Sniffies Caused an Apartment War

Jonathan Forisha:

Welcome to Adventures in Landlording. Each episode we pack our bags and hit the trail to answer some of the many questions plaguing landlords across America. Thanks for joining us for another adventure in landlording. I’m Jonathan and I’m joined by Krista. Are you doing Krista?

Krista Reuther:

Ooh, I am jazzed. I am pumped. I am thrilled. I’ve got adjectives out the wazoo to.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah you do. That’s a lot of adjectives. Thank you, thank you. Didn’t, you know, have to spend them all at once, but we’ve got some great stuff to talk about. Do you think you have enough to maintain the whole episode?

Krista Reuther:

Oh, I’ve got some and then even more.

Jonathan Forisha:

Okay, I like that. Well let’s jump into it. The first one we’re going to talk about comes from Reddit. The username is 64 underscore sauce. They write, if I own the house and rent out rooms, how do I approach ground rules about my guests versus tenant guests? That’s a good question. They live in California. They own a four bedroom, two and a half bath house.

They are house hacking, meaning that they are living in the property and renting out the other rooms. They have a boyfriend who stays over, they say half the time, so I guess half, half of every month, showers there maybe three times a month. The boyfriend lives with his family and has kids. And then we also have a roommate. They say first roommate and I sound like maybe the only roommate is a 45 year old man who not so subtly pointed out that in California if a person stays in a place over 15 days a month, they are considered tenants.

Oh. The roommate says he basically moved in with a couple but didn’t know that and that more people living in the property affects utilities costs. The roommate apparently also has a girlfriend who comes over sometimes and has kids to visit. So what are your first thoughts?

Krista Reuther:

My first thought is not the most helpful which is just if someone is staying in a property for 15 days but they are only taking three showers, like how does it smell in there?

Jonathan Forisha:

Well I’m not sure it’s a consecutive 15 days.

Krista Reuther:

Okay, maybe it’s broken up. But it is such a tricky situation when you are living with a tenant and you are trying to establish rules for both you and them. So I’d be curious what they have in their lease. It’s always what I fall back on.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, house hacking, it does set the stage for kind of uneven expectations because this person 64 underscore sauce is both a tenant in the house but also the landlord and the property owner. So it stands to reason that it may be a little bit uneven and a 45 year old roommate may have to just be okay with that. But there’s clearly an issue with, it sounds like the utilities. Yeah.

Krista Reuther:

And that’s something else I wanted to highlight is, again, I’d be curious to see what’s in the lease but if they are splitting the utilities equally, then I think the tenant has a leg to stand on to say, well hey, can your boyfriend contribute? Can we otherwise renegotiate this?

Because if you enter a contract thinking that it’s going to be an equal split between you and one other person but then a third comes in and starts using stuff as well, like it gets a bit messy.

Jonathan Forisha:

It does. Yeah. Yeah, I mean spelling it out in the lease is obviously the way to go. Or if really what the roommate wants is just to be heard, to have the conversation.

So having the conversation with them and saying like, what are your expectations? Yes, boyfriend will continue staying here 15 days a month and maybe we can convince him to shower a little more often than just the three times each month. But what can we do about those utilities?

You know, you could either split the utilities where the landlord is paying a larger percentage of them or changing it up where they’re included in the rent somehow. I think that’s where to start, right? It’s just have that conversation.

Krista Reuther:

Yeah, I think just sitting down and having that conversation, that’s exactly how I’d do it too.

Jonathan Forisha:

Okay, so if the landlord knew this was going to be the situation before they had this roommate, what could they have done to better set the stage here?

Krista Reuther:

So if they wanted to take a really proactive approach, they could explain that they have a partner who’d be coming in a certain number of days per month, but that’s already accounted for based on how the utilities are split or if they’re covered by the rent. I think just being as upfront as possible without necessarily making it a negotiation process, right? You could just say, yep, this is the rule. I have this rule for tenants about their guests and I am the owner of this house. So I’m going to have my boyfriend here.

It’s a little bit different. I take on the liability with my landlord insurance and XYZ. That at least gives the tenant the opportunity to ask questions and make sure that they’re comfortable before they jump in versus kind of having that surprise of, oh, this person’s here a lot. Oh, they’re using the water for the third time this month. Maybe they’re taking hour-long showers each time too. We don’t know. So being as forefront as possible I think would be a winning move.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah. When in doubt, communicate. Put it in lease agreement. Make sure everyone agrees to it. But yeah, when you are the landlord and the property owner and a tenant, then there’s going to be some exceptions and that’s okay. Just make sure your tenants all agree to that.

