When Following the Rules Backfires: 39 Tenants’ Brilliant Acts of Payback That Landlords Didn’t See Coming

Tl;dr (SPOILERS) landlord gives us 7 days to vacate our leisure business from the building, he thinks we cant empty the business during lockdown, and proceeds to advertise OUR equipment for sale to our competition. We sell everything in 7 days and destroy the rest. Enjoy no rent and the loss of your potential buyers. I work for a leisure company, think soft play, indoor soccer, laser tag (can’t be specific) Prior to lockdown, Managers and the big bosses were negotiating the renewal of the lease on one of our parks. Things were going mostly smoothly, however, the landlords were difficult to contact. Then 2020’s [p**p] hit the fan. All of our sites were closed, and everything was thrown into a mess. Negotiations began to slip down the priority list; nobody thought the landlord would push an eviction for an expired lease during this period. Especially with it still getting rent, despite the sites closure, and the closure of every business and restaurant in the immediate area. We were wrong. A few days ago we received a letter saying we had 7 days to leave the premises and take everything with us. We are reminded that anything left in the building after 7 days will become the landlord’s property! (that line is very important). Now a lot of construction goes into installing our equipment into a new building, which makes emptying one even harder. Add a lockdown, with no staff and most businesses shut, it meant that saving much of our assets would prove to be extremely difficult. To lose a profitable site and all of its assets is definitely a blow to our company. But here is where it gets worse; A few days into our 7-day eviction, we find out that the landlord has been advertising our park to our competitors. But he isn’t offering just the building, he is offering ALL OF OUR STUFF PRE INSTALLED. “Ready to go, just needs re-branding.” The landlord has evicted us from the property in an attempt to increase rent and make a solid profit from our equipment installed because he thinks we won’t be able to empty the park. We were furious. And here is where the malicious compliance came in, we were told we had 7 days to move everything we owned out of the property. so that’s what we did. Local businesses from all around offered up free space to store our things, a few people came back out of lockdown and they all spent the rest of the week removing, selling or destroying everything that was related to us. We didn’t even leave light fittings. In every other sight vacation we have seen, we always end up leaving thousands of $$ worth of disco lights in the ceilings because they’re too hard to get. We leave most the construction in, as well as things like the bars and kitchens that all stay intact (recognisable as what they once were) but not this building. We ripped up the flooring we installed, tore down the walls that were not part of the original structure (Wooden walls to divide up the space) ripped apart our manager’s offices and removed all artwork, and locke The landlord now has every new deal he has been making dead in the water, a large renovation bill to install new flooring etc. (or a company willing to do it themselves like we were). Lockdown has been extended another 4 weeks, so he has at least another 4 weeks without rent (we were paying) and won’t have any potential buyers. Silver lining: The assets we got out of the site (fridges, tv’s, equipment, food, tables) have all been sold, and the lack of rent and additional income has helped the business and paid staff wages. UPDATE Here is what happened next: We handed in the keys and it was probably the quickest handover we’ve ever had. The landlord Cleary didn’t want to make any kind of conversation and there was definitely an elephant in the room, but he definitely said NOTHING about the lack of our equipment. Complications did arise when we went to get back various deposits, But he had no case to withhold the deposits from us as the building was in excellent shape. (we had conducted much of the maintenance work ourselves, so the building was in a significantly better condition than we found it, (we also cleaned up 99% of the rubbish and dirt from our demolition crusade so he couldn’t bill us for cleaning) ) A very minor bit of pressing from our legal team meant that we received everything owed back in full! The building is still Vacant and as of yet we don’t know of any potential buyers.

poshbo , Rene Asmussen Report

As I was moving out of my duplex, my landlord looked in the window – saw a mess of boxes, bags, papers and shipping supplies and told us we were “messy” and she was raising our rent $200-300 more a month. She said we could pay that or leave. I told her we would be out by the end of the month. Come the end of the month, we are out and even shampoo’d the carpets (didn’t have to). The landlord dragged her feet and said she was keeping our deposit because of a laundry list of damage to the duplex. I emailed her back with a slew of photos of said damage on the day we moved in and told her that if I didn’t see my security deposit, in full, I was taking her to court. Got it 2 days later. I made a point to print out a dozen copies of the “Landlord Tenant Act” of my city, highlight all the areas she had tried to screw us over (the last few years) – then I took those booklets, looked up her properties online – and gave a copy to each of her tenants.

