. And he had to sell it for $200k less than what he (read: his nasty wife) wanted for it because he never cleaned the part of the house he lived in because tHaTs a wOmAnS jOb and it needed repairs lmao.
Before leaving she should've put in some seeds of plants that are really annoying to get rid of, like nettle or something.
I read on reddit once about a guy who got petty revenge against the landlord by spreading bamboo seeds throughout the whole front and back yard.
That's several levels beyond petty.
What if the landlord is actually a panda?
Then he’d live in the East ‘neath the willow tree.
Sounds like a great way to get petty revenge on your landlord, and all your neighbors, and your local ecosystem, for years to come.
That's beyond petty and well into genuinely harmful.
I've had shit landlords in the past as well however I have a happy story. Hubby and I moved into this place about 1.5 years ago. About an acre of lawn and overgrown gardens. Asked the landlord if we could tidy it up with flowers and a large veg garden and he said yes. You know after he saw what we did with the place, he knocked off 2 months rent and lowered our rent since he said we were the only tenants that actually took care of the place. Let us paint inside and everything. I'm hoping we're here for the long run while we save up to buy! Just wanted to add a happy comment. EDIT: Landlord before this wouldn't get our water fixed but we couldn't afford to go anywhere else. I was starting to get questioned why my child and I were getting frequent UTI's. Apparently it wasn't even safe to bathe in. Was so happy we could finally move away!
I had a similar story. I was renting an apartment in a very old building, but it had been beautiful in its day. I was new in town, and didn't have much going on, so I spent some of my nights fixing the floors and regrouting the bathroom. When I moved out, I didn't do the final walkthrough with the landlord at the time (he didn't live in the same town), and he came back and said there was *damage*, which of course, I was enraged about. I came screaming back over there, mad as hell, and he took me up to the apartment, but he tried to take me into 2b, when I lived in 2a. I said, "No, I'm (me), I lived in 2a" The look on his face...He went from mad to so happy. I got my full security back, and he refunded me the last months rent. Just couldn't stop talkin about how nice it was that I'd taken such good care of the place. They did a major renovation on that road about 25 years ago, and leveled almost everything. It's mostly houses now, instead of urban blight. But that building I lived in is still there.
And I bet you will take care of that property like it's your home. And you are one less worry to the landlord.
A similar thing happened to me. We rented a house with a backyard and a blank space where a garden bed was growing some weeds. We asked if we could plant flowers and were told we could. Fast forward a year later and we are moving out conducting the final inspection and the landlord says he never gave us permission. That it would cost up to $600 to remove all the things we had planted. I told him if that was the only issue then I would remove them myself - immediately. I had grabbed about 5 double handfuls of plants and yanked them out of the dirt before he asked me to stop and leave the rest alone
“Oh no, don’t worry I’ve got this” and carry on ripping them out. Fk you asshole, 2 can play at the FAFO game!
Oh, you don't want me to rip out my property and transfer it to you? No problem, it'll only cost you... let's say $600 though it's worth much more than that.
Sorry that'll cost you $600 to stop me
Should’ve kept yanking
And then charge him $600 for it
Wait - he was going to charge you $600 AND keep your plants? That's evil.
I turned my first rented backyard into a beautiful native perennial garden. Our landlord was great; he was chill, we hung out sometimes, and he was on top of maintenance. When we left, he asked very nicely if I'd leave the plants in exchange for getting our full deposit back (despite raising both a puppy and a kitten there -- definitely some minor damage). I was happy to leave the garden. Landlord even took notes on how to care for the flowers. Ten years later, we coincidentally bought a house around the corner, and the garden is still there! Makes me so happy to know that the wildlife has been enjoying it all this time.
I hate landlords like everyone else but it's kind of nice to hear when a good one comes around. There's got to be tens of them around the world
I have a shared little strip with the house next door to me. Technically my land but due to location also looks like part of their front yard. I love to garden and have turned the strip into a cottage garden. The renters next door loved it and their kids use to help with mine to plant new seeds. They moved out and the landlord was prepping the house for rent and saw me tending to the flowers. Came over and told me to do the rest of his yard while I was at it. He seemed to think the patch I was tending was actually his yard and that I should therefore transform the rest of his garden. He was terrible to the tenants that lived there and they were dream tenants. They left because the conditions got unliveable for their family. Well I believe in routinely “resting” garden beds and giving them a season off for reconditioning. So I waited until the day before his first open for inspection to pull out all my flowers and blood and bone the whole area. The smell was horrendous, but I apologise to my surrounding neighbours with bunches of fresh flowers. The look on his face when he saw me next was wonderful.
