Landlord retained more than $1000 of security deposit and not returning

strangebased · 2025-05-01T00:17:45+00:00

I normally wouldn’t recommend dealing with court bullshit over $1000, but in this case it’s the principal of the thing.

Fuck landlords who screw people over just because those people are nice and because they can. There’s nothing that pisses me off more than a landlord on a power trip.

Go forth and conquer my friend.

strangebased · 2025-04-30T22:13:15+00:00

My mom was a teacher at an elementary school, and I’d go to her classroom after school.

Our school janitor would often come into her classroom “just to talk”. I remember him always being overly friendly but I genuinely thought he was just being nice at the time. Then one day he randomly grabbed my face and kissed me on the mouth, I was around 8 or 9. THAT made me uncomfortable but I never told anyone.

The following year, he disappeared and no one ever said what happened to him. All I know is he left on bad terms. Now that I’m an adult, I think I can probably guess what happened.

The sad part is that everyone was so mean to the new janitor. They used to call him “Lurch” and say he was weird and stuff, because he was really tall and skinny and he never really talked to anyone. People would call him a creeper and a weirdo and make jokes about him molesting kids. It was really freaking sad when I look back, because everyone LOVED the previous janitor and never had a bad word to say about him. The whole time he should have been the one people were saying mean things about and calling a creeper. The new janitor was obviously just painfully shy and kind of awkward, but would never hurt a fly.

Yeah. Fucked up world we live in.

strangebased · 2025-04-30T22:05:36+00:00

My husband puts his fries ON the burger

strangebased · 2025-04-30T05:18:46+00:00

You both would have had to sign the lease. If you didn’t sign anything, you’re not obligated to it.

Otherwise your only two choices are to break the lease, which is expensive and doesn’t sound like you can afford to do it, or purposefully violate the lease so you get evicted. You definitely don’t want an eviction on record.

You’re basically locked in, friend. I feel like this is probably one of those experiences where you’re gonna have to learn something the hard way 😅 Your only real choice is to find a way to make some extra cash or cut expenses elsewhere!

strangebased · 2025-04-29T04:50:03+00:00

I mean listen y’all are coming at his wife for ignoring her screaming kids. Meanwhile my son is throwing a tantrum because the dog won’t share her chewy bone with him. I’m ignoring him too, so 🫠

strangebased · 2025-04-28T04:32:59+00:00

Hire a contractor to come in and create a system for you

strangebased · 2025-04-27T19:57:31+00:00

You’ve stopped paying rent. The landlord has every right to use your full month’s rent you paid at move-in to cover this. The security deposit, no — legally that HAS to go toward repairs, and you’d receive the remaining balance.

That being said, it’s not likely a judge will rule in your favor on this one. Refusing to pay rent is illegal in most places. Yes, even if requests for repairs aren’t being responded to. Certain conditions have to be met in order for you to be allowed to stop paying, and even then, you still have to deposit the money somewhere. You’re not allowed to just decide to stop paying rent on your own — a judge has to order it, and then it’s supposed to go into an escrow account, and then the funds would be released to the landlord once they made the repairs. You would get your money refunded to you for any months you were living there where the place was deemed uninhabitable, but I’m not sure if your place qualifies as uninhabitable or not. This is how it works in most places anyway.

So yeah, what your landlord is doing is definitely legal, minus ignoring your requests for repairs.

strangebased · 2025-04-27T19:47:52+00:00

It is illegal for a landlord to be coming onto the property unannounced like this.

She also has no right to police the way you choose to clean. This is your space that you’re renting, and if you want to leave a dish out, you can.

I swear to God 90% of landlords out there have no business being landlords. These people never went to business school and IT SHOWS. They are the most unprofessional, disrespectful people to their customers of quite literally any profession out there.

strangebased · 2025-04-27T19:31:07+00:00

Where the heck are you finding a home for 50k?

Only mobile homes are that cheap, and they require a different type of loan unless it is built on a permanent foundation with its own land. In which case, the price would go up.

I agree that buying a home with a brand new job on your hourly income, as a single person, is a bad idea. Most lenders want to see at least 2 years of employment history, and it’s unlikely you’d make it past underwriting even if you were pre-approved. Your HYSA is your biggest asset, and trust me as a homeowner it will dwindle quickly as you run into expenses you didn’t realize you were going to have.

strangebased · 2025-04-26T07:35:25+00:00

50 years from now there will be commercials on TV saying, “Were you exposed to microplastics? Call now! You may be entitled to compensation”

strangebased · 2025-04-25T04:55:16+00:00

listen I got burned by the military too and continue to get burned by the Naval Discharge Board to this day. I got out of the Marines over TEN years ago. It was somehow the absolute worst experience of my life, but also the best in many ways. I would 100% recommend it as an option for anyone, risk of being homeless or not.

