Recently, we asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share their wild, ludicrous, and outlandish living experiences and circumstances that eventually caused them to move out.
Take a deep breath and be prepared to clutch your pearls — here are the most shocking, alarming, and slightly gross stories:
1. "We lived on a cul-de-sac. We didn't love it (too social), but it was good for our kids. After four years, a total train wreck of a family moved in. Their kids were all over the place, unsupervised. They would just walk into your garage if it was open and help themselves to whatever was in there. Their dog was also allowed all over the street unsupervised. It left GIANT SHITS all over everyone's lawn. The parents also couldn't read social cues. The neighbors spoke to them about these issues multiple times, but nothing changed."
2. "I lived with my boyfriend and roommate for three years and had no problems until we moved to a new place, and my roommate got a new girlfriend. It was a perfect storm: faulty electrical, extremely hard water, a bad girlfriend who brought her flea-riddled cat into the house without permission, fertile cats (like, 13 cats at one point), and finally, a surprise in the couches from Goodwill. Bed bugs. It got so bad, and because my roommate didn’t want to put up any money for an exterminator, the bedbugs were nesting in our wooden nightstands. I finally moved out when this living situation broke up my relationship. I had to leave all my clothes in black trash bags in my mom's backyard to make sure all the bugs were gone."
3. "Our landlord had inherited the house from her parents and rented it out to raise the money needed to drag it into this century. She had it in our lease that we weren’t to have more than five people in the house without her written permission (there were four of us). There were also no overnight guests or men allowed for any reason at all. We also couldn’t do anything to ‘damage’ her garden, and the lease stated she could come over to garden at any time. Once, I was showering with the bathroom window open, and she stuck her head through the open window and INTO THE SHOWER to yell at me about leaving the window open. She would try the doors when she came by and would walk in if she found one unlocked. That, or she’d pop up at your bedroom window."
4. "My roommate was super sweet, and we got along great. But her dog was the spawn of Satan himself. I couldn’t walk through the door without the fear of being attacked. He was a little thing, so I wasn’t scared of him at first, but holy shit, did he prove me wrong. I’m 5’6", and he could jump high enough to bite my face. She refused to do anything about it, saying, 'It’s his breed.' I love animals so much, I don’t even eat them, but fuck that little monster, and her for not caring for it and creating a livable environment."
5. "It was our first home together as a married couple. It was small, but we didn't expect much since it was our first apartment. The bedroom had no windows, so when it got hot, we had to put a fan between our minuscule 'living room' and bedroom, just to get some airflow. The refrigerator was from circa 1950 and had 'never been serviced,' as our landlady bragged. It hovered at around 50 degrees. Speaking of the landlady, she lived in the unit next to us and was constantly arguing with her husband while trying to shush him because the walls were so thin. The thing that was the last straw was when we lost three of the five outlets in one weekend due to the ancient wiring. We lasted six uncomfortable months. So many years have passed (25) that we can actually look at that place with fondness at how horrible it was."
6. "So, I moved in with a close friend (who I no longer talk to), and everything was really good at first. We both had our own job, hung out with mutual friends, had movie nights together, etc. After two months, he lost his job and went on unemployment, which didn't bother me as long as his half of the bills were paid. We were in an agreement about no minors over at the house because we both smoked weed, and I didn't want to be in any trouble of that sort. But he started having 10 people in the house at all times, and I never felt comfortable in my own home. They would eat the food I bought, leave dirty dishes everywhere, and to kick it off, there'd be weed residue ALL OVER THE HOUSE AND LIVING ROOM."
7. "When I caught my cheating, live-in boyfriend with a girl in MY BED, LOL."
8. "My breaking point wasn’t actually the living conditions, but the effect it had on my housemates. One had taken to drugs due to feeling so miserable, and it completely changed her personality. She was fed up with stress from her post-grad and her living situation and thought it was the best escape. Unable to take her behavior anymore, I looked for somewhere different to live when our contract ran out. I became extremely unwell the week we were due to move out — to the point I had to go to the hospital. They advised me to stay in, but I discharged myself to help with the move despite being in horrendous pain. This was because of the guilt trip this girl put me under, and she was just nasty by the end. When I went back to the hospital, as I could barely move, she was incredibly rude to my parents, who were filling in for me. Needless to say, I haven’t spoken to her since due to her cruelty and selfishness."