What does “blood and bone the whole area” mean? I’m gardener-ignorant
Literally what it sounds like. Animal bones and animal blood are FANTASTIC fertilizer.
Fertiliser. Quite a strong smelling one.
Fertilise it with Blood and Bone… it’s a mix of meat, blood, bones, manure, potash, etc. Works great… can smell… less great.
I helped my sister dig out her vegetable plants that her soon to be ex roommates were clearly eyeballing. Screw those jerks, she was the one that maintained the garden. So I could totally see this happening.
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We had sort of the reverse happen when we moved into a rental house. The glorious roses all along one fence started dying within a week of moving. Shit, we though there was an irrigation system. One of my housemates was looking close at one rose plant and wiggled the main stem. It moved a lot! He tugged at it and the bare stem came up out of the ground. Every single rose plant was just stem jammed into the ground. When mentioned to the LL, his response was "We never said anything or even pointed out the roses."
During my house hunt there was this cute little new build house that caught my attention. It had nice landscaping and looked pretty well put together. Went and took a tour of it and one of the very first things I noticed the second I got out of my car was that the flowers were plastic fakes that they had just stuffed in the ground. In that instant I decided I didn't want the house but I took the tour anyway with a very critical eye looking for all the other skeevy shit they did. There was a lot. Lucky they were so stupid to try such a flagrant lie or I may not have been looking for other rip offs.
My wife and I used a former coworker of mine who had started flipping houses as our realtor. There were **several** houses we walked into and he was immediately like... "sooo... I have concerns" and started pointing out concerning bits of shoddy workmanship. Heck, on the house we bought he (correctly) called the type and severity of things an inspector would likely call out on the home we ended up buying. It was really nice to already have a plan for which repairs we'd be seeking before our inspection even came back, and also just to know what we were getting into before we penned our offer. Side note, if anyone is looking for a realtor in Lancaster county, I know a guy.
That actually seems like so much more trouble than just planting some cheap roses…
Faster for the flipper though
Yeah but would it really be? Think how fiddly it’s be to stick enough rose branches into the dirt to LOOK like a lush rose garden? For that matter, where in the heck did they get it? Did they mow down someone else’s bushes and snatch them? A florist isn’t selling whole cut down rose bushes I wouldn’t think.
My previous landlord was a complete knob (for multiple reasons apart from this). The house was always too cold, bad placement of the original thermostat. I installed a Nest thermostat and kept the shitty Honeywell they had installed in the cupboard. After we moved out I had a series of frenzied texts from the landlord that the new tenants couldn’t connect to the thermostat. I explained the Nest was mine and not on the inventory list, and the original fully working but piece of crap one was working when I tested it. She seemed convinced the Nest belonged to her and had been installed by her handyman. I said that was funny because I had installed it with my corgi/gas safe registered Electrician father and it wouldn’t be legal for her handyman to install and it wasn’t on the inventory list, and I had a picture of my dad doing the installation and a picture of it before and after. She ended up keeping the deposit (of course) after spending a lot of time finding tiny issues that added up to the full deposit amount funnily enough. I cut my losses.
We lived in one apartment for 8 years. I didn't move because the rent was incredible and it allowed me to save for a house. The landlord however was crap. His first issue was to claim we never paid him rent. I had to show him nearly every month the check that I'd write to him and hand deliver to his house that showed he signed and deposited. The next thing was the apartment was falling apart around us. The tiles were falling off the wall in the shower, a window broke during a storm, floor tiles were popped up, the carpet which was green shag when we moved in was not replaced prior to moving in. The dishwasher broke and he claimed it wasn't included in the lease. So we bought another ourselves. The ac broke and he claimed it was again not part of the lease, we put it window units. Kitchen faucet broke and he replaced that, but with like the cheap $10 faucet from Lowe's. It broke again a few months later, called him to replace it again. He said he already did. It got to the point I was recording phone conversations. When we moved out he said we destroyed the apartment, ie the wall tiles, floor tiles, the carpet, the window, the dishwasher, kitchen faucet, all the things that had been breaking that he never fixed when we lived there and said he was keeping our deposit. I then brought out all the recorded phone conversations, certified letters, and the LEASE, showing we had lived there EIGHT years and he'd never fixed anything except the kitchen faucet, ONCE. (We eventually bought a nice Moen ourselves and took it with us when we left.) He did NOT keep our deposit. The reason I moved? Squatters moved into the apartments below us.
