Property Management Horror Stories Part 1

Presenter:

What's up everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Loop It In, The DoorLoop podcast where we pick the brains of experts in property management, real estate, and investing. Tech, we cover it. Marketing, that too. So whether you want actionable tips or the insider scoop from top performers in their industries, this is one show you won't want to miss. Be sure to subscribe so you won't miss out on any future episode.

Muhammed:

Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of the Loop It In podcast. Today I'm joined with Ilia Valdes and we're going to talk about property management horror stories. Now it's a little bit different than what we usually do on the channel, but I think it's going to be very funny, very exciting, and hopefully we'll learn something as well. So, Ilia, why don't you tell us a little bit more about today's topic and where you found all these crazy stories.

Ilia:

So basically, I was doing a deep Reddit dive and I found that a lot of property managers and landlords have tons of horror stories, and I thought it would be, not only would it be lighthearted fun to share in our podcast, but also it would be good for our listeners to sort of learn some red flags to watch out for.

Muhammed:

Amazing. Well, I'm really excited. Could you tell us, because I know you've already looked at some of these already, how bad are they? What can we really expect here?

Ilia:

So they range just from your typical property management day to day, like just bad tenant.

Muhammed:

Okay.

Ilia:

To crazy stories that I don't want to give it away, but it's kind of insane.

Muhammed:

All right. That sounds amazing. Just before we get into the stories here, if you guys have any suggestions or stories that you've heard about or maybe that you've experienced firsthand, then feel free to drop it in the comments or just message us. Where can they reach out to us to give us some suggestions?

Ilia:

So any of our social medias would be amazing. You could just DM us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, wherever you find us, just drop it in the comments, drop it in our DMs, and we will probably use it for the next episode.

Muhammed:

Amazing. I'm excited. But let's kick off this pilot episode of Property Management Horror Stories. All right, so what's the first story? Let's hear it.

Ilia:

Okay, so we're starting off light, easing everybody into it. So one guy made his second floor apartment living room into a garden. He brought in a ton of dirt, planted a whole vegetable garden, and it was discovered when the downstairs neighbors complained of brown water stains coming through their ceiling. Can you imagine that? The dude had literally laid a foot of dirt right into the carpet, watered it with a sprinkler and hose every day. Madness.

Muhammed:

My God.

Ilia:

They had to tear the whole building apart and both tenants had to move. Lol.

Muhammed:

It says lol. Is that a quote?

Ilia:

Yes, yes.

Muhammed:

A direct quote. Very,

Ilia:

A direct quote.

Muhammed:

Wow. What was he growing in there?

Ilia:

I don't know. I mean, a foot of dirt, like I think you could grow some carrots or something, like rooted vegetables.

Muhammed:

What I'm curious about is how would you prosecute that or what would be the legal grounds for legal action against this person?

Ilia:

So I would say hire a attorney immediately.

Muhammed:

Okay.

Ilia:

Legal help 100%. And I mean, it's a clear violation of the lease agreement, but you also wouldn't think to say you cannot plant a garden in the second,

Muhammed:

Right, exactly.

Ilia:

So you never think about it. So,

Muhammed:

So what would be written in the lease agreement to go against something like that?

Ilia:

I would say definitely speak to an attorney if this is a worry of yours, and sorry if we planted this in your head, no pun intended. So yeah, definitely speak to an attorney.

Muhammed:

Wow. I mean, sounds like property damage, but I don't know. Speak to an expert.

Ilia:

Yes.

Muhammed:

Amazing. All right, so I'll go ahead with the second one. Three months before a tenant had to vacate, they stopped paying the rent and said to just adjust it against his security deposit. When told it's not acceptable, he involves his dad and the dad paid rent on his behalf for two months. Now, on the third month, no one was reachable on the phone, so we decided to go and see what was up, and we find the house unlocked with all the tube lights missing. The rest of everything was in good condition. No idea what happened, and none of the numbers were working. We ended up ahead since we had the security deposit of three months, and he never contacted us to get it back. Just a precautionary measure, changed all the locks and installed a second door.

Ilia:

Is that,

Muhammed:

Now that was crazy. I don't exactly know what went on there.

Ilia:

I guess they really liked tube lights.

Muhammed:

They really liked tube lights, and they just let the security deposit go, changed their identities, fled the country, who knows.

Ilia:

I guess, secure your tube lights, everybody.

Muhammed:

Oh, wow. It's a valuable commodity these days.

Ilia:

Exactly. All right. The next one,

Muhammed:

Could be worse though.