Well said. Another consideration and something that we don’t have in this post is what is the layout of this rental property? It doesn’t sound like we have separate entrances. It doesn’t sound like, I mean, it sounds like there’s a lot of shared spaces. They mention it as a house.

So I mean, if it’s just a single family home that hasn’t really been converted to have separate rental units, then that could also be where the roommate’s frustration is coming from because maybe the boyfriend’s a nudist.

Krista Reuther:

Hard to say. Anything happens in New York City. So there you go. California. Did this, oh well, double lease out in California. Yeah, weather’s perfect for that. So really considering the layout as you formulate a lease or if you’re looking to buy property hoping to live in it and rent it out in a house hacking sort of manner, considering that common space and problems that could arise, whether your partner’s a nudist or not and trying to get ahead of them will help smooth out your lease with your tenant.

Jonathan Forisha:

Absolutely. We made a video about where you can and can’t and probably shouldn’t put security cameras. And we talked a lot about common spaces. But I think, again, going to lease agreement, outlining how those spaces are to be used and maybe putting in there that your boyfriend who stays over half the time, he won’t hang out in the kitchen naked.

Krista Reuther:

Customize a state-specific lease agreement in 15 minutes or less with TurboTenant. Sign up today at landlordpod.com to get started and tell them the podcast sent you. Okay, you’re never going to believe this one. Okay. It is quite the saga. It’s coming to us from TikTok from Ms. D. Living. Title is No Judgment, but y’all help me out. Sniffies? Is this what’s happening? Watch this.

TikTok User:

Tiktok, I need y’all to help me. Have y’all heard of a site called Sniffies? I’m in my office chilling, right? And I get a knock at my door around like 12 noon.

It’s 12:24 right now. I go to the door and it’s a gentleman in an Amazon uniform. So I’m like, hi, are you picking something up?

Dropping something off? He was like, no. I was told to come to your apartment number and I was like, okay. And he’s like, I’m on my lunch break. I said, okay.

He was like, oh, I’m so sorry. I have the wrong house. Didn’t think to ask him what he was looking for.

Who he was looking for. Left it at that. Locked my door, went about my day. So I thought just five minutes ago, I get another knock at my door. Well, first I hear something outside my door. So, and I’m in the kitchen at this point because I never left the kitchen area. So I’m looking out the peephole and there’s this guy in a hoodie just standing outside my door like near my door. And I’m like, well, that’s creepy because I really don’t know what’s going on.

Why is this man sitting outside my door? I peep again. He’s gone. I’m like, okay, cool. But at this point, my spidey senses are gone.

I know something is wrong. So he comes up and this time he knocks. I look and he’s, I said, hi, how can I help you or something like that? I said, he goes, oh, I think I might have the wrong door. I opened the door and he’s doing something on his phone before he knocked. I opened the door and he says, um, oh, I might have the wrong house. I said, well, who are you looking for? Like, I know my neighbor’s name is, I’m assuming he’s looking for a woman.

He’s like, no, this is like a site, a guy on guy site. I said, I know you have a line. I know you got it. I know you got it. I’m like, can you help me out? Just understand please. Cause you’re the second person up to my door. I said, are you looking for? No, he’s like this, this place is called sniffing. He showed me the app. He’s zooming in and it was like a body part and it said like six foot two, 60 pounds or whatever, whatever.

These guys are, they, I can’t even talk. I said, is it grinder? Cause I need to know at this point, y’all keep knocking on my MF and no, he said, no, it’s not grinder.

He said, it’s called sniffies. I said, cause before I started asking all the questions, I said, no judgment, no judgment, but I just need to know what the heck is going on. And why don’t you keep showing up at my door?

This is not the right house. Ain’t no guy on that action going on over here. It’s the middle age black woman. In a one seat sniffies guy on guy action and whoever is in that app is sending y’all to my door. Somebody in this building. But what? Pick the right apartment complex, please.

Krista Reuther:

Thank you. Okay. So clearly she is a gym. Very understanding. Yes. Just asking questions. She ends up reaching out to her apartment complex because they require a unique code in order to get in and there are multiple points of entry. Like it’s supposed to be a very secure place to live. She asks if they can investigate and they agree, but she ends up having more men come to her door and they’re actively trying to get into the unit. So it’s not just knocking.