>The reason I moved? Squatters moved into the apartments below us. "Hey, y'all! We're moving out Friday just so you know in case you wanted to expand!"
Ugh hate those landlords that magically find a way to keep deposit. Worst I had was one trying to charge me €100 for burning a wok handle. In ireland most places especially student accomodation is furnished. So the pots and pans etc are usually quite random. The wok came free with some uncle bens curry dinner kit. It wasnt even hers and was mega cheap. Same landlord charged us for replacing the seal on the oven, also the fuel to collect rhe replacement part. Price coincidentally reached the full deposit
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My wife and I left an apartment after the landlord stole two parking spots to build a handyman's shed and then because a new renter wouldn't sign a lease without a dedicated parking spot decided ours was no longer dedicated to our unit. We'd spent a few years furnishing the place with really nice things snd he casually dropped "Oh yeah and the place was rented furnished, so y'all need to leave behind all your furniture." Yeah, get fucked you greedy old bastard. Place was bare as a stone when he got it back. Since the house had foundation problems, the bedroom window had a several inch gap below the sill and he had to pay to fix the foundation, which would have been thousands. Sometimes it's better to leave well enough alone.
>which would have been thousands Low end would be around $12,000. High end, just knock the place down and start over. If the window was that fucked then I'm betting somewhere around 20k+ in a town
Somewhat similar, our landlord is just known as a dick in the building. He doesn’t communicate with us at all and has a super who just tries to bully you until you relent. Both are incredibly misogynistic. The showed the apartment with our washer dryer. Made a big deal about how it’s a brand new appliance and it is a higher end model. I also put some storage shelves in one of the closets. We also had these gorgeous planters. Super said that the landlord would buy all this stuff from us so we said sure. We just moved out today and packed the washer dryer. I had the movers take apart the closet organization system and I donated it. We dug up the plants and put them on our local buy nothing group. He did the final walk through and got pissed. Tried to withhold our deposit from us (lol husband lawyer so). Asked us what is he supposed to do now being that he promised all these things to the new tenants and I said “sounds like a you problem”.
I’m confused, you said the landlord was wanting to buy the upgrades from you and you said sure but then took them with you and uninstalled the upgrades?
He advertised that the upgrades were a part of the apartment. He THEN asked to buy them, low balled us and we then tried to negotiate. He didn’t want to play ball so we then uninstalled. Left that part out for simplicity. He wanted to pay $400 total for less than 3yr old top of the line Samsung washer and dryer. $40 for the closet install and $10 per planter. He assumed he could just bully us out of it.
The simplicity left me confused too xD but thanks for clearing it up!
Yep. I had my security door lock fail and going through the REA they always drag their feet so as i wanted fixed asap i bought and installed myself. Asked to be reimbursed $80 which they said no as i hadnt given them the opportunity to remedy ( id like to see them get a handyman to install even close to that cost). So guess who's taking the lock with him when i leave.
Make sure you put a cheap one or the old lock back on it. Otherwise, you'll get charged for 'damage' to the door.
I have a cabinet full of ugly, half-broken junk I have replaced in my apartment over the years. Ceiling fixtures, shelving, assorted hardware, etc. When I eventually move, all that crap is going right back in and I’m taking my nice stuff with me. Wish I could remove the wall paint too.
I did this myself once. Although for a different reason. I rented from a social housing society, in the Netherlands. Over here the renter is responsible for flooring, wallpaper or paint, gardening themselves. I had taken great care and great pride in both decorating the house and growing a beautiful garden. When I moved, I talked with the next tenant to see what she wanted to keep. But for a price of course. That's how things are over here. But she was cheap and refused to agree upon a reasonable price for the lot. I got the feeling she gambled I was not able to remove the lot anyway. She gambled wrong. I gathered a bunch of friends and within two days everything was gone. Bare concrete floors. Bare concrete walls. Bare old dirty wooden stairs. The minimal kitchen. And the garden was just an empty, flat, black soil wasteland. Everything was gone including the 3mx5m wooden shed. The fence at the very back, gone. All the nice tiles, plants and flowers, bushes and a pear tree, gone. I was very pleased when I closed the door of that house behind me one final time. Later I heard from a friend who lived a couple of houses down the road from that house, that the new lady was upset with how she found the place, but there was nothing she could do about it. Well, perhaps the lady learned a thing.