Ilia:

It could have been so much worse. They could have stole the door.

Muhammed:

They could have stole the door.

Ilia:

Yeah. So make sure you're doing background checks everybody, make sure you do interviews. That's why tenant screening is so, so very, very important. Make sure that the person that you are letting live in your property is somebody that's trustworthy, somebody that won't do this type of stuff.

Muhammed:

Well, what's a good way to check against something like that? Obviously not the tube light thing. That's a little too specific.

Ilia:

Yeah, and I feel like you could never be 100% sure of a tenant's personality. That's just something that is impossible. You can't just tell somebody's psyche by a single interview, but definitely do your best to do background checks. Every step in the tenant screening process, you can check out our blog and we have a lot of information on that from step one to the last step, every single step, trying to help you out through that, how to automate the whole process as well with DoorLoop so you can avoid things like this.

Muhammed:

Amazing.

Ilia:

Or at least do your best. Okay, so the next one. So one of my tenants left the carpet in her room covered in melted slash dissolved Skittles, Slurpee,

Muhammed:

Skittles, the candy?

Ilia:

Yes, the candy Skittles. Slurpee, like 7-Eleven red cups,

Muhammed:

Right.

Ilia:

Feces, vomit and urine everywhere, face down emoji.

Muhammed:

That list just kept getting worse and worse.

Ilia:

It just kept on getting worse. It was so bad that it caused the other two tenants to move out. She only lived there for about two weeks. Do your reference checks you all. Direct quote.

Muhammed:

Wait, they moved out because of the smell, the other tenants?

Ilia:

Yeah. It was so bad that the other tenants had to move out. I think they were probably renting like a room in a house. I think this is more of that situation, but can you imagine that you were only there for two weeks? So do,

Muhammed:

I mean,

Ilia:

Reference checks.

Muhammed:

I feel like if you do a proper background check and a reference check, you'll be able to avoid things like that.

Ilia:

Yeah. But also you never know when somebody's going to do that to your carpet.

Muhammed:

Right. Drop some Skittles and who knows what else.

Ilia:

Exactly. Those are very also specific things that if it happens to you also don't feel bad. Don't feel like you're a bad property manager, a bad landlord. So also, that's also why we're saying stories like this, because it can happen to anybody. You never know when somebody's going to leave melt and dissolved Skittles in your carpet, and then everybody's going to have to move out.

Muhammed:

These are actually blowing my mind because I never thought that this would actually be possible, but wow. Okay. I got a story for you as well. So I'm just going to read direct quote from what the writer wrote into us, the property manager. "Oh, man. I had this guy rent out my guest room for a while. He vanished after he figured out I was going to evict him. When I got into his room, it was nasty." Like all caps. "I'm talking the bed had just been against the wall because there was a smear of hair grease three feet wide and six inches deep." What?

Ilia:

Oh my God, that's so specific.

Muhammed:

"It took a specialized primer to cover it. Thank goodness I still had some of the original paint leftover. Also, he had duct tape over the edge of the door so he could smoke inside his room. I have have asthma, so that's a big no-no for me." Oh my goodness. "He left a soggy pile of cigarette buds on the brand new window, still complete with burn marks. I almost puked the first time I went in there. I had to replace the carpet and repaint the whole room and the trash, little bit of furniture he left behind. Gross..."

Ilia:

That's insane. He could have killed her.

Muhammed:

Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know. And what makes it worse, obviously, is the fact that he had asthma and he probably would've known that. Oh, wow.

Ilia:

That's really dangerous. I honestly, this person is a trooper because,

Muhammed:

Yeah.

Ilia:

I don't know what I would've done. You could pursue some legal action I feel like. Again, speak to a lawyer. That's why when you're drafting lease agreements, you always, always, always should consult a lawyer. Some type of legal counsel. They will be able to help you out with any of the problems, anything you want to specify in lease agreement. Again, very, very important, and these stories I feel like are backing that up.

Muhammed:

Yeah. The duct tape was very creative though. You have to admit.

Ilia:

Yeah, you do. The,

Muhammed:

Not a very smart choice though.

Ilia:

Not a very similar choice. So I have one for you. So a few months ago, again, this is also from a Reddit user. "A few months ago I was going out of town for three months and I needed to sublet my apartment. I found two nice lads on Facebook marketplace who were very keen on staying in my residence for the entire duration. They were international lads from Ireland working in the US from a construction job". And he interviewed them, checked their backgrounds, got their IDs, got a deposit, and overall things went fine. Then the horror story started dot, dot, dot. I went back three months later to collect the keys and help the two with their farewells. I also planned on collecting the final check by hand, and this is what I saw. So this is in bullet points.