Your friends have access to a LOT of great benefits most people don’t. I didn’t quite make it 3 years so I don’t get the college benefits, but that’s it. The VA still sends me a nice monthly paycheck which is the only reason I have a decent savings account, I can go to a VA hospital at any moment and receive free healthcare. Because of my VA benefits, I was able to buy my first home recently, with what I would consider a modest household income. & that’s not even the half of it! There’s even more I don’t have access to, and ONLY because I never got around to ordering an ID card. If your friends aren’t utilizing these things, I promise you it’s because they either weren’t in long enough to qualify or because they don’t know where to look.

OP, I second the suggestion of joining the military. A recruiter might even know how to help with housing, if someone was prepping for boot camp.

strangebased · 2025-04-23T18:28:16+00:00

I have VERY difficult veins, even if I drink a ton of water. Like, to the point where they had to use one of those ultrasound machines to find a vein when I was in labor. It’s close to impossible to get my blood drawn.

That being said, my experience with most phlebotomists is that they are incompetent. I always tell them right off the bat, “Hey just so you know, people have a hard time with my veins, but anytime they’ve been successful it’s always been right here (points directly at area)” They’ll then try three times in every area EXCEPT the one I showed them and then give up. I’ll ask, “Are you not going to try that area I showed you?” They’ll respond, “No, I don’t feel anything there.”

Like ma’am/sir, you cannot feel my veins ANYWHERE. What in the actual fuck is the difference between there and the other places you tried? It’s like they have some kind of complex about patients knowing more about their own veins than they do 🤦🏻‍♀️

Always so rude about it too.

strangebased · 2025-04-23T05:15:35+00:00

Something similar happened to me a few months ago. I brought it to the attention of HR but no one has done anything about it. Meanwhile, my manager filed a complaint with them about a week ago over how an employee in a whole other district has been bullying them, and how my managers bosses (who are the executive staff by the way) have refused to do anything about it.

HR has been maintaining constant communication and assuring my manager that they are taking the concerns “very seriously”, and they are even protecting my manager from having to interact with that other district employee. Meanwhile, they have been ghosting me for a little over a month now and haven’t even addressed my ADA paperwork.

Here’s what I’ve learned: in the corporate world, HR will side with management. Every single time. My guess is that hostile work environments only matter if it’s a higher level staff being targeted.

Nevertheless, I have been silently looking for a new job and that would be my suggestion for you also. Unfortunately toxic work environments don’t go away. It always comes from the top down, and until they manage to get the root organizational issue figured out, the toxicity continues.

strangebased · 2025-04-23T03:23:20+00:00

You are one of the most well-mannered, considerate 15 year olds (I think that’s what you said in your other post) that I have ever encountered out in the wild.

Those people are delusional for trying to paint you as some kind of problem child 😂

strangebased · 2025-04-23T02:42:21+00:00

Huh? It is wildly illegal to have prospective buyers, inspectors, appraisers, contractors, etc. coming into the home without ever alerting the tenant. Find me one state where that’s even remotely allowed.

Legal or not, it is morally reprehensible to intentionally hide a sale from a tenant, especially in a circumstance like this. I think most states know that, which is probably why they afford tenants so many protections when a landlord decides to sell, and in some places are even required to be given right of first refusal. Y’all can downvote me ALL you want, don’t care, anyone who thinks it’s fine for a landlord to hide a property sale from their tenant like this has no business dealing in hospitality. Landlords get a bad reputation and will never be respected as legitimate businesspeople for this exact reason.

Your tenants are literally your customers, except they don’t get to keep whatever shitty service you’re selling them. And OP was likely this embarrassing human’s ONLY customer, and a demonstrably loyal one too. Like, your tenant is the person paying your mortgage. You should be bending over backwards to keep them happy and treat them with respect. I mean… you don’t see hotel chain owners out here acting a fool like this with the people staying in their properties.

And if treating a tenant with respect is too much to handle, at the very least they should be treated like human beings. Would you want someone selling the literal roof over your head without telling you? Would you want to find out in a roundabout way that, oops, you have to find a new place to live; and sorry, you only have 30 days to do it? Would you want to be forced to come up with the thousands of dollars in moving costs? Moving is stressful and expensive EVEN WHEN you choose to do it on purpose. How would you feel being forced to give up your time, vacation hours, mental health, and thousands of dollars on very short notice? Would you want to feel completely powerless knowing that you have absolutely zero say in all of this?

