My lodger from hell experience

esthomizzy

My ability to overpay the mortgage so much has taken a serious hit but I don't care. I'm so happy to have my flat all to myself with no 110% permanent stress level.

I'd been having some issues with her ignoring my requests so on Saturday I talk to her and ask her to pay attention to the ground rules I'd previously set (she'd been ignoring various things as she fancied) warning her that is she felt they were impossible for her to adhere to she should start thinking about looking somewhere more suitable. Most notable ones were leaving her boyfriend in the flat with her keys when she'd gone to work, and having him practically there every night. Refusing to remove her huge bag of shoes from the hallway where I had to trip over them every day etc etc. Sunday night I was out with my boyfriend. When we got back to the flat I asked him if he would mind taking the estate agent sign down from the front of the house (upstairs letting a flat). It's been up for ages and I was sick of the sight of it. He agreed and found some snippers to remove the metal rings and did it. Meanwhile I've gone inside. On Monday morning the lodger and I go off to work once again she leaves the boyfriend in the flat after me having specifically asked her not to do this. My bf gets ready to go and can't find his keys. He tracks back in his head what we were last doing and comes to the very unfortunate conclusion that he must have dropped them outside the flat when doing the sign. There is no sign of them so it's the only logical thing to conclude. I come home at lunchtime to guard the flat, I didn't bring my keys home because I thought they were usless now we were going to replace them, only it turns out you need the key to get the barrel out ( which I didn't know) so he sets off to get my keys from my desk at work and then go to the lock place to get new barrels etc. I have a quick look around in case he's missed the keys somewhere obvious. Well I just happened to glance in her room and there were her keys on the chest (her boyfriend didn't need to use them to double lock the door because my bf was in when he left so he'd left them behind for her) so I ring my bf as he'd only been gone 5mins and he comes back we get the barrels out and off he goes to banhams for the new ones.

As the slimmest (say 1%) chance had glanced across my head that she might have nicked them. I didn't contact her when I told the other people in the building that the locks had been changed because I knew that since her keys were in the flat she would have to ring me to get let in anyway and I could tell her at that point and give her a new set. Everything was changed and I go back to work for the afternoon.

I'm in a meeting until gone 5.30 but when I get out I've got an email and some missed calls and an answer machine message at about 4 saying I've come home because I'm not well but I can't get in what's going on call me. Then another one saying I've gone to bf's house call me. Well as I'm sure you can see where this is going. The only way she can possibly have any keys and have tried to let herself in is if she had my bf's keys because she'd stolen them.

I waited until 7ish while I thought about it and then I texted her and said I'm in now but I'm going out later. Nothing else. She calls of course and my bf answers (I asked him to come back as I didn't want to deal with her on my own). He asks what keys she tried to let herself in with and she says her own. He says your keys are in my hand so I ask you again what keys did you try and get into the flat with? She refuses to talk to him and demands to talk to me. I say the same thing to her. She says she wants to talk in person and she'll be an hour.

When she turns up (2hours later) we talk to her on the doorstep and ask the upstairs neighbour to be a witness. I told her she's breached the agreement we have by stealing from me and I'll pay her a refund on the unused rent for this month and take the lock changing costs out of her deposit. She argued saying that she didn't steal them she found them on the step (that bit could well be true as we in the front doing the sign) but either way she had no business stealing them at that point for her own purposes when she knew perfectly well whose they were (either because it suited her to have a set herself for the day( or indefinitely if we'd just got new keys cut instead of having the locks changed) having left hers with the boyfriend. Or she could have just done it out of spite because she's annoyed with me asking her repeatedly not to leave windows open etc and then my bf causes a massive security problem himself (yes he is an idiot) or probably a combination of both. She actually used that as an excuse and tried to have a go at me about it. But if she'd have done the normal thing and brought them in and said where she'd found them she could still have had the moral highground of him being an idiot for losing them without the associated costs of this course of action.

We let her in to collect some things (while chaperoned) and the other day she collected the remaining stuff. I'm glad she's gone and I never have to see her again and I am so not having any more lodgers unless they come with cast iron guarantees from someone I know and then only if I have a date in mind when they are leaving (temporary visitors only I think).

CheekyLittleMonkey

We all live and learn from our mistakes Ezthomizzy, and sometimes folk take full advantage/liberties of our good nature. I hope you find someone much more suitable next time xxxx I have a 5 bed home and I often think of renting one or two of the rooms out BUT always something at the back of my mind prevents me from doing so.

mountainlioness

Hi EM sorry to hear you've had a bad experience...

