r/Renters

State: MD

Hi all, I was renting a shared room in a townhome. The landlord and I had our fair share of difficulties together, just being incompatible (i found her very nosy, always peeking in my room or knocking on my door to try and hang out when I'd come home from shifts) and I lost my job earlier this year so I was struggling to pay rent. We ended up with multiple months where I paid what I could and then caught up later. And for the most part, I did catch up.

As of right now I owe $100 in previous rent payments. My rent was due today (to cover may 21st-june 21st) and I told her I had only half, but could pay the rest + the late rent fee in 9 days.

She said no and told me to be out of the house by the end of the day. She also said that she'll wait 6 months for the $1,000 "Early lease end" fee before she gets a lawyer involved.

I don't think that's legal? I'm getting evicted and leaving the day of. I'm not even a month behind on rent. I was told at 5pm to be out by the end of the day and I'm doing my best but I'm freaking out. I wasn't served any papers at all. We had a lease.

I might be very wrong about my interpretation of this but this all feels very sudden and very illegal. It definitely feels like she's lashing out because she's upset as opposed to doing things the cordial, legal way. But I'm only 25 so I don't know.

Any insight would be great! I'm young and dumb. Thanks.

UPDATES BELOA....

Update: All my stuff is moved out. I took photos of the bedroom and bathroom and screenshots of her demanding I leave via text. The room is a mess but y'know... That's what happens when you demand I leave within five hours, I guess.

I'm staying at a hotel for the night and saving the receipt. I'm going to stay with family afterwards.

Update 2: Well, it's the next morning. I stayed the night at the hotel. I received a text this morning from her asking "what my plan is" regarding to state of the room because she says she'd like to start showing it immediately. I did not respond but I was planning on saying something like,

"Hi X, I was told to leave the property and move all my things immediately. The keys have been left as requested. Everything has been moved despite an eviction typically requiring a 30 days notice. I understand that $100 is still owed due to backrent and you will be receiving that shortly. That being said, I no longer live there as of yesterday, and I am seeking consultation regarding any outstanding potential fees and reviewing our leasing agreement. Thank you and good luck!"

...but I have not sent that yet, as i want to speak to a lawyer first. She likely wants me to drop everything and return to the property to clean (listen, I'm not gonna lie that the room is dirty, I told her that while she was telling me to leave yesterday that it wouldn't be ready to show people but she still demanded I leave) but I feel like she's just trying to get free labor out of me.

I thought the light switch in my apartment living room was broken for like 3 weeks.

No ceiling lights. I flip the switch and nothing happens.

Eventually I discovered it controlled one random outlet in the room, which apparently is how a shocking number of apartments are designed.

Then came the process of walking around with a lamp plugging it into every outlet trying to figure out which one it was.

Honestly who decided this was a good system?

And even after figuring it out, the setup still kind of sucks because the second you want more than one lamp, you're back to manually turning everything on and off every night.

I actually got annoyed enough by this problem that I ended up building a hardware product around it later on.

But before all that, I mostly just wanted confirmation that other people also thought this apartment lighting setup was ridiculous.

So when we went to look at this apartment the landlord was super nice. Of course he was he needed to fill a home. He said a lady with 3 kids will be moving above us. Come to turn out she moved 10 people in. I told the landlord this and he said I was crazy. But yet they have 3 cars and so much proof there is a lot of people up there. In the lease we have the basement and the door connects to my kitchen next to my bedroom. And the lady above has the attic which they use as a bedroom. So my problem is they blow a fuse all the time and they need to go into my basement because the box is in there. The landlord gave her the code to my basement we don’t have keys it’s digital. So now with the warm weather they keep blowing a fuse causing them to just let themself in my basement. I don’t like it I have expensive collectibles down there and I feel like someone is breaking in because if I’m napping I can hear them down there. What should I do moving forward?

Adding : thank you all so much. Gonna get a door bar after work and a wireless camera. Also for some clarity I know I made this confusing. There is also a door on the outside that leads to the basement. And from the basement there is a door that goes to my kitchen.

our building switched to smart locks back in january, they made it seem like it was just a convenience upgrade, keyless entry whatever. i didn't really think much of it

but two weeks ago my property manager sent me an email saying she wanted to "check in" because she noticed i hadn't been around much and wanted to make sure everything was okay with the unit. i never told anyone i was gonna be gone, i was just staying at my girlfriends place across town for a few weeks

looked it up after and apparently through the landlord portal they can see a full log of every entry and exit. exact timestamps. which means they know when i leave for work, when i come back, if i have people over, how long they stay

the email was friendly and whatever but it seriously creeped me out. like i get that its technically their building but i didn't consent to being monitored like that. i have some savings set aside so picking up and leaving isnt the worst option but i really like this apartment and 3 years of being a good tenant shouldnt have to mean starting over somewhere

has anyone else dealt with this or pushed back on it in any way. feels like a line got crossed even if they wont see it that way