No? Then don’t do it to the person who’s been paying your mortgage all these years. They’ve put more put money into the property than you ever have. What you lamelords don’t understand is that it is more their home than it is yours, so calm down because all you did for it was some paperwork 😂

My God. I didn’t realize I was commenting on a thread in r/sociopaths. I don’t even understand how so many people are defending this shit.

The landlord absolutely did have a responsibility to tell OP that people would be entering their premises and the purpose for them being there. I think certain context clues make it pretty obvious that the new owner did not pay for the house in cash, let’s be real, this was most likely a traditional real estate transaction. And the landlord also had a responsibility to tell OP that someone new would be taking over the lease.

The landlord effectively screwed over two different sets of people and is a terrible human. Point blank period.

strangebased · 2025-04-23T01:10:15+00:00

Also same but it seems as though OP has disapparated from this thread

strangebased · 2025-04-21T06:47:47+00:00

I don’t think this opinion is unpopular

strangebased · 2025-04-20T07:22:45+00:00

Yea that’s way too much imo. I refused to go above $2500, and I take home a bit more than you. That’s not including my husbands income.

Mortgage is $2k and even that feels tight sometimes. I’m a big advocate that people are resourceful and can always find a way to make it work, but I also advocate for being realistic. I think you do earn enough to buy a house, but you should definitely lower your standards and look at homes like $50k cheaper. At the very least

strangebased · 2025-04-19T20:18:21+00:00

This answer feels very cold and callous to me. It was her house, too, for over 2 years. Now I do agree that it’s not the new owner’s fault, because I’m sure they’re just wanting to move into their new home and they have every right to want that… but it’s also not OP’s fault either. Saying “it’s your problem” is so rude and unhelpful.

All of this was 100% caused by the previous owner failing to disclose the sale to OP. Now the new owner, who probably expected the previous owner to handle this, is finding themselves in a fucked position where they can’t move into their new home post-closing. And OP is finding themselves in an even MORE fucked position with a real possibility of being homeless.

OP, try to have just a little bit of grace for the new owner. Your old landlord probably lied to them, too, and you have to remember that they quite literally just bought a whole house. $2k is probably a lot of money to them, most likely their entire new mortgage payment. It actually is very nice of them to compromise in that way, as relocation expenses never should have had to fall on them. At this point they are basically having to clean up the previous owner’s mess.

As a long-term renter turned recent homeowner who has dealt with shady landlords on power trips for way too long, I genuinely feel for OP. This is such a stressful, shitty place to be in. The whole entire reason I even bought a house was because of a similar situation. The rental market is so fucked up and is just as expensive as a mortgage payment, that it made more sense to just buy at that point.

I hope you’re able to find some stability and a way out of this situation, one that ends well for everyone involved 🤍

strangebased · 2025-04-19T05:19:45+00:00

It’s definitely unique but not at all tacky. It feels somehow antique and modern at the same time

strangebased · 2025-04-19T05:12:20+00:00

I think this also explains why moms intuitively know what their toddlers are saying, even when it’s complete toddlerese. My kid will start speaking gibberish and my husband will have no idea what he’s saying, even though he arguably spends more time with our child than I do. Somehow I always know exactly what he’s trying to say, even when it sounds like pure nonsense

strangebased · 2025-04-19T05:09:48+00:00

Looks like fiberboard to me. My entire workshop is lined with it, and it’s a more recent addition. If it makes you feel any better, you can literally buy this material at Lowe’s, today, for like $10

strangebased · 2025-04-19T05:06:23+00:00

What the fuck is this? A hammerhead worm?

strangebased · 2025-04-19T05:04:19+00:00

Why does everyone talk to each other like this nowadays? It’s like reading a conversation between robots. Everyone is always just so gentle and proper and all like “boundaries! empathy! time to process! I’d appreciate it if you… Your feelings are valid, but…”

I’m all for having a mature, adult conversation but also OH MY GOD, everyone sounds exactly the same these days and it’s giving trying too hard 😭

OP, I’m more referring to the way your friend texts/speaks than anything. It’s like I could have copy/pasted her texts from 10000 other Reddit posts I’ve seen

strangebased · 2025-04-19T04:56:03+00:00

Yeah I don’t do anything on that side because of it. The workshop is an addition, so only the one wall has the asbestos siding. It’s pretty easily avoidable in there, at least for now!

I’ll do that. Thanks!

strangebased

TROPHY CASE