I rented a beautiful house in Albuquerque, relocating from Virginia, to take care of my ill mother. The landlady lives in Hawaii and had “friends”, all with keys, handle the rental process, and do “maintenance”. The keys to the house were left in the mailbox for me to pick up when I moved in.

Over the past eight months, the house has been broken into several times. The last time, involving a brick through the window, involved a S.W.A.T. team because at least one robber was still in the house when I called 911. The robbers took everything of value that could be carried, well in excess of $20K. Both the police and I believe that the robbers on different occasions had the keys, and just destroyed windows and property to look like random thugs.

I just spoke with the landlady. She’s simultaneously suggesting that I leave immediately, and also that I owe her for the remaining year on the lease, and that she keep my deposits, and, to top it all off, that’s she’s a mensch.

I’m willing to just go quietly and lose my enormous deposit, but there’s no doubt in my mind that if I were to later file a suit, even just to recover some of my damages from her insurance company, she’s going to feel exactly about me as you did about your tenant.

I thought it was a total load of bunk, and that she just wanted to break the lease. Whatevs.

But then, THEN, I got a lawsuit threat, with letters from a lawyer who’d taken her case. She wanted money from me for not properly disclosing what a crappy neighborhood it was. I couldn’t stop from laughing. Such a frivolous threat! I was aghast and thought, wow, this chick is really greedy. I blew it off, then got served with the actual lawsuit. OMG.

Because of course I’d been very realistic with the neighbored. This story is quite funny now, when you think that every vacancy I get, I have 106 people lined up on the street begging to move in. Ha! Those were the days!

Anyway, I turned it over to my insurance company. They said, Yep, this is a load of junk. We’ll take care of it.

So they paid her $20,000 to go away. Now I was REALLY aghast. She didn’t have a case, why would they do that? They explained that it’s cheaper to do that than to fight.

The rub was, I had to pay triple the premiums for several years till it dropped off my insurance record.

I cannot believe she got away with it, but here is my two cents: If you feel like being evil and suing your landlord over this, go ahead. There is money there.