I got stuck in a gated trash area of my apartment complex and had no way to get out so I had to call 911!
We are obligated to throw out our boxes there or we will get fined.. I did as told and the gate closed behind me one night. The lock latched and there was no way for me to exit from the inside unless I climbed on the dumpster and scaled the wall then jumped down 20+ feet. I didn’t want to risk breaking a bone so I called 911. When the fire department arrived they had a hard time entering the complex. They had to wait outside the gates for 10+ mins until another resident came and let them In. At that point my phone had already died and I was panicking. When the fire fighters finally let me out, they tested the door and confirmed that there is no way to exit from the inside. I informed the apartment complex of this and they told me that the reason there is no way to exit from the inside is because they want to keep trespassers out. They then fixed the issue by putting the dumpster outside the gated area and offered me $150 to keep quiet about the incident (towards a spa or toward my amenities ). That isn’t even 10% of my rent so I didn’t even respond to them yet. I honestly don’t care to have the $150, I just want to break my lease and leave.
How can I break my lease without having to pay the early termination fee? (Which is 2 months of rent + 60 days)

And it isn’t just this incident that’s making me want to leave… mgmt lacks effective communication, my apartment always needs repairing which is crazy because this is a new building but since moving here 4 months ago, my stove didn’t work, my dryer didn’t work, they have to replace all my floor boards, cars are getting broken into, etc.

I have been renting a condo in OR for two years and my landlord only accepts checks. I have a travel rewards card and rent is my biggest bill by far every month. My other payments all go on the card but the biggest expense I have to pay by check aka the old fashioned way. Is there a solution or a way that can solve this?

just got my lease renewal and it's going up $75 a month. literally nothing in my apartment has changed or been upgraded. is this just standard practice everywhere now? feels like they just do it because they know moving sucks tbh.

i’m 25 and i recently noticed extra charges showing up on my monthly rent statement that were never clearly explained when i moved in. at first i thought maybe i just overlooked something in the lease, but some of the fees feel really vague or random, things like “service fees,” “processing fees,” and other small charges that slowly add up every month. the frustrating part is that nobody really explained these costs beforehand, so my actual monthly payment ends up being higher than what i originally budgeted for. i’m trying to figure out if this is just a normal renting experience now or if i should actually question it more seriously.

for other renters, have you dealt with surprise fees or unexplained charges like this? and how do you tell the difference between legitimate charges vs management just squeezing extra money out of tenants?

We're looking for a new apartment. We currently live in an in-law unit attached to our landlady's home. We've been here for 18 years. Our landlady is not so well anymore, physically or emotionally.

Every application we see wants a current landlord reference. I just don't see how we'll successfully look for a new place without her finding out. We'd like to simply give notice, pay the month's rent, hand her the keys, and eat the cost because we're concerned how she will react.

We can't possibly be the first people to be in this situation. Has anyone navigated this with some modicum of success? What did you do? What did you wish you'd done differently?

hey all!
I got a puppy a week ago and my lease ends in August which is less than 3 months away and I haven’t paid any pet fees. It’s a $300 non refundable deposit and $35 a month. I feel stupid paying that when I’m literally moving so soon. I honestly also forgot about the pet fees when I bought my puppy. My pup hasn’t caused any issues and he doesn’t shed and hasn’t been too loud and I constantly keep everything clean. If I leave him he barks or whines for maybe 8 min max or less and then falls asleep. The only time he’ll bark for a consistent few minutes is if I’m leaving him alone in his crate but other than that, he doesn’t bark much. He’s a really good dog. The thing about this complex though is it’s HUGE and it is a pet friendly complex. SOOO many people have dogs here of all shapes and sizes and you’ll constantly see people walking their dogs and you’ll hear barking a lot of times. It’s a complex of 4 huge buildings and it’s about 2-3 years old. Something I noticed is it seems a lot of things slide because there’s kids from other random developments that cause misery and trouble to all the residents and they use our amenities and swim at our pool and it took them a while to do something about some things but they still come. Another annoying thing is one time they even forgot to send a maintenance person for me. There’s people in the grilling area by the pool setting fire alarms off because they smoke everything up and there’s even multiple people smoking weed from their balcony and smelling certain areas up. I really wonder if there’s people here that don’t pay the pet fee and “ secretly “ have a dog. I have never had any issues here but I’m overthinking it. I want to add again, the complex is so huge that the maintenance people have to drive golf carts around the whole place. So I don’t know give me your thoughts, people. Please be nice about it and don’t judge because I don’t think I’m an asshole for not paying this fee. My husband and I always pay rent on time and never cause any problems.