apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

we live in an apartment formerly known as a garage. my sister and her husband are our landlords. we have an excellent relationship with their family and enjoy dinner together once a week (on mexican mondays)!

My landlord lives across the street and is 90 years old. He still mows the lawn, but is slow to fix things. I just do the repairs (if I'm able) and include a receipt with my deducted rent check. I actually prefer him over a previous "Nazi" landlord who wouldn't even allow nail-holes in the walls.

I'm a landlord for only the second time and my first was a tenant who stole my microwave and left roaches when he was forced to leave (because of legal issues all owners had to sell their units).

After that, I don't bother my current tenant who pays on time and has never had a problem with any other building occupants. Who cares what she does as long as it's presentable at the end of lease?

It's best to be your own land lord, screwed otherwise. We have a condo, not much, but we are chipping away and it will be ours someday.

we've all met my landloaf.

she is a profoundly stupid woman who has a single point of view for all interactions with every tenant: you are scum and anything you have to say is either wrong or criminal; the fact that the appliances (wiring, locks, toilets and other plumbing, windows) have failed is due to sabotage even if they are original to this 102 year old building; housing laws only exist where it yields direct financial advantage to owner; "normal wear and tear" is an urban myth; common areas should be maintained by the tenants (lightbulbs for example).

We live next door to our landlord and have a good relationship with them. They even installed a second air conditioner in our place at their expense because we wanted another one and the one we were going to buy, a secondhand one, drew too much power for our place. They volunteer to take care of problems for us on the rare occasion when we have one and mind their own business.

our current landlords are very strict in some ways -- no nail holes in the walls, no painting the walls. it might be tempting for us to complain, but they make up for it in other ways, installing brand-new plumbing, heating system, wiring, kitchen cabinets, and picture-rail moldings before we moved in. all this has made our 1920s-era apartment a joy to come home to. also, they haven't raised our rent since we moved in several years ago, even though they certainly could have.

therefore we are philosophical about the ban on nail holes & painting. in the grand scheme of things, it ain't that bad.

My landlord is some sort of Real-Estate Conglomo-Corp...

....for years, they deferred maintenance - then when they finally needed to fix the elevators, replace the roof over the pool pavillion and paint the building - they successfully passed rent increases by the Rent-Board saying that these were "Capitol Improvements".

Meanwhile we still have drafty and ill-fitting windows, obscenely inefficient electric baseboard heaters, the elevators are breaking down again, and the carpets are what was installed in 1964 when the building was new.

What an awesome topic, Regina!

We have a love/hate relationship with our landlord. He is quite aged, and only the second owner of our 1917 cottage (he purchased it in the 50s, I think). He is an engineer and craftsman with a fantastic design sensibility, and he remodeled our home himself in a really open, modern style that still preserves the character of the place. He can still be found on the roof in knee pads clearing the gutters. I have so much respect for all of the above.

BUT...he can regularly be found reading women's magazines that come in the mail for his tenants (there are 8 units among a group of 4 cottages). I suspect he steals our Netflix (a suspicion also independently held by another tenant, which we only discovered as she was moving out). I caught him peeing in our bushes during the day (he lives next door). He's been known to look into windows of single female tenants. He eggs on tenant disputes rather than mediate or decide them.

So um, yeah, love/hate.

I've had my share of good and bad landlords.

The worst: A mega-corp owned complex that never bothered to fix our leaking window so that every time it rained, I had to put towels out.

The best: My one and only NYC landlords who owned a FABULOUS Spanish restaurant, which I lived right above. No bugs, no problems, and every time I paid rent, I got a massive plate of paella with lobster, as well as desert!

Now, no more landlords. We own, thank God!

splendid, i think you and i have the same landlord...

My last landlord told the new tenants they could start moving in before my lease was up...and didn't tell me. So I woke up one morning to, "Hi! I'm Michelle. Mrs. Landlady told me I could start moving in today!" Random yelling stranger in my house.
This was after multiple visits from her and repairmen (painters, etc.) to the place without any notice. After my roommates moved out, she took that as a sign that the place was uninhabited and there was no need to tell me of any goings on in the place. Um. Hello? My stuff is still here. I'm paid through the end of the month...
By the last few days I was scared to take a shower in the place for fear I was going to be walked in on by someone. I've heard similar stories from people who have been walked in on by land lords while they're naked. Yipes!
Now that's one of the first things I ask about when moving into a place : What's your policy on giving notice for repairs or showings? I understand little or no notice when you've requested something be looked at or for emergencies, but yowza. Creepy.

I've had both good and bad. I had one landlord that stole a check from me and cashed it months after I'd moved out.

My current landlord is SUCH a sweetheart ... she's at least 50% of why I love living here! Always gets things fixed ASAP and even once when I was in the hospital (and she had seen the ambulance take me away), she left me a note under my door saying that she knew hospital bills were expensive, so not to worry if I needed to pay them first before rent the next month. wow!

We have been very fortunate to have always rented from friends or their parents. Our current home is owned by a very good friend of mine. He's been very accommodating even when my husband lost his job (gave us a break and that break still continues, luckily hubby is working now).

We are very very lucky.

My landlord is actually pretty cool about stuff. I am not positive what he looks like or if he has ever personally attended to my repairs. He's always been reasonable when I call, and his memos are... well at least you can tell he cares when he writes these up. They tend to be long and explanatory, like how the costs went up and they unfortunately had no other choice but to finally raise the prices in the laundry room by a quarter, or when he has a fine rant on privileges over some complaints about some tenants not scooping up after their dogs.