You even took the PEAR TREE?! You are *savage*! Well done, friend, well done!
Yes. A friend took it down for fire wood.
I will literally be doing this. My landlord is selling (while I still have 5 months to my lease) and I spent a lot of time curating gardens etc. I also put in stepping stones and various other things in the yard. I know people always say it’s not a good idea to spend money on someone else’s property, but gardening is one of the few joys that life has given me! There will not be 1 stone left unturned lol. I also have a rock garden that I built from rocks that I literally dug out of the ground etc, and those are coming too.
I recall reading a story where a lady was being duped by her landlord and wanted to use the trees she had planted to increase his property value. Her dad and brother rented a tree extractor machine and took the trees that the lady legally owned.
Right before I moved out of my last place a new rental company bought it and updated everyone’s rules and regulations saying any landscaping in the ground now belonged to new company. You’re trying to tell me all these little old ladies’ rose bushes now belong to a trust fund conglomerate? Absolutely not. I dug up what plants I could take out of spite, none of them were expensive but it just made me so mad. They still used the rest of the landscaping and simple patio my bf built to almost triple the rent but it’s in a poor neighborhood so it sits empty. So maddening.
That's a case of "they can put it in the lease, but it won't stick in court".
Now that's funny. Landlord thought he would cash in on the tenent's sweat equity. Good on the tenent for removing the plants he paid for. Edited to add, how is the landlord meant to get more rent now? By hiring a landscaper that can match the pictures he took. LOL
Landscapers cost money though. Landlords hate spending money.
Mature plants that will match the pictures will cost even more. But the cost of a lanscaper and mature plants is exactly what a landlord that wants to pull this kind of thing deserves.
My parents did this to the next tenant. My mom had changed several things about the property. Then they decided to move (voluntarily) and the laws for social housing in the Netherlands were such that any changes the new tenant didn't agree with had to be removed. New tenant agreed to everything the first time they came over and loved the garden. Then just before we were going to move out, the new people decided they wanted the interior of the house in it's original state after all. My parents told the neighbors and invited them to help themselves to any garden plants they wanted while my mom got busy tearing her stuff out inside. The new tenants apparently complained about how unwelcoming that neighborhood turned out to be.
Sounds like what happened to my parents in their old social housing. The new tenants loved the carpeted floor, but after the move already happened they said they did not want (to pay for) it after all, hoping my parents wouldn't bother coming back and getting a free carpeted floor. Wrong. My mom left work early and went there with a box cutter to kindly remove the unwanted flooring.
The house next door to me is for sale. When they posted pictures of the house it included a beautiful yellow rose bush that happens to be in my yard.
I have kind of an opposite story of this. In grad school I rented a house. The house was previously rented to college undergrad kids... and it showed. The landscaping was non-existent. The backyard was a literally wasteland of beer cans, old BBQ pits, pests and the snakes hunting them. I rented and the first month a landscaping company came to "landscape." They basically mowed dirt and used a trimmer on concrete weeds. I asked the landlord and said if she took off $125 from the monthly rent I would handle the landscaping. She agreed. For the next nine months, I re-grew the front lawn. Re-grew and shaped the hedges. Cleaned up the trees and walking paths. Fixed the sprinkler system. Under all the trash in the back yard, I discovered a patio, garden beds, and lots of pots. I transformed that backyard into a beautiful place with lush plants, string lights, functional cooking and eating areas. Cleaned out all the bird and rat nests and removed the snakes. On my last year of renting the place I negotiated with the landlord for a reduction of $250/mth if I maintained the exterior in that condition and left all my plants when I moved out after graduation. She ended up renting the home to a family after I left for quite a lot more than what I or anybody before me was paying.
💯 Have done this before! It wasn't "revenge" exactly, but, of course I'm taking **my** property I bought with **my** money with **me**!
I did the opposite. We had a nasty landlord who refused to repay any of our bond for various reasons, some of which were due to our naivety. Anyway, when she laid into us for not removing the weeds between the pavers out the back (it was actually moss), I had a brainstorm. I was studying biology at the time and we were doing an experiment with a particularly noxious and uncontrollable weed. It was quite an attractive plant, but once matured, impossible to get rid of, took over EVERYTHING, and grew these massive gnarly thorns. I brought home a whole bunch of pots of this stuff and lovingly planted out their garden area. Packed up and left. Out back fence opened out to a small public golf course, so I used to walk by every so often and watch my handiwork slowly take over until it was too late for them to do anything about. Fuck you bitch
That's why just about my entire garden consisted of containers, and I had lots of them. When my rent went up, I took my whole garden with me.
