by Adrian Glick Kudler
Curbed Horror Stories are firsthand reader reports about terrible Los Angeles apartment experiences past and present. This week, in honor of Renters Week, we’re having a rental horror story showdown. We’ll post a few horror stories each day with a vote for the best on Thursday. The winner will advance to the national round of our network-wide contest (and the nationwide winner gets a free month’s rent!). Horror stories to if you please.
I’m a landlord, and a super easy-going one. I manage several buildings and home, around 90 units total. My tenants these days are all clean and respectful. Really can’t complain. […]
A couple I rented to were vacating and an interested fellow-tenant wanted to check their place out. They were really reluctant to show it, they gave stupid excuses, but insisted it would be best for her to wait until after they moved out, then they left without any mention of keys or forwarding address for the deposit etc.
Their place looked like a homeless shelter. Their toilet was streaked black-orange-brown, it had never been cleaned. They had roaches crawling all over their toilet and hanging out in the shower like they owned the place. There was even a dead roach dangling from a spider web in the kitchen. Tons of dead roaches on top of the fridge that they never bothered to clean off. Under the fridge too. Along the base boards wrapped up in dust bunnies…
Really great touch- they left me a bunch of 99c store cleaning supplies on their kitchen counter. Barely used of course.
Repugnant.
You NEVER would have guessed it. She was a school teacher and he was an assistant at an ad agency. Both about 26 years old. Whenever they stepped out the door they looked clean and presentable but they were living in FILTH.
That’s why they kept giving excuses as to why the other tenant couldn’t check the place out. Why they vanished without follow up info to return the deposit.
It cost easily double their deposit to clean the place up. After seeing their unit the complaints of bugs from the neighboring tenants made sense.
They are lucky they found each other. Must be hard to find someone willing to live in those conditions.
This article was written by Adrian Glick Kudler and originally published on la.curbed
