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

I live in the same building that I work in. I manage a sandwich shop in a heavily urban area. The landlord of the building is an angry old man, who we all love, but can be crotchety at times. He took upon himself to remove the bike rack in front of my building, illegally. His thinking was it would cut down on people leaning on it to smoke cigarettes. So I emailed the department of transportation, stating that if they continue to be removed, we’ll potentially miss out on business from cyclist, on the theory that if they have no place to securely lock up their bikes. My landlord is on vacation, when he comes back on Wednesday, there will be a brand new 20 foot bike rack installed directly in front of the building, courtesy of the city.

fatheraabed , Josh Bean Report

It was coming up on renewal time, and my landlord had just sent renewal paperwork with a big rent increase. Knowing I could find a cheaper place nearby, I sent in my written notice to vacate, which was required 60 days before my move out date. The landlord rejected my notice, and told me that if I read the lease I would know that notice to vacate was required 60 days before the first day of the month that I wanted to move out, not 60 days before the move out day itself. As a result, they were going to force me to submit a new notice the following month and pay an extra months rent (at the new higher rate). I was offended by their attitude, but accepted that they had won – at least until I checked the lease against local rental law. While they were right about the required date of my notice to vacate, they had failed to send me notice of rent increase on time, because I was supposed to have a minimum of 2 weeks AFTER receiving their notice of rent increase to put in my notice to leave at the end of my original lease term! I wrote back to them with a screenshot of the relevant city law and said “while you are correct about the due date of my notice to vacate, you also failed to send me timely notice of rent increase. You can’t require me to send you notice to vacate at the end of my lease term before knowing how much you will be raising rent! So how do you plan to remedy your breach of the lease?” After what must have been a tense call with their lawyer, my landlord agreed to accept my original notice and let me move out on the day I planned. Since I had already paid my last months rent, they never got another cent from me!

User , Romain Dancre Report

My lease is ending soon and my landlord has been showing my apartment to anyone with a pulse, non-stop, for months. During a couple of these showings, my bedroom door was locked. The landlord got mad about this and told me he was coming to remove my bedroom door handle and replace it with a handle with no lock. He said city fire codes do not allow locks on interior doors and he wanted everything up to code for the new tenants. I responded that getting everything up to code was a great idea! I offered to schedule an inspection from the city so they could get all their maintenance done at once and really be sure things were ready for the new tenants. Best to do the whole building, I think I saw signs of rodents in the basement… Suddenly building codes weren’t so important. My bedroom door is now locked during all showings. edit: Guys look, we’re famous! https://www.newsweek.com/tenants-response-landlords-code-threat-delights-internet-1711025 A huge thank you to Newsweek for giving me something perfect to tape to the apartment door before showings! Thanks to everyone here for all your ideas and words of support!

conandy , Alena Darmel Report