The Renters From Hell… And All Their Relatives

My wife and I owned a two-bedroom, 660-square-foot condo some years ago and, when we moved to a single-family home, we rented it out. One of the applicants was a young, enlisted service member and his fiancée. We felt we should give them a chance since they were just starting out. They paid up front and we halved the rental deposit to give them a break. That was a huge mistake.

The second month they were there, they were late on the rent as they were on the third month. We finally had to charge them the 10% late fee. Into the fourth month, I got a call from a friend who still lived in the condo.

Friend: “There are twelve people living in your rental, and they’re taking up all of the assigned parking! They showed up from one of the US territories and never left. They built a cooking pit on the walkway in the common area and they’re roasting freshly killed chickens and pigs.”

Mind you, this is a suburb, not a farm. I went down there to talk to them.

Me: “You cannot have all your relatives living here as they’re not on the rental agreement. They have two days to move out. You also need to repair the common area where your firepit is, or else I’ll get fined.”

Renter: “Our relatives came over and they had no place to stay, so we let them live here.”

Me: “They can stay in a hotel.”

It was three generations — twelve people plus the couple — living in a 660-square-foot, two-bedroom condo.

Into the fifth month, I had to charge them the late fee again and call the service member’s commander to get him to pay. Finally, at the end of the sixth month, he got deployment orders, so we let them out of the lease.

On the day of the exit walkthrough, I found that the curtains were gone, and the carpet was stained with grease and soot from them roasting chickens and pigs in the living room. The dishwasher was inoperable because the drainage tube had eight ounces of rotting fat lodged in there. There was grease and soot all along the walls of every room. They lost the keys, so we had to change the locks. They tried a makeshift repair of one of the toilets, using… concrete.

I confronted them on all of this and said we would be keeping the security deposit, at which they got angry. They thought that, since they lived there for six months, they owned the curtains. They were going to challenge us on the rest for their security deposit, but I wrote a detailed letter — with photos as documentation — to his commander and they backed down. It cost us three times the rental deposit to repair all of the damage and to get all of the chicken and pig grease off of the walls.