You may well be put off lodgers for good but just to say that we've been taking short-term lodgers from the uni I work at and (touch wood) it's been fine so far. Unis are often looking for good places to place visiting professors and researchers (often here too short a time for a proper assured tenancy) and we've found them no trouble at all (they tend to work hard, keep to themselves, be quiet and considerate). If you live near a uni that might be a good source of lodgers?

moominyak

Hiya Esthomizzy, I can empathise about this one...

Had a similar one myself for about 6 months last year, had to tell her that her bf couldn't stay Sunday nights because they were too noisy (talking, mainly, I hasten to add ), she flouted this rule several times afterwards, the bf also thought it was ok to come banging on her bedroom window (it's a bungalow) at 3am and also to leave his pot lying around in my kitchen, and she obviously thought it was easier to extract the Michael first and then apologise afterwards every time.

Fortunately she moved out just before Christmas, and I must say that the other one who moved in just before her (her friend) and the girl I had staying before that were and are both fantastic lodgers, whereas this one was just a gobby, p***-taking little madam! Even her friend (who still lives with me) has commented how "You never really know somebody until you live with them".

The atmosphere improved overnight once she'd left

Good luck with any future lodgers!

aloiseb

We had one who was such an idiot, he never opened the windows in the flat he'd rented from us for a year. (We told him he'd have to because there was an issue with ventilation)....then he had the cheek to complain that his clothes had got mould growing on them!

Still nowadays I expect we'd be taken to court for Health and Safety.

esthomizzy

Thanks everyone ML I also work at a Uni and have had temporary lodgers before (who were all lovely, and best of all left after an agreed period). At the time of taking a permanent one I was finding it pretty hard to make ends meet (with my extra mortgage payments I've been trying to stick to) and I thought a permanent extra bit of income sounded like a good idea. A few months later I am fully disabused of this notion

I've had a little payrise at work too since then and now I think if I can cope day to day without one then any lump sums I get from temporary people can go straight into the mortgage pot (or maybe a little holiday if I deserve a treat).

bandraoi

So your boyfriend has keys to the house.
Your boyfriend carelessly loses the keys to the house and she picks them up but forgets to tell you in the few waking hours between her going to sleep that night and rushing out to work the next morning, hey maybe she even told her boyfriend to give them back to you but he forgot.

You can't find the keys and instead of simply ringing the other person who lives in the house to check if they've seen them, both you and your boyfriend take a day off work to change the locks and when she arrives home, make her homeless.

Lodger from hell alright.

esthomizzy

bandraoi wrote: »

Lodger from hell alright.

There was no necessity to remove the keys from the flat at all, she would have been perfectly within her rights to discuss this or leave a snotty note about lack of security this is what a normal honest person would have done. She stole them out of spite and because it was convenient to her to have an extra set for herself she even admitted she did.

You are of course entitled to your opinion.

bandraoi

or she picked them up on her way out the door in the morning and in the face of the fact that you'd already changed the locks and were obviously desperate to kick her out of the house anyway, decided not to stand up to your rant.

esthomizzy

I hadn't changed the locks at the time she left in the morning I only did that once the keys couldn't be found and it was clear there was a security risk to the flat (her stuff would have been as much at risk as mine if I hadn't). Of course I wouldn't have just changed the locks to get rid of her that would be illegal as well as being incredibly unfair. The only reason I didn't tell her immediately that the locks had been changed was because she had been repeatedly lying to me that she had ever given her own set of keys with her boyfriend against my explicit request even though this was certainly happening and was completely obvious. She could not have picked up or borrowed the keys by mistake as it is a huge bunch easily identifiable as to whom they belong to.

Taking something that belongs to someone else even if it was an opportunist theft rather than a planned one is still stealing. It shows a dishonest nature.

patrick1

She certainly does sound like the lodger from hell. I imagine she'll have trouble with other people in the future too.

I had a flatmate once who'd bring people he'd picked up home. Once he left one person (who we'd never met) in the flat while he went to work and when I got home half my stuff was gone. It's certainly a good idea to not let lodgers or flatmates allow partners to stay when you or they are not there.

I've recently bought a place and have a lodger. He's great and very considerate, even does my dishes occasionally too. There are plenty of good lodgers out there, so don't let one bad experience put you off.