About landlords and tenants. How to spot some potential problems.

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[b][u]About landlords and tenants. How to spot some potential problems.

Only real life examples, I hope they would be helpful for potential renters and their friends, relatives/parents.

Landlord greet potential tenant in... underwear and "explain" what he want "My neighbors do not like, that I rent my house, so at morning, when you go to your job, be UNNOTICEABLE, invisible, so they would not even see, that
there is a tenant here. And same way at evening, when you coming from work." (Me to myself "Do you want me to crawl?")

One of the unemployed tenants would leave lights turned on whole day(probably due to the vision problems?), so at Noon there are 12(twelve!) burning bulbs in the kitchen and not a single person for 40 minutes(at least, may be a lot longer).
Joke around the house "Do not even try to talk to him after Noon, he is done for a day(wasted, completely)".

Landlord, who live at the same building "share" food of tenants.
Tenant, looking in the fridge: where is my so and so?
Landlord, calmly: I ate it.

College Dr, Edison, NJ, Millpointe Condo complex , landlord B.R. from the country of useless phone customer service representatives. In this case level of self tolerance to lies is just unbelievable. May be it is because he needs to support his 14 or 20 children and HAVE TO rent what he have without even pretending to be honest, but 4 Br apt, made out of 3 Br condo changed 11(eleven!) renters in less, than 6(six) months. So, sometimes you think what business this guy is in, is it renting or collecting SSN?

Ad said ...............................In reality

"ground level" actually, it is half underground level(half basement),

"central AC" you need to ask landlord to bring you a WINDOW unit,

do you have a phone jacks? Landlord assured there are "jacks in every room", it turned out there was ONE BROKEN for the last 5 or 10 years jack in the kitchen, which would have cost to the renter $135 to fix(per phone company hourly repair rate).

"utilities split by 4" in winter time, when bills are high due to use of heater, it is true, but as soon as bills go down utilities become "fixed" all of a sudden for the amount you paid in winter time.

"tile floor, no bugs" after initial inspection and concern landlord was asked whether there are cockroaches, because place look, like it have them. Remember, I said honesty is non existing in this case? Landlord made surprised face and swear he paid pest terminators and they took care of it. After asked "what's this" about cockroach running across the counter, he looked at the pest and answered "Where, there is no cockroaches here!".

After about a week in the apartment seen:
- hundreds cockroaches. Not dozen, but hundreds.
- spiders,
- some dark bugs(about 1/4 inch long),
- centipedes,
- small caterpillars,
- BED BUGS. All rooms infested with bed bugs of all sizes,
people wake up with poison ivy type skin condition. When
asked(complained), landlord said "YOU brought them, there were
no bed bugs!!!" When renter moved out because of it, landlord
placed ad about room again with exactly the same
"tile floor, no bugs" wording. When it was pointed out to him,
this line disappeared and explanation was "Bed bugs is no big
deal. EVERYBODY knows there are in every house in NJ."
No more claims, that tenants brought bed bugs to the apt.
Everybody thought: "If you, all your relatives and friends, who
live in NJ have bed bugs... What can we say?"

deposits Nobody received full deposit back, not a single person. Landlord would try to extract(deduct) for at least something(keep in mind, there is no damage).

mail When asked about the key to the mail box, landlord, who do not live at the place said he is "not going to give a key to tenants(?) and will bring mail once a week". He did not show up next weekend and when tenants called him, he said "I do not know whether I am coming this week. May be next one." When he was told it is not going to work he said "I am doing my roomies a favor by allowing them to use my mail box, if you want your mail forward it to your job." He delivered mail several times and then started "missing" mail ("There is no mail.")
This is illegal.

promises It took him month and a half to bring cockroach bates(probably cheapest he could find in Walmart). Renters refused to spend their money on what is clearly landlord's fault.

renters' treatment One of the guys was supposed to leave for good one morning, even though landlord was coming next morning before tenant left, he tried to "play" the situation.
Tenant cleaned the room, no damage. As ALWAYS landlord started telling the tenant he is going to keep part of his deposit.
Surprised tenant asked why, landlord have no single reason to justify it, so
at about 1000 PM (night!) landlord started SCREAMING at the tenant. !??

renting process Due to the often moving out tenants landlord need to find new ones. He would sit in apartment for 2-4 hrs, waiting for a call or visit of potential renters and when after 2-4 hrs of COMPLETE silence his phone finally rings, he would say
"Therrrearrreanotherrrrenters, whoarrreinterrrested,soyouneedtodecide NOW!"

hiding For some reason landlord put his phone number in ad, like this 123fourfivesix...
I wonder why.

funny part In order to keep tenants from leaving, he would become friendly and say "Blah blah blah, you are good tenant, I want you to stay, it is like with my wife, we arguing, but we still LOVE each other..." Now THAT'S scary. :)

If you plan to check a potential apartment, bring someone with you. It was very interesting to see how two different mamas from Africa recognized problems with the place after just 5 minutes, they both left after 10 minutes after entering the apartment. One of them said to the landlord "You need to put real info in your ad, so people would not waste their time."

It is unclear whether this landlord get used to conditions, like this because of his previous experience or whether it is just desire to be "successful" landlord, but if you see something off, do not assume, it is probably good, because there is a good chance it is not. The worst part is that the area considered to be good and NOBODY expect such problems here. Would you like to stop bed bugs spreading in NJ? Shut down several places, like this one.