They are like trying to get in there. Okay. So she files a police report because she still hasn’t gotten those codes from the complex. She hasn’t heard back. She’s like, okay, I’ve got to progress this somehow because this is not making me feel very safe. The apartment complex is ghosting her. They are not answering her calls. So she ends up roping in their corporate office and she finally gets a response, but they tell her, well, we’re only going to release those codes to the sheriff.

So she’s like, well, shoot. Okay. I’ve called the police. She has a police report. She lets them know. And someone starts posting her address once a week with men showing up regularly trying to get in.

Jonathan Forisha:

Posting her address on this sniffies. On sniffies.

Krista Reuther:

Okay. So it feels purposeful. It feels malicious because if it was just a mistake, you would think it would stop. It is not stopping.

Jonathan Forisha:

And it’s definitely like when they post it, it’s her, like this apartment. And also here’s a code.

Krista Reuther:

Well, okay. Okay. You wait. So she installs a ring camera and a door blocker. Okay. Unfortunately, the leasing office lets her know that there are no codes to report because these men have just either been let in directly without a code or they slipped in behind someone else who had their own code. Every one of them. Every single one.

So she’s like, well, what can I do? That was the last thing I had. That’s the only thing that was making me feel safe was that I had some kind of recourse to figure out like who was sending people to my door. And so she decides to move, which is that means she’s going to have to break her lease. And like get out of there because she’s like, I can’t handle this. People keep coming to my door at all hours. Like, what am I going to do?

TikTok User:

So with all that emotional stuff going on, I’m feeling a certain type of way and being on pins and needles and not being at peace. I make the decision to move. We’re working through some options for me to be able to get out of my lease.

And then once I have that finalized or I know what I’m going to do, I’ll let you guys know. But in my mind, I’m moving. You know, it stands about it. I just don’t see myself being comfortable here.

Krista Reuther:

So she tells the office that and they say, oh, we’re really sorry to hear it. You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to waive your concession because when she originally moved in, they gave her six weeks off of free rent. And so if you break the lease, assumingly, you’d have to pay that back.

So they say, don’t you worry about it? We will give you those six weeks for free and we’ll do a mutual rescission. So she would be responsible for paying $1,500. They would be responsible for paying $1,500. The total of that, that 3,000, that’s how much she pays in rent.

So she’s paying $3,000 a month to stay somewhere that is not feeling safe. And this was a solution. I do love a good compromise. She’s like, okay, cool. She is so upbeat, so understanding about it. Even though it’s actively scaring her, she’s still like going through this as kindly as possible.

Here’s where things get sticky. She is trying to get them to do their job. She’s like, hey, can you update the lease in my profile so I can see what my prorated rent will be? Is there any way we can negotiate where I don’t have to stay the 30 days? Because there’s a 30 day notice period before you can leave. And they’re like, no, we’re not going to let you do that. She’s like, I don’t feel safe here. And they’re like, tough cookies. Okay. She’s like, okay, well, that’s fine.

Jonathan Forisha:

And at this point, men are still showing up. Men are still showing up. Like, how do we know how many? Or is this just like a horde?

Krista Reuther:

It sounds like at least one or two every time that her address is posted. And this is spanning like about a month and a half at this point.

Jonathan Forisha:

A lot of dudes.

TikTok User:

So it’s a lot of dudes. The people that are coming to my door are just as innocent as I am. I’m not trying to cause harm on them. That’s not what this is about.

Krista Reuther:

I want it to stop. And it keeps happening. So it’s like, okay, well, she’s like, all right. Okay. I understand. I’ll just start my next lease somewhere else. I will pay whatever I need to get out of here and feel safe.

It all sounds good. Until. Until the office follows up with a letter from a law firm that says, Hey, we’ve seen you go viral on Tik Tok. Even though you’ve never mentioned our name, you’ve never mentioned where you live or any of the names of the employees who have let you down repeatedly throughout this process.

If you name any single person or entity related to this case, you will owe us $5,000 plus legal fees. So they are preemptively retaliating, even though she has been nothing but kind and conscientious throughout this harrowing experience. And now she’s ready to go to war.

