There must be something about having complete control over whether a person has a roof over their head that turns you into a complete arse.

We all have crazy memories of landlords. What’s a collapsed roof or surprise eviction between besties, right?

Landlords are truly pushing Generation Rent to their absolute limit. We asked you to share your most chaotic landlord stories, and boy did you deliver. We’ve put together the worst, most cursed stories together to remind us that, even if we’re in rental hell, we’re in it together.

Roofs are overrated, actually.

“The roof of the apartment collapsed the day before we were due to move in. Wooden supports were completely rotten. Needless to say we demanded our money back and refused to move in. Landlord hit us with the old “well we’ve never had complaints before. The problem with the roof has never happened before. It’s not that big of a deal”… The implication being that there was a quantity of bird shit he would put up with in his own home.

Currently they are trying to hold on to our deposit and rent for an apartment we never even moved into. In talks with the RTB.

The “fix” he refers to is plugging the hole on the outside with epoxy and nailing a board of plywood to the hole on the inside.”
-Antoine, 28, Carlow

Just a little something extra

“Was living in a place in Drumcondra for two-ish years. We opened up a letter from a letting agency addressed to the gaff a few days before we moved out. Turns out he was renting it for 1,400 and charging us 2,100.”
-Anonymous 21, Drumcondra

Merry Christmas, and a happy new wall.

“Not sure unhinged, but left us one month without an oven during Christmas, then when leaving she gave us the deposit back but rang me three days later asking for 400 euro back to have one wall painted. One wall.”
-Dean, 28, Drumcondra

Getting a bit too close there, mate

He showed up with COVID to stand just outside the front door, with a wee face mask and tell us that he is poorly and can’t collect the rent till the following Friday, and we all needed to be there for it. We asked him oh, do you have COVID and he was like I do yeah, nevermind though, rent Friday.
-Dan, X, X

Party’s over

“Evicted on the spot at 5am Post Pride party! And was only allowed one trip to move home before they changed the locks, then they were fuming I didn’t empty the big bins outside?

My landlord drove up from Kells to personally evict me and all others living in the house, none of which were present. He said he’d received noise complaints – which had not been relayed to me but gone straight to him. After a friend urged me to report him to the RTB, I looked up the gaff and realised he wasn’t registered, even tho we were paying him an extra 50 a month in cash because of how high tax was apparently :)”
-Anonymous, 22, Deansgrange

You never forget your first landlord

“I had a ✨psycho✨ landlord couple in the Falls Road in Belfast! I used to get home from uni sometimes and my landlord and his dog would just be sitting in the sitting room watching TV with a cup of (my) tea in his hand!!! I was 18 at the time, first house out of home so I didn’t even think it was as strange as it was.”
-Niamh, 18, Belfast

If your landlord is like this… run

“Used to live in a house with six other people. Had to text our creepy landlord about the heating not working properly. He replied asking if I didn’t have a man to keep me warm at night, then proceeded to snoop around all the girls’ bedrooms and text us about what he’d noticed in there and make comments about our underwear.

He had keys to the house and would randomly show up all the time with no warning to use the toilet. He also had 20+ properties across Dublin and all our rent was paid cash in hand. He had his mail send to our house and the envelopes literally had ‘offshore accounts’ stamped on the front.”
– 22, Anon Rathmines

Do you live in a house or a flowerpot?

“I live in a house of five people, it’s meant to be four but we have an extra person to keep the rent down. One day, my housemate was sitting on the toilet upstairs and the kitchen ceiling fell through and started pouring water. It remained like this for months until they eventually sent a gardener, yes a gardener, around to fix it.

Still to this day, we’re terrified the kitchen ceiling is going to fall through. The hole has been fixed but they just screwed some plasterboard to the ceiling kind of, no paint or anything. We still live there, and the rent is kind of good. It’s mad. It took us about four months to get it fixed. You should see the shower upstairs. The agency used the same gardener fella and he came over with Covid screens from their office to make a shower screen.”
-Anon, 24, Dublin

Are landlords just really into gardens?

“Lived in a tiny apartment in Ranelagh when I just moved to Ireland. Asked the agent if we could buy our own furniture while we were at the viewing because there was garden furniture in the living room. He said no problem. Couple of months later, we buy a sofa and ask the landlord to take his garden furniture. He said no and that the agent was mistaken which is annoying but whatever.

He then said he’d have to charge more rent if we wanted to have our own furniture in the apartment. As in he wasn’t going to move his out either but he wanted us to pay more money for the pleasure of having his garden furniture and our furniture squeezed into the gaff like it was fucking Storage World.”
-Anon, 25, Ranelagh

The Luas is free, but your “water feature” is not

“I had a landlord when I lived in a tenement on Marlborough street, I never knew his name, he collected 1,000 euro in cash on the first day of each month and spoke in a thick Belfast accent (we affectionately called him RA man) there was an actual hole in the ceiling that was used to call ‘the water feature’ when it rained.

He never fixed anything, when then new Luas line was built on Marlborough st he said he needed to do ‘repairs’. We all moved out to let these take place and then he told us we’d have to pay double the rent or we weren’t getting back in.”
-Trasa, 29, Rialto

There are no winners here

“Landlord agent barged into my apartment at 03:00 stinking of drink while a party was happening next door, insulted me, made remarks about my girlfriend and said he was there to assert his authority. “I’m here to exert my power over the tenants” was an exact quote.

I was alone in the apartment watching preseason football. Not sure who was more unhinged to be honest.”
-Joe, 23, Summerhill

That’s-a one-a spicy landlord

Landlord wanted to evict me for cooking ‘ethnic food’. Was garlic and onion for a bolognese.

Basically the landlord would have come on the third of the month in person for collect rent and I was cooking. He came in and the garlic and onion fumes were so abrasive to his senses he made me stop cooking and come outside to the driveway to hand over the rent money.

He was on about how he wasn’t a fan of ethic food and the neighbours were “complaining about the smell”, mind you it was a semi-detached house in an estate in Dundalk.
-Bert, 21, Dundalk

Landlords. They live rent-free in your mind while you live in their kip for 1600 a month.

Elsewhere on District: You can buy boots made from Gregg’s Vegan Sausage Rolls.