Couple Checking Out Rental Property Finds A Hidden Message From Previous Tenants, Heed The Warning

Looking for a new place to live isn’t an easy thing. It not only comes with financial stress but also with the responsibility of picking a nice place where you’ll be able to live normally, preferably without any kind of infestations. Yet, it isn’t such an easy task. Some landlords are pretty good at hiding nasty stuff until you agree to rent a place, and then stuff like mold, rodents, and bugs come out.

Luckily, there are some people in the world who are ready to take down lousy landlords. For example, ex-tenants who warn future ones about the place’s awfulness in a creative and kind of mysterious way.

More info: Reddit

How should you react when you find a scary note telling you to run in the place you were planning to live in?

Couple Checking Out Rental Property Finds A Hidden Message From Previous Tenants, Heed The Warning

Image credits: PhotoMIX Company (not the actual photo)

A couple in Brisbane was doing a rental inspection at a place they were planning to rent when they came across a warning from previous tenants that said to run away as fast as they could

Couple Checking Out Rental Property Finds A Hidden Message From Previous Tenants, Heed The Warning

Image credits: u/ViolinistNatural4852

Couple Checking Out Rental Property Finds A Hidden Message From Previous Tenants, Heed The Warning

Image credits: u/ViolinistNatural4852

Recently, a couple in Brisbane, the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, went for a rental inspection at a $480-per-week apartment.

In April, it was reported that the median rent in Brisbane is around $636 per week for three-bedroom houses and around $570 per week for units. So, the OPs were planning to pay lower-than-average weekly rent, which might look like quite a good choice.

But the rental inspection changed their minds. And it did it not in the way it typically does. Typically, during this kind of tour, possible tenants find apartment flaws that scare them off. But in this case, it seemed that the major flaws were hidden, as what warned the couple wasn’t the flaws.

Rather, it was a warning about them, written in red ink and hidden in a cupboard. If you’re a Shining fan or a Stephen King fan, you can kind of compare it to the famous “Redrum” writing. Only the writing in this story wasn’t related to supernatural horror but real-life horror instead. To be more specific, the horror of terrible landlords.

Couple Checking Out Rental Property Finds A Hidden Message From Previous Tenants, Heed The Warning

Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto (not the actual photo)

This note was basically a bullet point list of the worst things about the apartment, from mold to, as we said, an awful landlord who likes to snoop around, doesn’t fix the stuff he’s supposed to, and so on. The note concluded with a phrase: “worst rental experience ever. RUN,” which, well, doesn’t sound promising, does it?

Even if the note looked like it was from a famous horror story, it wasn’t so bad for this couple. While, yes, they lost quite a cheap apartment, they definitely dodged a bullet of mold, cockroaches, and an annoying landlord. The ex-tenants, who went out of their way to write the warning, surely did them a solid.

People online fully agreed with this sentiment. Some even suggested that everyone should start leaving reviews about their terrible rental properties to warn others about scammy landlords.

You might wonder why being a landlord is such a hated profession. Well, it all comes down to several things. First, people tend not to like landlords due to power dynamics. People in this profession tend to hold quite a lot of power over tenants regarding their living situation, which can make some people feel a tad helpless.

Couple Checking Out Rental Property Finds A Hidden Message From Previous Tenants, Heed The Warning

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)

Secondly and more commonly, some landlords are just very bad at their jobs. Just take a look at the one from today’s story — his ex-tenants warned others that he likes to visit the apartment unannounced, and he doesn’t fix anything at the place, which sounds like a mold, cockroach, and mice nightmare. And he is surely not the only one like that. In fact, there are worse landlords than him. So, people simply tend to not like others who don’t do their jobs and neglect the people they’re supposed to serve.

There’s also money at play here. We all are aware that rent isn’t cheap. In fact, a lot of times, it is straight-up overly expensive. So, in a way, landlords are seen as the embodiment of greed and exploitation. After all, by charging excessive rent prices, they are exploiting people who need shelter. What is even worse is that, quite often, expensive shelter is in fairly poor condition.

And when people can’t afford such high prices, some landlords heartlessly throw them out onto the streets, which creates another social problem of homelessness.

So, as we and other people online have already decided — warning people about your poor rental experiences is a good thing, as you might save others from suffering the way you did. Ultimately, shouldn’t we all strive to do good for others to make this world a slightly better place, huh?

When the couple posted this note online, it soon gathered internet folks’ attention, who praised the ex-tenants for their move

Couple Checking Out Rental Property Finds A Hidden Message From Previous Tenants, Heed The Warning

I am a writer at Bored Panda. I have loved creating and writing down stories about people and things since I was little and I think this passion led me to get degrees in sociology, communication, and journalism. These degrees opened various paths for me, and I got a chance to be a volunteer in the human rights field, and also try myself out in social research and journalism areas. Besides writing, my passions include pop culture: music, movies, TV shows; literature, and board games. In fact, I have been dubbed a board games devotee by some people in my life.

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What do you think ?

POST

Ele V 7 months ago

out of curiosity.. how did they manage to leave this message without the landlord seeing it ?

8points

John Poole 7 months ago

Apparently, had he fixed what was wrong with the place, he would have found the note.

23points

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Kate Jones 7 months ago

Seriously, we need a carfax for apartments. It would keep slumlords from getting away with it. If I'd gotten that I would have known not to move into the place I'm living now and sign a lease where I'm stuck.

5points

Laugh or not 7 months ago

We need a glassdoor or yelp for rental properties.

5points

AndThenICommented 7 months ago

There was an app in Auckland that was doing just that about 5 or 6 years ago. I don’t know if they survived, if I recall property managers were trying to shut it down. Since Australian regulators and politicians don’t seem interested in actually addressing the rental crisis, I feel they would also try to shut it down. What’s sad is that even good landlords are being pushed out of the market, as an outsider (living here) I can see so much stems from not having 30 year fixed mortgages. They hike up the rates to ‘curb inflation’ but in the end it means “the [right kind of] people aren’t moving up the wealth ladder so we much squash them”. There’s little rent control and property management companies are instigating many of the rate increases as well and even trying to push tenants out of their homes if they’re still on lower rent and a current lease.

2points

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