TikTok User:

Remember, I said I would possibly start a war. They want to go to war, right? You know, I’ve been very nice and I’ve been very kind. You know, I just want you to know that deep down in tie to me, I’m not an evil person.

So while I could have released your name, front office names, the name of the company, the name of the management, the name of the department, comics, all of that. I’m not going to do that because of my safety. And then I’m just not an evil bitch. I’m just, that’s just not me. But y’all want to play hardball because why when I open my email today, the muse or rescission is actually drafted up from a lawyer saying that I would have to take down any disparaging comments about the apartment complex that mentioned their names within five days and not going forward. I can’t post any content on social media about them. And if I violate the contract, I’ll be liable to $5,000 plus damages.

Krista Reuther:

So she says, you know what? I will go ahead and I will pay that $5,000.

TikTok User:

Since I’m digging in the savings, let’s go ahead and dig baby. Let’s go ahead and dig baby. Let me know how much I owe you if I do not sign this rescission agreement. Cause guess what? You’re not going to silence me.

Krista Reuther:

Tell me everything I owe so that I can write reviews. I can let everyone know. I will put it on next door. I will post your information about this company everywhere. And all the office manager could say was, well, I didn’t do anything. Right?

TikTok User:

How sick and convoluted can you be in your head that you don’t even care about the company or the employees that work down in office? You just want to make sure that I don’t release your name. It’s given corporate. It’s given shenanigans.

It’s given the whole nine. But guess what? If you want to go to war, we can go to war. I can say whatever I want to say. No holds bar. I can go in all the way in. Let’s get into it.

Krista Reuther:

So she is literally, she is willing. She’s going to go ahead and pay that money. Find a new place, move in and have her freedom because the fact that they tried to prematurely silence her is just the wrong move. Oh my gosh. It’s the capstone of bad decisions on top of all of the other things that this apartment complex has done.

TikTok User:

I’m not deleting anything. I’m not deleting. I wait through this. At the end of the day, nobody else is affected but me. Talk to your lawyers and let them know I’m not signing that agreement. Let me know what my total is and I’ll be gone expeditiously.

Krista Reuther:

I really feel like Mizdy tried her damnedest to be kind and understanding and just roll with this and work with the office. And they were just like, we’re going to ignore you. We’re going to not work with you. We’re going to say we have codes, but then we actually don’t. And yeah, you still have to pay us, but don’t you dare say anything. Because if you do, we’re coming after you, even though you haven’t said anything before. Wow. Yeah. What are your initial thoughts?

Jonathan Forisha:

Well, the detective in me just wants to solve the mystery. Yeah. She, you know, in the first clip, she asks the second man who showed up, asks so much of questions and finds out that it was on sniffies.

I’m so curious. Did she ask any of the other guys? Did she get more information? Did she, you know, who are they there to meet?

Is it all supposed to be the same guy or? Because it just feels like somebody is messing with her. It feels sort of akin to swatting, right? When somebody like calls in, there was a bomb threat, there’s address, and there actually isn’t, and they’re just messing with a friend or an enemy or whatever. This feels like that. But I’m from your overview. I’m getting that she maybe never found that out. Yeah.

Krista Reuther:

She has no idea. And she, she couldn’t think of anybody who lived there that had an issue with her. Or would want to go out of their way to do this. And I don’t believe that she continued having conversations with them, especially because they’re coming at all hours of the day, and we’re late into the night.

And so for her own safety, I think she kind of just let it lie. But it would be so frustrating to just wonder, like, who is doing this? Because if you do it once or twice, maybe they’re just bad at apps and they don’t know how to enter an address when it’s a pattern. And the other thing is, you know, she doesn’t know if the men then turned around and like reported the profile, but it would always pop back up. So like she even reached out to Sniffy support.

Oh, OK. And Sniffy was like, well, if you can get us the user ID, we can try and track them down. She even she signed up. She reached out to her audience because she did go viral on TikTok and passing like hundreds of thousands of views and one very nice viewer is like, hey, you can use my face and my pictures and I’ll tell you what to write because he’s in the community. So he set her all up so she was in there and she could not find this posting. She couldn’t see she went above and beyond really putting on that detective hat, trying to work this out and it yielded nothing, which would be so frustrating.

Yeah, it would be what a whirlwind. And also to bring it back to the landlord tenant side of things, everything she was being so understanding, despite, you know, being hosted by the office and not really getting help up until the point where they soured that relationship and you just you don’t have to do that. Like, don’t do that. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She has been helpful. She has been communicative. And I think I would have been swearing and yelling and crying if I was in her position.

