New York Real Estate Horror Stories
While we raise an eyebrow at that old saw about how it’s accepted New York etiquette to ask absolutely everyone you encounter what they pay in rent—sometimes that’s still super inappropriate!—we know for a fact that no matter who you’re talking to or how much of a lull you’re at in a conversation, you can always, always, always, bond with people over apartment (and roommate) horror stories. People are as greedy as they are unhinged, and there’s something particular about New York real estate that encourages humanity’s worst qualities to run rampant. No one comes out unscathed. You know, I thought my tussle with a roommate who illegally extended a lease in my name and tried to steal my security deposit was an all-time cautionary tale (we haven’t spoken in three years), until a friend was slashed in the face by an intruder after his landlord refused to put basic locks on his ground-floor apartment in Bushwick. It’s real bad out there.
Which, um, is actually a testament to all the other good stuff that keeps us all from leaving, right? Sure. Anyway, in the spirit of commiseration (and schadenfreude), we polled acquaintances, colleagues, and the internet for the best of their worst. Hell is other people, and your landlord.
MATT NELSON
Co-founder, Mellow Pages
Bushwick
My own apartment is like a shoddily insulated shed attached to the original building. The heat either works too well (ground floor problems) or there is no heat, and I can actually hear wind coming in under the storm door which leads out to the backyard. But my “favorite” part about my apartment is that directly outside the storm door there’s one step down and then a tiny drain with medium sized holes. For the first two years living there it was the only drain in the whole backyard. With three trees along the fence separating us from our neighbors, anytime rain came, it meant leaves, dirt, branches, cigarette butts, plastic bags, and anything else unmoored would come floating fast toward and then ultimately clogging the miniscule holes in the drain. And when that drain got clogged, it didn’t take long for the “one step down” recess below my leaky door to fill. I remember during Hurricane Irene, I was up every hour to clean out the drain. It was still muggy then so I think I wore my rain slicker and my boxers, no shoes. I slept in fits for fifty minute intervals curled on my bed between whatever I couldn’t pick up off the ground and pile on my dresser. By Hurricane Sandy, I had learned my lesson and built a series of small brick levees lined from my shed’s outer wall to the adjacent church’s leading downhill to a little drainage box made of more bricks and a window screen above that little drain that never could. It almost works.
BECKY MCCARTHY
Bartender/Student
Bushwick
Once I accidentally stood in front of a crack house before walking up the block to see an apartment I was trying to rent, and when I came out, three undercover cops zip-tied me, searched my backpack, and made fun of my Discman, because it was 2010.
LAUREN BECK
Associate Editor, Northside Media Group
Murray Hill
TAZRI MCAFRIN
Account Manager
Bed-Stuy
NIKITA RICHARDSON
Editorial Fellow, Northside Media Group
Bushwick
BECA GRIMM
Writer
Greenpoint
“We don’t cover that,” she snarled. “And by the way, we’ve gotten a lot of complaints about you girls smoking pot and playing loud dance music.”
That was definitely not us.
I relayed the story to my roommate and she asked, “Do you think she means Fleetwood Mac? And do you think she could actually help us find pot? I don’t know anyone in Greenpoint.”
BRITTANY TAYLOR
Student
Williamsburg
I had a cokehead closet case roommate for a month and a half who always talked about how the neighborhood junkie wanted to come up to use the bathroom and give him a BJ. Fortunately, he never invited him up.
KRISTIN IVERSEN
Managing Editor, Northside Media Group
East Village
The first apartment that I lived in on my own was located directly above the home of an octogenarian woman who just so happened to have about 20 cats. The smell of cat urine permeated all the common areas of the building (well, not the roof, still though!), but luckily couldn’t be sensed from inside my apartment, unless I opened a window. So, you know, I just never did! It got stuffy, but stuffy is always preferable to cat piss. Always.
All of this would have been tolerable (sort of, I guess I used to have really low standards of tolerability), if Rossellino hadn’t broken the first rule of being a good neighbor in New York City, namely, never directly address what your fellow apartment dwellers are doing in the privacy of their own homes. And Rossellino broke this code in the worst possible way, by reaching across the air shaft to knock on my window late one night so that he could then ask me if I was “ok” because he’d heard “strange noises coming from my bedroom.” He asked me this while holding both his snarling ferrets in his arms. He was also shirtless.
He disappeared from the window pretty quickly once I started screaming at him, and he never bothered me again. But it was still pretty bad. Unrelated to that incident, I moved out not long after and so only saw Rossellino once more, years later. He was sans ferrets and appeared to be directing Danny Aiello in some kind of movie, but I didn’t really try to find out what that was all about. In short, I fucking hate ferrets.
REDDIT user icanhe
Greenpoint
I lived in a 2-bedroom on India between Franklin & Manhattan (Greenpoint), the building was bought by a new owner 2 months before our lease was up. It took 5 months to get our security deposit back after we moved out, the new owner was going to take out $600 (of the $2800 he owed us) due to 5 nail-holes in the walls where pictures had been hung, saying they needed to be patched and the entire apartment would need repainting. After reading up on everything (as well as emailing, calling & texting the asshole owner every day for the 5 months), I found out he hadn’t kept the security deposits in a bank (which is required by law in buildings with 6 or more units); after I inquired about the banking information, he ended up giving the full amount back.
DANNY STEDMAN
Co-founder, Northside Media Group
Brooklyn Heights
My roommate once hung up a naked photo of his girlfriend, and then she moved in a month later—the photo stayed up.
ALEX KONSEVICK
Design Director, Northside Media Group
Williamsburg
AUDREY SCHAEFER
Account Manager, Northside Media Group
Park Slope
The former owner of my building passed away in January 2012 before I moved in and a realtor named Lynn became the overseer of the estate, and was supposed to sell the property. It took a solid two years. In the meantime, my old roommate was convinced that she found bedbugs in her room and demanded that Lynn take care of the problem, which she didn’t. So my roommate took matters into her own hands and plastered the building (with Post-It notes, mind you) about the issue, saying that we had bedbugs and management wasn’t doing anything, and people should get in touch with Lynn to demand she take action. And they did.
They had not. So my roommate called Lynn again once she discovered she had more bites and demanded that they bring in a real exterminator. They didn’t, they brought in the same faux-exterminator, but they at least did all the units and used a different chemical that wasn’t so horrible smelling, and we didn’t get any more bites.
A few months later, both my roommate and I get a “three-days-notice” to move out, claiming that we hadn’t paid rent for over eight months, essentially as revenge for all the demands we made about the bed bugs. We both produced rent check stubs for the months in question and nothing ever came of the eviction. The bedbugs went away, my roommate moved out, they’ve finally sold the building. The new owner isn’t ideal, but I won’t pass too harsh a judgement until I see how they pass their first critter test (which, hopefully, they never have to take).
REDDIT user DSP Germ
We discovered a mouse was living in our oven only after turning it on.
ALEXANDRA PAULINE
Advertising and Sponsorship Coordinator, Northside Media Group
Williamsburg