9. "After university, I moved into quite an old house with three others in Brighton. There are areas of the city that were built quickly to house workers for the industry in the early 1900s, and to say they aren't holding up now is an understatement. It wasn’t long after moving in that we discovered the mold problem. There was also a hole in the roof that was leaking straight into my bedroom. Despite constantly ringing the estate agent, it took months to get it fixed, and I had to live with it during one of the wettest Novembers on record. It prevented me from sleeping and enjoying my room at all. The mold also made everything smell, and I think it was a key factor that made us all feel quite unwell at times."
10. "I was homeless for a bit during COVID when it first hit, and my friend took me in. They basically had a rented house for people who didn’t have anywhere to go. I lived there with eight other people (seven guys and one other girl), and constantly had to clean up after everyone and keep track of everyone’s things. It was basically like I was their mother. Eventually, I ended up getting lice because the place was disgusting. AND THEN, the friend who took me in ended up kicking me out a few weeks later because I started dating someone who wasn’t him. I didn’t really make the choice myself, but it was still a horrible living situation."
11. "My roommate was the messiest person I’ve ever met. There would be dog poop in our living room for two weeks and more — all over the floor. Dishes everywhere. He was a dog abuser. He would leave a 10-month-old husky-wolf mix in the cage for 10+ hours a day to snowboard. The dog would pee itself and overflow the cage, and I would have to bathe it. He would throw the dog against the wall that we shared, etc. When he found out I called animal control on him, he began to freak out on me and threaten me. My boyfriend had to call an ambulance to calm my anxiety attack. My apartment complex did NOTHING to get him away from us, and since animal control never saw the dog being abused, they couldn’t accept my footage. So, we had to pay him $1,000 to move out of the apartment. I found out he’s since lived at three other apartments in that complex because everyone there HATES him. And he still has his dog."
12. "I moved into an apartment with my best friend in college, which immediately changed the dynamic of our relationship. We got three months into our lease, and I had to move out after she installed security cameras with audio in our living room, kitchen, and hallway. I always felt like I was being watched. So creepy."
13. "The water in my first apartment in New York was trying to kill my roommate and me. When we moved in, we noticed there was dirt in our water; it was at the bottom of our tub and dishwasher. After I showered, my skin would start to itch terribly. Over the next six months of living there, we both started getting colds a lot, but we didn’t think anything of it. As time went on, my roommate and I continued to get sick. My roommate got MRSA, which landed her in the hospital where she had to get surgery. Even then, she still caught every cold she came in contact with. Then I got the flu, shingles, and walking pneumonia all in a matter of four months."
14. "It was my first apartment after graduating college in Philly. The landlady seemed nice enough for the first few months, but then the issues started. First, her boyfriend’s brother moved into the basement and smoked pot all day, stinking up our apartment. It wasn't ideal, but we got used to it. Then, when it started getting cold, she wouldn’t turn on the heat. It was included in our rent, but she controlled it. At one point, I fell asleep while sitting on the couch, and because I was so bundled, my head didn’t move. She then started pressuring us to pay for utilities. The kicker, though, was when she used the key she had for our apartment to go in, steal some stuff, and then stage a break-in for the whole building (three units, including hers)..."
"She even contacted the police and other tenants when she 'discovered' the break-in, but never myself or my roommate. I got home, realized stuff was missing, saw my landlady’s cordless phone sitting on my roommate's desk. I called my roomie and the police. When the first officer got there, the landlady came out and told him that my roomie and I had been sleeping with her brother in the basement — which was not true. The officer then went into our apartment with us, and we pointed out everything and explained what was missing. I think the highlight of his night was when we gave him the landlady’s number to call, and the phone on my roomie's desk rang. So, the next day, I took my car to my mom’s to be safe. While I was there, my roomie heard our landlady talking through the vents about how she wasn’t sure if the police really had her on camera or something like that..."
"My roomie told the detective and went to the police station. The warrants were made, her apartment was searched, and her car was impounded. After all that — a set of new locks, an order of protection, testifying in court, three felony counts of burglary, and a plea deal for crimes motivated by drugs (they found needles during the search) — my roommate and I decided we’d take the risk and break our lease. Once our landlady realized we were moving, she turned off all the power to our apartment."
15. "I was subletting a room in a university town for the summer. The three fridges in the kitchen should have been a sign to bail, but I was working and only needed a place to sleep, so I stayed in my room with a private bathroom. One night, I was eating from a box of cookies. About five little cookies in, I realized something was wrong. Ants had taken over the box, and I’d eaten a ton. I left that night and never even went back for the mattress."