Jonathan Forisha:

Well, so this sounds like a large apartment complex. It doesn’t sound like our typical DIY landlord and they don’t have a great reputation. There’s not a whole lot of compassion, right? Because I would say, look at your lease agreement, what’s in there. But probably big apartment complex has a pretty airtight lease agreement for situations. They feel like our derogatory towards them, even if she never talked about where the apartment complex was or named any names. But I also wonder about that, the code that is necessary to even get into this building and that they have no record of codes at all. I don’t buy that this would be a place where you have to have a code and people are just letting others in all willy nilly.

Krista Reuther:

Yeah, that part stuck out to me, too. And if that is the case, because I understand, you know, sometimes you’re going into a door and you see somebody carrying something, you’re like, oh, I’ll just let them in.

Right. I’m so kind of polite. There’s a line when it comes to security where like, maybe I need to reeducate your tenants and say, hey, don’t do that. Everybody has to enter their own code.

Jonathan Forisha:

Or the code thing was bogus from the start.

Krista Reuther:

Or the code thing is bogus for the start and the way to just jack up the rent without providing the security that you’re paying for.

Jonathan Forisha:

I mean, three grand for an apartment. This is not a cheap apartment complex.

Krista Reuther:

No, it’s absolutely wild to me. This is nuts.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah, that’s a very weird one.

Krista Reuther:

Yeah, I’m happy to say, based on her updates, she has moved out. She has found a nice place where she feels safe and comfortable. And hopefully the sniffies person just sniffs elsewhere from now on.

Jonathan Forisha:

Whether you have one door or a hundred, TurboTenants All-in-One Landlord platform helps you maximize your property management business. Sign up for a free account today at landlordpod.com. This is our last segment in which we highlight a bad landlord in the hopes that you don’t repeat their mistakes. This is what we call the landlord special. Landlord special.

OK, this post comes from Reddit username preparation knows 7636. And the title is broken door. And they post that their apartment door is broken and will not close at all. And they say their landlord can’t do anything today. So the tenant has to either sleep in an apartment with an unclosable door or leave that apartment with all their belongings inside and an unlockable apartment. They live in New York, just outside New York City. So let’s start with is it a big deal that the door doesn’t work?

Krista Reuther:

Yeah, yeah. Doors are one of those key bits that really contribute to the security of a rental. All tenants have the right to feel secure. It’s under the warranty of habitability. So, yeah, they need to be able to close their door and feel safe in their living space. Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Forisha:

If the door was broken for a really long time where there was no door at all, this is a violation of their lease, a violation of I’m sure their local laws. They do say they live in New York, outside of New York City. So I’m sure there are state specific laws saying that your rental has to have a door that can close. And probably lock. And probably lock. Yeah, those are these are important things.

Everyone wants to feel secure inside their rental. So digging into the comments on this particular reddit thread, a lot of people were asking how is a broken? Can you shut it?

Can it be screwed shut for the night? All kinds of different things. And they did finally post a picture of this allegedly broken door. So if you look at this door, it doesn’t look like it’s an awesome shape, but it also looks like you could close it.

Krista Reuther:

Three thousand percent. You can close it and just shove a dresser up there. If you have a chair with a nice back, you can even prop that underneath the door knob. But unless you’re Jason Bourne, I’m sorry, you’re probably not that interesting where people are going to break in the one night that your door is not working. That’s right.

Like if your landlord said, hey, I can’t get to this until next month. Peace, sucker. Yeah. Like then I’d be more willing to take up arms. But like this is annoying.

This is unfortunate. I’m sorry, you feel unsafe, but you have everything at your disposal to fix the situation and put up with it for a night. Now, if your landlord doesn’t come back the next day, if they start ghosting you, make some calls, but you’re going to be OK, friend.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah, agreed. If I was the landlord, I’d say let’s hop on FaceTime and walk me through how it’s broken. Maybe we can figure out how to shut this thing so that you’re safe and sound inside for tonight, and then I’ll be by in the morning with some tools and we’ll fix this thing. Well, that is it for this episode of Adventures in Landlording. Make sure to subscribe on your podcast player of choice and on YouTube. If you have any feedback or you want to share your own adventure in landlording, check us out at landlordpod.com.