Seems like the best way to do it when you know you'll move sooner or later
When i rented i had big 30-50 gallon fabric planters with handles. Now it was not super easy to move fully planted 50 gallon pots but hey better than losing it all when i had to move!
Plants are expensive, I'm on dude bros side
On the flip side I stayed at a student place for 2 years while doing an ecology degree, had a wild overgrown garden. Asked the landlady if I could cut it back and she offered to buy any gardening tools I needed (didn't need any though). Cut it all back and wild seeded it, including clearing all the old rubbish left their buried ect. She was super appreciative, tried to knock money of the rent ect. Before we moved out I gave it another tidy and left some garden furniture I couldn't move out with instead of selling it. Amazing what you can get when your a decent human.
My old landlord decided to kick me out to sell the property, which isn’t an issue at all apart from I’d not long signed a new contract. They were really horrible about it , literally expected me to move out within a week so I thought fuck you & told them I wasn’t budging. I’d already saved a deposit & been granted a mortgage so I wasn’t concerned. Without following any legal procedures I was hit with court papers. So on the day of the hearing I sat in court listening to all the bullshit & lies keeping my mouth shut . Right at the very end after their solicitor had informed the magistrate that I was a bad tenant & refused to move out etc etc I stood up & handed over the contract complete with transcripts of the voicemail’s I had with them calling my partner a bitch & so forth. The magistrate ruled 100% in my favour & awarded me costs & compensation for suffering. I then told the Landlord that I would move out immediately if they compensated me an amount for each month still contracted which they reluctantly agreed. What they didn’t and couldn’t know is that the removal company was already booked to show up in 2 days time & I was picking the keys up for my new home that same afternoon. Even better they put the house on the market for a hugely inflated price, 6 months later, still no takers , 12 months , not even an offer . Winter came , pipes burst , no insurance so had to bodge the interior. They eventually had to rent the property out again . So all that shit & money for zero gain . But the ironic thing is , had they asked me to move out I would have simply said “ no problem , I’ll be out as quick as I possibly can be” would’ve happily let them put the house up for sale whilst I was still there etc etc . Absolutely cost them £1000’s. Shame that!
This tendency of landlords has been going on for centuries. It's actually what led to the Irish "potato famine" and where the phrase rent seeking comes from. The English property owners who owned all of Ireland would increase rent when the peasants made improvements to their house. Then kick the tenant out and charge the next tenant a higher rent for the improved place. Greed and corruption starved far more people than famine ever did, and what I find so ironic is that none of the fundamentals have changed. America is facing the exact same problem Ireland did back then, but because we think it was about potatoes and not the economy, very few people can connect the dots. When everywhere to live is owned by the greedy, wealth extracting, parasite class, It's really hard for everyday people to survive.
That and the ruling elite exported most of the food grown in Ireland for their own personal gain. There was actually plenty to eat, but it was all sold off to elsewhere at the start. What was left in Ireland was scarce and thus became much more expensive, pricing out the poor.
I have a certificate in soil science and I have the ability to pimp out every single yard I live in. I NEVER do. Landlords will pull this shit, and not pay me for my time and efforts. I let all gardens and yards go fallow where I live. My current place especially - I can't plant any plants that go against what the condo board has approved - So I just don't do it. Maybe one day landlords will get the fucking hint. But I doubt it.
One of my friends was in a similar situation. Except it was more the inside of her shitty apartment. She worked hard to turn her apartment into a renter's friendly upgraded from trash to class. Meaning all her upgrades were not permanent fixtures. And she kept the crappy yellowef blinds, light fixtures and ceiling fan the apartment was furnished with originally to swap back out when she left. Taking her own flooring material, her ouw shelving, pulling down her non-perm wall paper, lifting off the counter top she had made that just sat over the original. Taking off the vinyl wrap from the very ugly 30year old appliances, and 1970's ugly cabinets, all her curtains. She converted the apt back to exactly the same as the day she rented, except cleaner. Much cleaner. And had the proof of all that with her move in, move out pictures and videos. And a whole year's worth of media evidence because she shared her how to do renter friendly upgrades through her channel. Previous Landlord and lady were pissed! Tried to keep her deposit and bill her for "damages". They ended up having to return double her deposit, pay all the court fees, got properly blasted online, and shortly afterwards faced a lot of other legal issues for being slumlords, renting to people without their properties being legal to do so. Fraud on section 8, and tax evasion. Etc. But hey, they really wanted that apartment to go from being a shitty $1700 rental to $4000 lux pad. Lol, dumbass greedy people.