16. "My sister moved out of her sorority when her underwear kept disappearing. 🫠"
17. "I’ve been living the nightmare up until very recently. I have been forced out of my home of more than 10 years due to corporate greed. My apartment complex used to be owned by a smaller property management company, and while it was older, it was well-maintained, and the manager lived on site. Now, the complex is owned by a corporate PM company, and it's gone all downhill. There’s no one onsite past business hours, so emergencies go ignored until the PM is available. They are so focused on trying to 'renovate' the units to look 'pretty' so they can turn a bigger profit, that they’ve neglected anything else."
"We had issues go neglected for months in favor of the renovation — there are construction bins blocking parking spots (and there’s already not enough parking so it’s utter chaos after 5 p.m.), and we had major plumbing issues causing water shutoff for DAYS that they never compensated for. The windows really need replacing, but they’re not touching them because it doesn’t make the apartment 'look' better, I guess. The neighborhood is not a quiet or safe one, either. Watching them try to gentrify this complex by slapping a few cheap cosmetic changes on it in order to jack up rents while ignoring the bigger problems is so infuriating. Good riddance!"
—Anonymous, California
18. "I had just moved to Dallas for work and found a decent apartment. Then, all hell broke loose. I lived on the first floor with neighbors above and below me. Well, the couple above me were the worst! They would argue all hours of the day and night. A couple of times I could hear him smacking her. I was afraid to call the cops in case he figured out it was me who called. I kept telling the property manager what was going on. Then, they got a dog. However, they were too lazy to walk down all the stairs...so they let the dog piss on the balcony. Not joking."
19. "My husband and I rented a condo in a small, 12–16-unit complex. Only one other unit in the complex was rented; the rest were owned mostly by retirees. The Homeowner's Association collected dues from all the unit owners, but the dues were never enough to handle simple repairs (like cracked sidewalks). There were cracks in the front wall of the house near the kitchen sink, and ants would come into the unit in droves during the summer. We realized something was VERY wrong inside that wall when my husband tried to play a prank on me and locked the front door with the security chain. The chain should have effectively locked me out of the unit, but I was able to not only open the door, but pull the whole door frame off of the wall with it..."
"Soon after, our dog and I started to get really lethargic whenever we were in the condo, which got worse when I was unemployed for a time and almost never left the place. We realized it was a mold-related illness, and asked the landlord to send a plumber to figure out where the leak was. No leaks were found in outdoor piping. We KNEW there was mold in the wall making us sick, and we ended up sending the landlord a notice of refusal to pay any more rent because we were paying for a 'livable' unit, and the unit was no longer 'livable' until the mold situation got handled. We moved out fairly quickly and had to explain promissory estoppel to the landlord when he tried to go after us for the unpaid rent. My health (and the dog's) greatly improved once we started living somewhere else."
20. "I rented from a woman who owned the house. I was told that she would only be around on weekends and holidays, which I thought, 'GREAT! I'll have the place to myself most of the time.' Then, she began operating her bedroom as an Airbnb. I'd come home to a stranger in the house. Even though I explained to her that this was not our deal, and how scary it was for me, she continued to do it. So, while she was away one week, I moved out. I just took my things and scrammed to a cottage that I spent the next 10 years in. There were MANY other annoying things she did while I lived there, but making me feel unsafe became the ultimate dealbreaker."
—Anonymous
21. "The roof leaked so badly that our latex paint-covered ceiling turned into wet, drippy stalactites. This was in Washington State, so it wasn't like it was ever going to dry out! The landlord's first response was to spray everything with bleach (while our property was still in the rooms, uncovered). Thankfully, they refunded us our rent and full deposit and replaced some ruined items. They even offered to move us into another apartment in the building, but we decided to peace out. I met my husband at the next house, so it all worked out in the end!"
—Anonymous, 40, Washington
22. And finally: "In my early 20s, I lived in a duplex with a couple of friends. The landlord lived alone upstairs. I lived there for a year; he was a little odd, but nice, so we renewed our lease. Pretty soon after that, we began hearing him yelling, sobbing, and laughing uncontrollably through the floorboards at all hours of the day. The handyman was his friend, and we had his number from when he fixed things around the house. We contacted him, and he gave us the landlord's brother's number. The brother let us know that the landlord had schizophrenia and was off his meds, but he was 'harmless.' It continued to escalate from there."