Every December, he personally composes a letter about peace and a sprinkling of irritation at current foreign policies, and a common wish for persons no matter what their religion may be, to have a safe and peaceful season. It's printed on theme border paper like some candles or a snowy house in the woods, and personally delivered to the door of each tenant. Regardless of how over the top this is, it's not intrusive. I think he wants to run a tight ship, but he's not hanging around, making spot inspections and making any sort of comments about my life.

I like that he doesn't live in the building or nearby, and that I don't know what he looks like, and that he's not my friend or my enemy. And yet, he indicates in many ways that he's not absentee, he's actually putting thought into managing his properties; a decent source of income for him seems to include a regard for the fact these apartments are homes and people live in them. From what I understand, a lot of landlords aren't so interested in the latter that they tend to forget, or have nothing better to do all day than act semi-parental, hovering and nagging.

I've been fortunate to have wonderful landlords. 4 apartments in 12 years. My favorite was my previous place we were good friends, she'd invite me up for tea or drinks. But unfortunately she ended up in the hospital, and I looked after her place and pets for almost a year. So after 7ish years of living there she asked me to move because she was selling her house. I miss living there.

My landlord owns at least 50 (probably more) old houses and also has several huge apartment complexes. I know his name (Steve Brown) but I have never seen/met him and I'm not sure if he actually exists...

Big corporation is our landlord. We have never met anyone. If we had a problem, we would have no idea who to call. Even our checks are made out to some odd lock box address.

Worst. Landlord. Ever.

I promise to log back in here in a month or two, once I've moved, to tell all. Right now, since the landlord lives in the same house (I have one of the apartments in the small house), I cannot go into it. There's a chance it could be seen by the landlord, which would cause extended grief.

But I tell you -- after renting since 1996, I've never had as bad a situation as now. I've always only ever rented in houses, in two states and three cities, and always had good relationships with landlords, usually who lived in the same house. But this one: how many different ways are there to spell "crazy"?

My land lord is a big real estate managment company in Richmond. Looking back if I had done more research I would have seen all the rants on Craigslist about them, but... I needed a place and I needed it right away.

There have been times that I have been without AC (in July), without heat (in Jan), without hot water... I have had their people: pee on my floor, take detox powered in my place, bring their dog (I have pictures of the muddy paw prints). They come in without asking, and they never take care of issues. And the bugs! I am counting the days until my lease is up.

I love my current "landlady" - she's only 23 years old, same as me! She bought the condo I'm living in (no idea where she got the money) as an "investment" to help pay for medical school, and I knew the second I met her she would be awesome. Young (so not jaded by years of tenants), but because she's in medical school she's also incredibly anal and attentive to details (so if something is broken, she makes sure to handle it in a very timely fashion.) We get along great. :)

I had one crazy landlord for a condo I rented for a few months one summer, though. He kept track of EVERYTHING - charged me exactly $4.97 out of my security deposit for a baking sheet that I burned (but didn't take with me, so I assume he's still using it!) When I asked about the charge, he actually produced a RECEIPT from Target with the baking sheet price listed. (And it wasn't like, the receipt from the trip where they stocked the apartment, it was just some random receipt from buying milk and eggs). Talk about ANAL!

My current landlord is cool, he's in his early 20's like myself and conducts himself in a very professional manner. He listens which is very rare with landlords (like my previous one) and he told me he doesnt care what I do with the apartment as long as it looks the same as it did before I leave. So far ive painted the whole place and fixed several things to my liking, and the guy fixes things right away, my other landlord took 5 months to fix a cracked window.

My previous landlord was a cheap bastard, this guy bought me a new kitchen sink garbage holder thingy, new showerhead and tub hair thing from BED BATH & BEYOND! not the dollar store like the other guy.

My building supervisor and his wife are fierce. They're Croatian and unafraid of laying the smack down when necessary.

I don't know who actually cashes the rent cheques.

My landlords are pretty good. They are super nice and I usually end up chatting with them for 15 minutes when I drop off my rent. The only problem is they are very much the stereotypical quick fix people. Instead of taking the time to fix it so it doesn't happen again they just do a little quick fix until it gets to be a huge problem and they end up having to do it the right way anyway. The best example of this was my first apartment before I moved up to the nicer upstairs one. They had just retiled the bathroom due to the fact that the floor underneath was rotting. I knew nothing about this but had had a few of the tiles simply snap in half underneathe me from basic standing pressure. The tenants after me found later about the rotting floor and the landlord had to tear up the whole floor and redo it in the end anyway.

I love my landlord - he is from a very grand, eccentric English family and rents out the top floor of his enormous house for a bit of extra cash.

The house is wonderful - it's full of old family portraits (there's one in the downstairs hallway that dates from 1752) and genuine regency and Chippendale furniture. His stories of the good and great (and, erm, not so good) more than make up for the slight tendency to be slow about repairs.

After reading all the landlord horror stories I now want to get my drink on.

Long live Pearl!

My husband and I love our landlords. They're an older Italian couple and super super sweet. The husband periodically leaves bottles of wine on our doorstep, and every December they take us and the two other tenants out to dinner at a local pizza place (which happens to be tonight!)

Even though our place is pretty tiny (400ish sq/ft), we want to stay there until we buy our own place, partly because our landlords are so great and that's such a rarity.

Our current landlord prefers to be called the "land guy". They're pretty laid-back and hands-off, which suits us well as my housemates are inclined toward fixing things ourselves (pretty necessary in a 104-year-old house).

Our last landlord got divorced partway through our lease and decided he was going to sleep in our basement (it was a single-family house). Obviously this was not okay, but we had a terrible time explaining this to him (major language barrier). So glad that's over with.