With Halloween upon us, we were tempted to share the accounts of some “scary” rental experiences people have gone through. Unfortunately, there are far too many of those out there – probably enough to write a novel. You may even have a horror story or two of your own!
People have all sorts of experiences when renting. Luckily, many of those experiences are positive ones. We found some funny rental stories that made us smile so we decided to skip those horror stories and share some fun stories instead. Halloween is also supposed to be about treats and fun as well as tricks and spooky stuff, right?
Here are three funny rental stories we hope you’ll enjoy as much as we do!
1. The Duct Tape Castle
My sister and I decided to room together. We were both young working women at this point (post college) and were looking to rent a large townhome in a rather posh (mostly homeowner occupied) neighborhood. In other words, this was not student housing or section 8.
The landlord seemed nice enough. He and his wife used to live in the home. It looked fabulous. Spacious. Clean. Gorgeous tree-filled lot. The rent was high, but good for the area. We decided to take it.
Things go swimmingly for the first few months. One day I decide to dust my ceiling fan and discover that one of the fan blades has been "patched" on the top with....duct tape. Odd. Perhaps a temporary fix that was forgotten? I didn’t think too much about it.
A few weeks later, my sister is in the kitchen. She leans up against the sink and the panel under the sink pops off. She thinks uh-oh...but closer inspection reveals that the piece had been held in place by....duct tape!
I think you see where this is going. Over the course of two years (yeah we really liked the house and the neighborhood) we discovered that our landlord was some sort of duct-tape mad genius!
Window sills, kitchen cabinets, drapery hardware...all held together and repaired with the sticky silver-grey miracle. His masterpiece though had to be the door hinge (yes!) he fashioned for my closet door.
We eventually stopped calling him for repairs. As my sister pointed out we could buy our own duct tape. We got pretty good at taping stuff together.
We still laugh until we cry about our "duct tape castle". Too bad I moved out of the state. I often wonder if the house is still standing.”
~ Plaidmom on City-Data.com
2. Avoid "badgering" potential clients
“My wife and I went to a view a house occupied by a nice, but entirely bonkers old lady. As she was showing us around we could hear a commotion in the kitchen. ‘Oh, don’t worry, that’s just Albert’ she said and we thought no more of it.
That is until we arrived in the kitchen to discover that Albert was in fact a badger who breaks into her house through her cat flap and gnaws on her kitchen units.
Strange enough, but soon to get stranger.
In order to get Albert to leave the house, she removed a fish from her fridge and began to gently slap the furious beast in the face with it until it scurried out of the kitchen.
For a moment I genuinely thought that she was going to be mauled to death (which would have been tricky to explain to the estate agent), but it turns out that Albert is terrified of fish. Obviously.
Needless to say: We. Did. Not. (Rent). This. House.”
~ Andrew on Rightmove News
3. A “Cat-tastrophe”
“Semiannual smoke alarm check day.
Walk into an apartment and find a cat sprawled out on the carpet, basking in the sun, sound asleep.
It's a No Pet Property.
Whip out my phone to call the resident and when she answers I tell her, "I see you have a cat, but this is a no pet property."
She quickly replies with, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have a cat."
I look down at the purring feline rubbing up against my calf. "I'm looking at it now."
"Well, it's not mine. I don't know how it got in there."
Makes sense. Someone totally broke into her apartment, set up a litter box in the kitchen, a food bowl in the hall, and a five-foot high cat gymnasium thing in the living room.
Darn criminals.”
~ Erin Huss on The Apartment Manager’s Blog
Do you have any funny rental experiences? Please feel free to share them with us!