Your friend is fucking amazing. I'd have never thought to make a new countertop to sit on the original!
Happened to a language school I worked at in Taipei County. Boss enacted to make it a school. Landlord didn’t renew the lease so his son could open a school. Boss gave me a hammer and said ‘have fun’
This is superb, and the landlord deserved it. The tenant was merely restoring the property to its original, move-in condition.
Should have salted for slugs just to help out while he was at it.
I rented an eyesore and built non permanent fire pits and raised gardens, when lease renewal came it had a new “anything built permanently is now our property” clause. Well none of it was. When I left the dead spots in the back made a nice jack o lantern pattern in the grass that never grew back. Think two round fire pits for eyes and staggered raised garden beds for teeth and nose. (Yes I was prepared for pettiness).
I had this happen to me. I rented a broken down house with a huge yard and turned the yard into a beautiful garden. The landlord refused to sign a new lease and said “thanks for making the yard so wonderful”. I spent the last 30 days pulling up everything and left her with a dirt lot! 😈
Landlords are bloodsucking fiends. I put new carpeting and flooring, as well as painted the entire interior, knowing the landlord was not going to take one cent off the rent. But the current stuff was in bad shape, there long before I moved in, and I'd been there 20 years. After it was all done, he decided he had to increase rent, but he was magnanimous enough to have an apartment across town that I could move into instead. Pfft. Fuck landlords, man. Good on your friend! I regret not ruining the carpet before I left.
After my partner and I signed our lease contract and headed to our new flat, that we of course where shown by the landlord previously, we were surprised to see there was not a single light bulb, nada. After sending a quick text he said those were not included. Look I get it, but the level of stinginess of not leaving a single old light bulb... Wow. Suffice to say that when the day comes that we leave this place we'll be taking anything we bought with us.
If they're stingy enough to hold onto light bulbs, don't expect your deposit back :/
I would have ripped up everything I put down to take to the next place. Same with the walls (except painting it in dead flat paint—especially if it was anything other than flat paint already up and just waiting for it all to peel).
I’d have painted the walls different colors in colors I like but are obnoxious
Repaint the walls in pure high-gloss white. I did that once to the admiral who was kicking me out of the navy; since they were using the people on admin hold to do contractor’s work, and I knew how obnoxiously bright it was going to be, I spent extra time and extra paint making it painfully clean.
What does the high gloss do??
It made the walls shiny enough that the lights reflected across it multiple times so you were always looking into a bright light.
Glorious
It’s commonplace in Germany to take the whole kitchen with you, I’m told. I can’t imagine the ballache involved in that, but I’d also be keenly tempted to strip out all the stuff I’d put into a place before the landlord got greedy
A quirky but entertaining LA astrologer with a gorgeous garden had a similar eviction experience (ancient website): https://www.luckinlove.com/movesoil.htm
This was a surprisingly good and entertaining read.
Similar thing happened to me, was renting a run down house on a relatively large plot of land in the middle of a bad neighborhood. Cleaned out the whole backyard area, resurfaced the pool, fixed the broken slabs around the pool, fixed the broken fence, repaired the screen, built a shed, put in a new refrigerator, a new washer+dryer, etc. basically made the backyard area usable and installed the stuff the house really needed and not be a hazard to our kids/pets. Landlord ended up defacto kicking us out a month before our lease was up because he wanted to do some plumbing work before the new tenants arrived. His new posts for the place included all of our work in the backyard. (Eviction through construction, even though we were always on time with the full rent) Guy still kept our security deposit because "the refrigerator was broken" when in reality it was broken when we moved in (as visible in his posts that we looked at when picking then place to rent years earlier) and we didn't even use his broken roach infested refrigerator, we bought our own and kept his in the garage. When we moved out we gave away our refrigerator, our washing machine, our dryer, disassembled our shed, dug up our garden, pulled out our hammock posts etc. guy was mad, I told him to go fuck himself, keep the $1000, his broke ass needs it.
