Renting a nice house in a nice neighborhood came with what seemed like a perk: a laundry room stocked with a premium washer and a gas dryer. About a month in, that dryer burned an entire load of laundry, actually singeing and charring the clothes. Photos went straight to the landlord along with a request to cover the roughly $300 in ruined clothes and get the dryer repaired.
His response denied any responsibility at all, stating the lease was clear that no washer or dryer was included, and that if those appliances were present, they must have been left behind by a previous tenant, meaning they weren’t his and he bore no obligation for anything not explicitly documented in the lease. Out of pocket came the repair costs and the replacement clothes, a frustrating outcome given the appliances were sitting in the rental and actively being used as part of the home.
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A Pattern That Extended Well Beyond One Dryer
About three months later, a conversation with former tenants of the same house revealed this wasn’t an isolated incident. Those tenants had made real improvements to the property and left it in better condition than they’d found it, yet the landlord still refused to return their deposit. A neighbor later confirmed the pattern extended further still, saying the landlord had never returned a single tenant’s deposit and offering a pointed piece of advice: read the lease to the letter, because the guy was difficult about absolutely everything.
The house’s appeal, it turned out, had far more to do with the tenants who’d cared for it over the years than anything the landlord himself had contributed.
Reading the Lease Carefully, Then Acting on Exactly What It Said
Ten months later, at the end of the lease, that advice got put to real use. The lease was reread carefully, confirming the landlord’s own earlier position in writing: the washer and dryer were not included, not his property, and not something he was responsible for.
Taking him at his own word, the washer and dryer got listed and sold before the keys were turned in.
An Angry Voicemail, Met With His Own Words Quoted Back
Less than two hours after handing over the keys, an angry voicemail arrived demanding the appliances be returned. The reply came in writing, referencing his own prior email: confusion about which appliances he could possibly be referring to, since he himself had confirmed in writing that no washer or dryer was included in the lease and that anything present must have belonged to a previous tenant rather than him.
The lease itself provided additional cover, specifically stating that the tenant was responsible for reasonable costs to remove, haul, store, or dispose of property left behind by others, language that applied neatly to appliances the landlord had already disclaimed ownership of.
Why This Wasn’t Actually a Stretch of the Truth
Nothing about this response involved bending the facts or exploiting a technicality that didn’t reflect what had actually been said. The landlord made an explicit, written claim disowning the appliances specifically to avoid covering a repair and a damaged load of laundry. Once he’d taken that position formally, in writing, treating the appliances as unclaimed property left behind by a previous tenant, exactly as he’d described them, was a direct and consistent application of his own stated position, not a clever workaround of it.
A Deposit Still Withheld, But the Math Still Worked Out
The security deposit never came back, withheld over what were described as a plethora of minor, negligible issues, consistent with the pattern the neighbor had already warned about. Even without that deposit returned, the numbers still landed favorably. Selling the appliances brought in roughly the equivalent of the withheld deposit, the earlier repair costs, the ruined clothes, and about $100 left over for the trouble of dealing with the whole situation.
Where This Ended Up
A landlord who went out of his way to deny responsibility for appliances actively being used in his rental property, specifically to avoid a $300 repair and clothing replacement, ended up losing those same appliances entirely once he’d already put his position in writing. The eventual outcome, recovering costs roughly equal to the deposit, the repairs, and the damaged clothes combined, reflected a fair correction to a landlord who’d spent the better part of a year disclaiming responsibility for anything not explicitly written into the lease, only to find that same standard applied right back to him.
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