Greedy landlord raises the rent when he finds out how much his tenant earns: years later, the tenant gets revenge
It is well known that buying a house is not easy, but renting one is not that simple either - not for the tenant nor for the owner. A landlord usually does not normally rent his property to just anyone, while tenants can struggle to find a honest owner. A story of "revenge" has appeared on Reddit, concerning an injustice suffered by a young couple who, at the time, were renting in an apartment managed by a greedy real estate agent. When the couple asked the landlord to extend their lease for a couple of months, he agreed, but increased their rent by a staggering $ 500 per month. Years later, the couple met the greedy real estate agent again and "got their revenge"...
"RockyMoose" is the Reddit user who told this story in which a real estate agent exploited his knowledge of how much RockyMoose was earning. RockyMoose and his wife had recently got married and had agreed to spend a year or two saving money so they could afford to put a down payment on their first home. They both had salaires and, for a while, they decided to tighten their belts and spend only one salary. in this way, they would have saved enough for a down payment within a year. And that's why, at the beginning of their adventure, they took a rented house, choosing one which was well within their budget. The owner of the apartment, who was also the real estate agent, seemed thrilled to have them as new tenants, but later was very surprised to find out what RockyMoose's salary was and how much he had saved. The young tenant, in fact, was making $ 75,000 a year. Apparently, he seemed far too young to be earning such a salary. The real estate agent immediately exposed himself as being very jealous of his tenant's income ("I can't believe how much money you make" he repeated several times to RockyMoose) - but he agreed to rent him the house at the advertised price, that is $ 950 per month.
At the time of signing the contract, RockyMoose asked the real estate agent if it was possible to extend the contract by a few months if they needed to. The agent replied that there would be no problem doing this.
After a year, RockyMoose and his wife found their dream home. They had saved up enough, so they could afford to lay out the down payment. What they no longer had, however, was additional time in their rented place in order to make their move timeous and in a coordinated, calm manner. RockyMoose asked Hank (the real estate agent's fictional name) if there would be any problem extending their contract by two months and he agreed by sending him the new contract documents. What he didn't tell the couple, though, was that for these additional 2 months, he would be charging the couple an extra $ 500 a month on their rent. Hank knew RockyMoose could afford to pay more and didn't hesitate to squeeze him like a lemon. It was clearly a cowardly, greed-fueled move, as RockyMoose noticed that Hank had only raised the rent by $ 150 and not $ 500 in his public vacancy announcement .
The worst thing Rocky remembers from that time is when he tried to protest against the price hike. Hank bluntly stated, "RockyMoose, you don't have to like it, you just have to pay it." RockyMoose protested further but Hank replied that "he couldn't afford to lose money". Eventually, RockyMooose had to bite the bullet and put his pride aside and pay the extra rent. But years later, he got his chance to make Hank pay for his greed - literally.
Five years later, RockyMoose got married, had a daughter, and was still in the house he had bought with his wife. Everything was going well when, one day, Hank, the greedy real estate agent, turned up again like a bad penny. RockyMoose's colleague, Phil, was selling his apartment in order to buy a new house and had approached Hank to handle the procedure. From his past experience, RickyMoose knew that Hank would be dishonest in his dealings with his colleague. And so he told Phil the whole story about Hank, and asked him not to trust him. Phil was shocked by Hank's behavior and agreed to dump him to find another real estate agent. By doing so, RockyMoose prevented Hank from earning $ 20,000 from the deal. The icing on the cake was the way in which Hank was dumped by Phil - dumped using the same words the real estate agent had used on RockyMoose five years earlier:
"Hi, Hank? It's Phil. Yes, look, I've decided to talk to other agents. I'm not going to sign with you ... No no, you don't have to give me a discount. You'd lose money if you did... No, it's just a decision that I took... no, it has nothing to do with RockyMoose." After a short pause he added:
"Well, you don't have to like it, Hank. You just have to accept it. Goodbye!"