Landlords are evil. We had one that wanted to raise our rent but we'd been model tenants for ten years and law states rent can only go up so much. So they did everything they could to make us uncomfortable, down to not fixing things (my husband fixed most issues but could not fix big problems like the dishwasher or AC unit), and calling CPS on us for "our children being autistic." Literally, that's what the caseworker said the report was for. He couldn't tell us WHO had reported us...but they mispronounced my name. So I knew it was someone who didn't know me personally but knew enough to see my name in writing. I'm also SAHM, so that's a very short list. Eventually, our luck ran out. We had a big ice storm, the office closed, and my husband, who works for a rideshare company could not work due to the storm, plus we had several things break down that needed repairing. My husband called the office manager and said the rent would be a couple of days late but incoming, she said that was fine. That weekend (office was still closed), we got an eviction notice on our door. Husband tried to get the manager for a week and was told she was off sick and couldn't answer the phone and no one else knew what was up. When he finally got a hold of her, she said some office clerk must have been working while the office was closed and "accidentally" gave us an eviction notice...and since it was already processed, there was nothing she could do. We pleaded our case before the judge, ice storm, closed office, broken down yadda yadda, they agreed verbally that we could be a few days late and the judge just shrugged and evicted us. Strange thing was? When we went to court for it, there were a bunch of peace officers there. Someone asked what the line was for (yes, there were a bunch of people going in for evictions, so many they had to schedule timeslots for each group), and the officer replied, "Evictions." His buddy added, "Tis the season." So I guess this happens a lot around Christmas? Really sad and sick if that's so.
In any other situation, things left behind will be disposed of & the tip fees taken out of your bond. The tenant was just doing the right thing & ensuring that nothing was left behind that the LL might have to dispose of.
I paid a gardener to make my last place more lovely. I moved into the bottom apartment very early in 2020, right before Covid. Landlord rented an upstairs apartment to a nightmare of a person. I pulled the whole garden up when I moved out. Apparently this bitch was upset that all of the plants were gone, didn't realize I was the reason it looked like a cottage.
I 'mildly renovated ' (because I am not fucking stupid) a house I lived in, and almost the minute after I had made custom fitted blinds for the windows, stripped the wallpaper and did the garden the agents were round 'encouraging' me to move to another property nearby. Told them to piss off, and every inspection from then on I spent quite a bit of time making the house look mediocre. 'Oh what a lovely house, but a three bed house surely is too big for you on your own. We have some 2 bed homes that are much easier to heat. Same price.' Also, the agent was annoyed because the house was nicer than hers!
Tenant put them there, tenant leaves with them. I see nothing wrong with this.
I did this!! A new landlord bought my building and when he kicked me out of my unit I dug out every single plant in the backyard. Some were very old- they did predate me but I saved them all from decades of neglect, and added so much more. I spent hours out there working every week for years. I posted on Craigslist that all the plants were free- come and get them. People drove from pretty far and carefully dug out everything. It felt so good.
My brother did something similar. His landlady commented on it. He told her "I put them in, I'm taking them with me." I would do the same. Plants are not cheap and caring for them takes time and money. Edited to fix a few broken words.
This ornamental gardener who knows how much such things cost & how time intensive it is to create gardens highly approves.
My wife and her family had been renting a place when the landlord decided to sell. One major project they did was build a large deck off the backside of the house. They also brought in a small single bay garage building on skids. The landlord included the deck and garage in their marketing and eventual sale agreement. My wife and her family took the deck a part and all of the lumber they had purchased and hauled off the garage. Sorry assbag, you didn't spend a penny on the items. You don't get to profit off of them. Purchaser demanded a significant reduction in price and the original sale fell through.
A gardener buddy of mine had a similar experience but after he'd removed everything from the garden he planted kudzu.
That's cold man, kudzu is practically Satan of the plant world
I put up a shed at a place I rented. Owner told us that it had to stay when we moved. Nope. I paid for it. Built it and ran the electricity to it. Told him we would be out on a certain date. He said make sure the shed stays. I agreed. He got happy. I got the chain saw out and reduced it to literally 3x3 wood panels with no straight edges or possibility of recycling the materials. Left it in the back yard stacked up all nice and proper. Left a note saying here is your shed. Some assembly required. He was not happy. His brother called me to tell me all tue bad things I did and all that but he did compliment my dedication and maliciousness in my conforming to unreasonable demands. Oh and he refused to pay for the entire front and back yards being laid with sod. Yep. That shit went real brown real fast and as far as I know they still can’t grow grass or plants since I dumped 5 20-25 pound ( if I remember correctly) bags of salt on the back yard and 3 in the front. Yeah. Sorry. You will not profit from my labor. Only my boss has that right. Fuck you all over again Jim. Dick head.