The keys were dangling off a hook in the wall. Great, I had my keys. The rent check was in the couch pre-written for an amount that was three-fourths of the monthly rent. Dun, dun, dun. The doorknob had been bashed in i.e. there was no more doorknob, just a hole in the door. Upon entry, the carpet across the house had been ripped off the floor, dot, dot, dot. No more carpet. I was expecting two people to have lived in the apartment. I opened the closet and saw 14 air mattress boxes that fell out of the closet.

Muhammed:

Ilia:

14. I turned over my mattress and saw a 30 by 40 grid of open and drank beer cans stacked up under the bed. The glass, yep, the glass on my glass dining table was missing i.e. dining table with just legs. A wall had a hole in it about one foot in diameter. None of that was an exaggeration. Truly horrendous sight. I ended up contacting them via WhatsApp and letting them know that I am planning on keeping 100% of the security deposit to clean the house. They did not respond, so I kept the 3.5K they gave me for repairs, re-carpeting, new tables, fixing door, and deep cleaners. I barely stayed under the deposit amount. Overall, this was a super inconvenient experience. Luckily, things spanned out at the end. Moral of the story. So this person gave us, okay,

Muhammed:

This is a long one.

Ilia:

They gave us the list. Number one, always collect the deposit for rentals. Maybe me do half month check in to make sure things are looking all right and renting is not for the faint of heart.

Muhammed:

Wow. Clearly not.

Ilia:

Yeah. That was a crazy one. I don't know what I would've done if I just walked into my house, into my property and saw this horrendous site.

Muhammed:

Wow. And then it just kept getting worse.

Ilia:

Yeah. It did.

Muhammed:

The carpet's gone, the doors broken and the keys aren't even going to work.

Ilia:

Yeah, the air mattresses.

Muhammed:

Doors is destroyed.

Ilia:

That's insane.

Muhammed:

And 14 air mattresses.

Ilia:

That 14.

Muhammed:

At least 14 people were sleeping in there.

Ilia:

Yeah, I guess. I guess it was protected all around surveillance.

Muhammed:

Yeah. Happy story in the end though. At least he was able to cover all the expenses with the security deposit.

Ilia:

Yeah. Which I don't know how he did, by the way. That was amazing budgeting on his part. Maybe he had connections because to stay under three point, what did he say? 3.4K, 3.5K for re-carpeting, new tables, the door and deep cleaners, that's not in this economy.

Muhammed:

Yeah. I'm impressed. I don't know how he got that done, but lesson learned there.

Ilia:

Lesson learned.

Muhammed:

Oh, no. All right. We got another one here. "Rented out to a tenant who seemed to split his time between two different apartments. He had rental subsidies, so wasn't paying much out of pocket. He was fine for about two years until he started being sketchy in paying rent." Okay, so two years, everything's going well. All of a sudden, something's up. "Rather than let himself get evicted and lose his subsidies, he voluntarily left. Upon moving out, he calls me and asks me what he wants me to do with the fridge. I didn't know if he wanted me to throw it out or what. Question mark. Question mark, question mark." Obviously he's very confused, the person telling the story. "Turns out that he stopped paying for electricity and the power was shut off months ago. The fridge, oh, I see where that is going, "The fridge completely full,

Ilia:

Oh my God.

Muhammed:

"Which was only four months old at that point." So still a pretty new fridge, "Had been fermenting the whole time. It was unbelievably disgusting. Just full of bugs and larvae and puddles of juice." Sorry for that very descriptive statement there. "But between rent owed, replacing the fridge and other repairs, the damages exceeded the amount of security deposit I was holding." Ah, all right. Last part here. "It took a long time to get the place rent ready again. Mostly my fault not hustling enough with that. So I definitely ate a lot of costs." Oh my God.

Ilia:

That was a crazy one. What would you do? What would be your initial reaction when you saw that fridge?

Muhammed:

I wouldn't even open the fridge. I would tape it up, get some movers to help me out and just dump it somewhere.

Ilia:

That,

Muhammed:

Just get rid of it. It's not worth cleaning. You don't know what you're going to catch opening that up.

Ilia:

That's crazy. That goes to show that you never really know what people do behind closed doors.

