A respectful and professional landlord is a blessing. But someone whose greed is off the charts is bound to make your life that much harder. That is unless you know how to enforce boundaries properly and aren’t scared of standing up for yourself when it truly matters. And if you know your rights as a tenant, well, you have a massive advantage.

Redditor u/wusselpompf recently went viral after sharing how, together with their wife, they got revenge against a landlord who tried to keep their deposit. The tension reached a boiling point after the couple had already moved out when their landlord suddenly demanded that they renovate the apartment. Read on for the full story.

Bored Panda has reached out to the author via Reddit, and we’ll update the article as soon as we hear back from them.

The way your landlord treats you can have a huge impact not just on your time renting, but can also affect you after you move

Image credits: Alena Darmel / pexels (not the actual photo)

One law-savvy internet user shared how they got revenge against an exceptionally greedy and undiplomatic landlord

Image credits: Frank Schrader / pexels (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto / pexels (not the actual photo)

Image credits: wusselpompf

Figuring out whether or not your potential landlord is trustworthy is harder than it might seem

The more experience you have interacting with people, the better you can judge their character. That being said, it’s not like anyone can read someone’s mind. Even the best interpreters of body language, tone, and reputation make the occasional mistake. So, anyone can slip up and end up getting stuck with a bad landlord.

After all, you don’t have a lot of time to analyze them as a person. You probably view the apartment and chat with them for a little bit, and that’s it. Unless there are some major red flags, you don’t really get an in-depth dive into who they are as an individual, what they value, and how they’ll treat you in the future.

What really helps in any situation is to do some background research before you commit to signing any contract or lease. Search the internet to see if the previous tenants have left any reviews about the landlord or their property.

Whether or not there’s any information about them online, you should definitely go through the lease with a fine-toothed comb. If there’s any ambiguity in the phrasing, ask the landlord to clarify things in the document. You want to be sure that you know who’s responsible for maintaining the home, fixing the appliances if they go out of order, and how you’ll get your deposit back.

You can get a sense of who they are by how they react. Iffy landlords might try to rush you to sign ASAP and will be against any rewording. On the flip side, good landlords won’t mind making the phrasing clearer so both parties are on the same page.

Image credits: Pavel Danilyuk / pexels (not the actual photo)

If you know your rights and have a paper trail, you’re at a serious advantage against landlords who don’t follow the law

It’s essential that you properly inspect the home before you commit to renting it. Be on the lookout for things like mold, signs of low-quality DIY maintenance, and damage. The last thing you want is to live in a place that has shoddy plumbing, faulty electrical, and weird stuff growing in damp corners.

One sign of a truly good tenant, aside from paying the rent on time, is that they’ll look after the property as though it were their own place. It’s something that any landlord would ask for! So, if the home is in genuinely good shape and there’s no wear and tear beyond what’s to be expected after a few years, there’s no reason not to refund the deposit.

But in case the unthinkable happens and you don’t get your deposit back for some unusual reason, it helps a ton if you know your rights as a tenant. If your landlord has clearly breached the law, you can take action and hire an attorney. Something that’s going to be a huge boon to your case is if you have a physical or digital paper trail of your interactions with your landlord so the situation doesn’t devolve into a we said/they said sort of situation.

What did you think of the way that u/wusselpompf handled the greedy landlord, Pandas? Would you have done anything differently? What’s the very worst landlord you’ve ever had? On the flip side, who was the best landlord you’ve had the pleasure of interacting with?

We’d love to hear your opinions and about your experiences, so if you have a moment, scroll down to the bottom of the post and leave a comment.

Image credits: Anete Lusina / pexels (not the actual photo)

The tenant later shared a bit more context in the comments of the viral post

Many internet users were seriously impressed by how the author handled everything

There were a few readers who had very similar experiences. Here are their tales

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