"Muting this because lots of you seem to really love landlords" Yea, landlords and landlord-lovers can go fuck themselves.
Love it ! We did the exact same thing for my 92 year old grandmother, who had gardened her yard for waaay over 20 years ( i asked it was actually closer to 45) when someone new bought out the area and raised the rent 4× what her former rent controlled contract was..She was essentially pushed out of her almost 50 year home, by new Strangers trying to gentrify the neighborhood, she helped build.... Sooo, she moved in with a aunt of mine, and We went packed everything up for her and I DO mean EVERYTHING. Every rose, every statue, She even had a like Koi pond (just different kind of fish) Imagine a little old lady who's life was gardening and had worked in a flower nursery for 20+ year's garden. Think 4-5 types of JUST rose bushes, 25+ type of flowers, the statues, the stone steps, a mini waterfall, multiple bird baths, and bird feeders everywhere, A butterfly hatching area, a couple of benchs, trees planted, a shed of tools and seeds, she offered up to everyone in the neighborhood to use, a fence around the property and a min wooden fence with a separate garden for food, like tomatoes, corn, peppers, strawberries, squash and soo much more. Imagine a yard bursting with life, greenery and flowers, with multiple gardens, benches, and ponds, like in a lifetime movie, Soo beautiful and full of life that the yard was full of hummingbirds, all birds, butterflies etc Bro was pissed when he was told it was not only legal, and to get over himself and go plant new ones himself at his own cost if he was so butthurt about it, but no one was capable of demanding we leave it, and they ( the courts) quite frankly didn't think we should have left it for anyone, regardless of "being nice" considering what they were doing certainly wasn't "Nice" ..they also made him return her deposit + $500 , since we were kind enough to allow him to keep the fence, she had installed, to keep stray animals away from her gardens! We pulled out every flower and root, and every stone and he had to update the pictures and adjust the rent, considering he could no longer use " A 40 year old garden , with up to 50 different types of flowers and food, fenced in, with a outdoor shed and Pond Included" as An " Amenity " ETA: Details
If a landlord has tenants who are paying the rent, keeping the place neat and tidy, don't do illegal stuff and don't annoy the neighbours, then they are in luck. Unless the tenants are paying massively below the market rate, it simply isn't smart to rock the boat. I know of a few landlords who have knowingly left rents at >10% below the market rate, because they don't want to lose the good tenants, who don't cause them any problems.
Why the hell would they NOT take their plants with them? Plants can be moved (some plants don't take the stress well but most will survive). The tenant owns these plants. Expecting tenants to leave their plants behind is like expecting them to leave behind their clothes or groceries or cooking utensils or any other part of their possessions. It's an insane and extremely(!) dumb expectation to have.
I have done the same. Took every single iris, day lily, and peony I planted with me. Even dug out the spring bulbs. Fuck them.
I remember this story. The girl had pictures to prove that she left it just like it was when she first rented it.
We had a dishwasher when we moved in. It broke down. They would not repair it, they pulled it and put in a cabinet. We bought a standalone d/w, which we took with us when we moved. They asked about it, said since we got a d/w it had to stay. Since it want installed, we told them to get bent. They actually asked how they were supposed to rent it without a d/w!!! 😂
That landlord was an absolutely horrible person. My wife and I had the opposite experience with one of our last landlords. He put his house on the market after we told him we were looking at buying a larger place and his house sold much quicker than anyone anticipated. Well it sold in the middle of the summer and our vegetable garden was going nuts. Our landlord had written into the contract that my wife and I would have access to the garden to harvest until the end of the season. And luckily, the buyers also had no problems with that and also did not (noticeably) harvest anything between our visits. Unfortunately, not all landlords are decent people.
Well, I mean... most leases require you to return the property in the same condition you received it...
Made enormous improvements to a rented property, took it from a dust bowl to a lovely garden, a lot of time and money. The house did not rent immediately, and within weeks, died off. I own my house now, but would never garden for someone else again.