Muhammed:

Yeah. And that's something that you can't really look out for. If it's someone bringing a dog in a pet free property or smoking, you might be able to smell that if you came by the apartment to look around or the complex. The fridge, there's no way you're going to know.

Ilia:

There's,

Muhammed:

Property managers are not checking fridges.

Ilia:

There's absolutely no way you're going to know.

Muhammed:

Maybe there should be.

Ilia:

Yeah. Maybe you guys should be checking the fridges, but I don't know. There's also no question that you can ask that's like how do you maintain your fridge?

Muhammed:

Yeah.

Ilia:

During an initial tenant screening, you can't just be like, by the way, do you clean your fridge? It's kind of odd. Also, you could ask for their cleanliness maybe.

Muhammed:

Yeah.

Ilia:

Actually leave that out. I don't know if you can do that.

Muhammed:

Okay. Remove that.

Ilia:

You could ask maybe other questions that will give you a little bit of insight into their personality again, but this is something that you can't really prepare for.

Muhammed:

It goes back to the reference letter as well.

Ilia:

Yes. Again, check the references. Honestly, the best you can is do everything that you can. So afterwards, you're not sort of guilt tripping yourself like, oh wow, I could have done this. I could have done that. I could have done other things different. So if anything, all these stories are just reassuring me that doing the whole tenant screening process, it's just going to be better for peace of mind.

Muhammed:

Yeah.

Ilia:

Because if you went through the whole tenant screening process, at the end, you're going to be like, well, there's nothing else I could have done.

Muhammed:

Right. I covered all my bases,

Ilia:

Yeah.

Muhammed:

But literally there's an unlimited amount of possibilities of what can go wrong. That's what I'm kind of learning here today.

Ilia:

Yeah.

Muhammed:

So you can't prepare for everything, but be as prepared as possible. Make sure you have a good security deposit in place that you can use in case anything does go wrong.

Ilia:

Yes. Yes, I agree. I have another one for you.

Muhammed:

All right.

Ilia:

So, "A guy I used to work with," so this is from another Reddit user.

Muhammed:

Okay.

Ilia:

"His uncle owned a few houses and my coworker was his maintenance guy." So this is the story she heard from her coworker. "Well, they had some people renting in their house who failed to pay the rent for a few months in a row, and they served the eviction papers." Normal. "The people we're out of," also, if you want to learn more about eviction, check out our block.

Muhammed:

Nice plug there.

Ilia:

"The people were out of place on the day of the eviction, but they had taken everything with them." And by everything, I think she means everything. Again she says, "Let me clarify that everything isn't just their stuff. It includes the refrigerator." I don why the refrigerator is a common theme here, but watch out for the refrigerator guys.

Muhammed:

Lock it down, put a chain around it.

Ilia:

"It includes the refrigerator, the shower stall, the kitchen sink,"

Muhammed:

The shower stall.

Ilia:

Yes. I guess the,

Muhammed:

What?

Ilia:

Yes. Like the walls,

Muhammed:

Okay.

Ilia:

Covering the shower. "The kitchen sink, cabinets, and baseboard heaters. They basically stripped the entire house down to the studs, and the only thing left was the carpet and linoleum. They even cut the electrical wiring and took out the outlets". The,

Muhammed:

What?

Ilia:

"We kind of suspect that this was some sort of salvage operation. They rented the place, stripped it for everything it was worth, and then sold what they could and ran away." This is again, a direct quote, and again, of course they tried to pursue legal action, but as the people had apparently fled, they had fled the state and they had no permanent address, so not much can be done.

Muhammed:

Wow. So these are just nomads driving the country, stripping apartments down.

Ilia:

I guess but, I mean,

Muhammed:

And you said they didn't pay rent for a few months in a row.

Ilia:

Yeah. So these people lost,

Muhammed:

Right.

Ilia:

Income from the monthly, so these people lost those monthly rental income, and they also lost their outlets, their refrigerator, baseboards, shower,

Muhammed:

The lost of their refrigerators is the biggest tragedy here.

Ilia:

Yeah, apparently refrigerators are very important.

Muhammed:

What about the tube lights?

Ilia:

I guess they left the tube lights.

Muhammed:

Maybe that was the same person from the previous story. That was their first crime, and now they're upgrading to steal everything else.

Ilia:

And all they needed was the tube lights from the other place.

Muhammed:

Oh, yeah.

Ilia:

Since they had already stole everything.

Muhammed:

Pretty much.

Ilia:

So yeah. I mean, you could have probably maybe gotten their social security number, a little bit more information from them. So again, make sure that the information that you're getting is truthful. Make sure that you're getting enough information so that you can maybe track them down if you ever need to pursue legal action.