Disorderly_Chaos , Michal Balog Report

A few years ago, I moved back to the city in which I was a university student. As I was now ‘a young professional’, and had experienced significant issues with housemates in the past (non-payment of bills, having to do all the cleaning) I decided that I would rent a small flat from a reputable agency which specifically catered for ‘young professionals’ such as myself. I went and viewed the property, which was quite messy, and needed to have a few things addressed (ie the vinyl flooring in the kitchen was ripped, one of the drawers in the freezer was broken). But seeing as tenants were still living in the property, and the agency assured me that between tenants the landlord would clean the property, and resolve any small issues prior to moving in, I happily signed a contract, and wrote a cheques for the deposit, and first month of rent. Two months later, I moved into the property, and was welcomed with the following issues (note, I just happened to stumble upon the list I made at the time when clearing out an old hard drive a few days ago): General: The entire property had not been cleaned Fire door wouldn’t close (breach of fire regulations) The previous tenants had left much of their belongings behind, namely clothes and bedding General waste was present in all rooms (bins had not been emptied) Batteries had been removed from all of the fire/smoke alarms (by law, they were meant to be hard wired in rented property) Half of a lightbulbs had been removed from the property Hallway: Mains supply & circuit breaker ripped from wall (incredibly dangerous) Carpet soiled Bedroom: Slats on bed broken (so would not have been able to sleep on it) Mattress torn and ripped Vinyl floor ripped up Window jammed closed Bathroom: Faecal matter on light switch Mirror broken Toilet had not been cleaned (still had faecal stains in Shower door broken off hinges Vinyl floor torn up Kitchen/Living Room: Washing machine broken All draws in fridge freezer absent or broken beyond repair Gas cooker, missing burner caps and pan rail (therefore unusable) Two cupboard doors hanging off Vinyl floor ripped up Curtain pole ripped down It was very clear that two things had occurred here. The first being that the previous tenants had done a bit of a number on the property. That they had not respected the property, and had left quite a lot of damage in their wake. They did not even have the decency to empty the place of their contents, and at bare minimum, take the rubbish out before leaving. The second issue however, is that the landlord had evidently not made any significant attempt to bring the property back into a habitable state prior to me moving in. Being the reasonable guy that I was, I called the landlord and asked if he could resolve these issues immediately. Primarily as the property was genuinely in a dangerous, and non-inhabitable state. I did not want to be a [jerk] about it, however, at the bare minimum, the flat should be safe to inhabit. The landlord dismissed all of my complaints, and stated that his wife (he was on a business trip to Dubai) had inspected and cleaned the property a few days before, and all was fine (a blatant lie). I told him that I was extremely unhappy with the situation, and he told me to ‘adhere to the contract which I had signed’. He subsequently put the phone down. Any sympathy I had for the landlord evaporated at this moment. He was happy for me to live in a dangerous property. So I went through my contract line by line, and found two key pieces of information: If a property is deemed to be in breach of fire regulations and/or is deemed uninhabitable by a suitable representative, it is the responsibility of the landlord to resolve such issues immediately If the landlord cannot resolve such issues immediately, it is the responsibility of the landlord to provide alternative accommodation to the tenant until the property is returned to a habitable state. Fortunately, a close member of my family at the time was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Within the hour I had a formal letter stating that the property was uninhabitable, and dangerous. I had this emailed to the landlord (address helpfully listed on the contract). Within 10 minutes, I had a call from him arranging emergency accommodation at a local hotel until he returned from his business trip, 3 days later. On his return, he drove directly to the property from the airport, and returned the cheques for my deposit and first months rent to me, and asked me to move out. Which I gladly did. Unbeknownst to him, a copy of the letter had been sent by my family member to the Housing Ombudsman, and the local authority. The last thing I heard is that this bloke ended up being investigated, heavily fined, and had to sell the house. TLDR: Landlord rents me dangerous property, and tells me to adhere to the contract. I adhere to the contract, and get a weekend in a hotel, all of my money back, and he is heavily fined and sells the property.

low_myope , Alena Darmel Report