Muhammed:

That's the thing. There's no way to keep them accountable if you don't even know who they are or,

Ilia:

Exactly.

Muhammed:

Where they're going to be.

Ilia:

Yeah, exactly.

Muhammed:

Crazy.

Ilia:

Insane.

Muhammed:

All right, well, we do have one more. This is the last story actually, and this one's going to be a shorter one, but we do want to say trigger warning because it does involve animals, but let's just get into it. All right. So here's a direct quote. "Left their German Shepherd mix locked in my basement after they moved out. Couldn't open the door as it was freaking out whenever I walked near the door." Clearly it was in distress. "You could see blood from its paws as it clawed on the base of the door. Had to call animal control to remove the dog, and neighbors said the tenants moved out almost a week earlier." Oh my goodness.

Ilia:

That is so sad.

Muhammed:

Wait, so the dog was in there for at least a week?

Ilia:

Yeah.

Muhammed:

Wow.

Ilia:

Without food, probably. This is also why now I understand why a lot of landlords they're like no pets, because there's also a lot of responsibility that comes with owning a pet, and you don't know if the person that you're renting to has that responsibility.

Muhammed:

Yeah. I mean, I wish we got more information to know if the dog's okay.

Ilia:

Yeah.

Muhammed:

Hopefully he is. It sounds like he's still had a lot of energy to try and escape and everything, but yeah, I think the landlord did do the right thing here.

Ilia:

Yeah, definitely.

Muhammed:

It would have been wise just to open the door, especially with an animal that's in distress. He called animal control, which is obviously he made the right call there. So yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of stories like that. You hear stories all the time of animals like being locked in the backyard or locked somewhere. At least he was able to rescue this one.

Ilia:

Yeah. At least they could call animal control. I mean, if you ever come across this, you can call animal control again and try to save the poor animal, which is so sad. I don't know why somebody would do that, but.

Muhammed:

It's ridiculous. Yeah.

Ilia:

The best you can do in this case is just do your best. And now again, now I understand why a lot of landlords are like no pets, because you can never really be sure. I mean, if it's an emotional support animal, I guess people went out of their way. They actually need the dog. They have a disability.

Muhammed:

They really care about their dog at that point.

Ilia:

Exactly. So it's a little bit more steps that you have to take. Again, not saying that everybody with an ESA is going to take care of their dogs, not generalizing this, but also you need a little bit more documentation, a little bit more, just try a little bit more. So yeah, that might be something you might be thinking of implementing, and maybe this story makes you want to implement it. And if so, I don't blame you.

Muhammed:

Yeah. And again, not the fault of the landlord or property manager. There's no way they could have known,

Ilia:

Yeah.

Muhammed:

About any of this happening. So yeah.

Ilia:

And if they are that,

Muhammed:

He handled it well though.

Ilia:

Yeah. And if your tenants are dog owners, making sure that they're responsible dog owners. Doing a pet screening is also really important sometimes sort of to see the character of the dog, especially if you're renting out like a unit where the dog is obviously going to be interacting with other dogs and other people, especially kids. You can do a pet screening and see how well that dog is behaving, how well the dog is being taken care of. So those are all great options that you can do to at least try your best to keep this from happening. But then again,

Muhammed:

I love that. That's actually a really good point.

Ilia:

Yeah. But then again, you can never be sure, which is why things like this happen. These aren't just people that,

Muhammed:

They happened to the best landlords, the best property managers.

Ilia:

Exactly. Happens to everybody. So if anything has happened to you, again, we'd love it if you could share it, but don't feel guilty, don't feel like you're a bad property manager. Don't feel like you're a bad landlord. Happens to absolutely everyone, and I hope that we showed that today.

Muhammed:

Yeah, I appreciate that lesson there. All right. Well guys, thank you so much for watching. We hope you enjoyed it. Some of these were a little tragic, some were a little funny. So if you have any stories like this that you want us to tell on here or just react to and let us know, message us anywhere on social media or just reach out to us wherever you can, and we'll be sure to include it in the next episode. But with that said, really appreciate it. This has been another episode of the Loop It In podcast. I was joined with Ilia Valdez. My name is Muhammad [inaudible 00:24:54] and we'll see you next time.

Presenter:

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. Don't forget to give us a good rating on whatever platform you're tuning in from, and we'll be back soon with another new episode. We hope to see you there. And until next time, this has been Loop It In.

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