How to Identify the Perfect Corrupt Landlord to Forfeit Your Security Deposit To

MADISON, WI - Navigating the Madison housing market is a rite of passage for all UW-Madison students at the beginning of a new school year. No matter whether you’re a seasoned junior who is looking for a house that won’t burn up the last dwindles of your college savings, a freshman scrambling to find people to live with a year from now, or a daredevil willing to risk being homeless for the chance to sublease a luxury apartment for cheap, we all have to go through the dreaded process year after year.

Is it unfair to make students, some of whom have been in Madison for less than a month, scramble to find others to live with for a year and sign a lease for housing a year before it actually takes effect? Yes. Is building another 12-story monstrous concrete “mixed-use development” that only the wealthiest students can afford going to fix the problem? No. Will the University do anything to stop overcrowding the dorms and make living in them a more viable option for non-freshmen? Fuck no, our lovely football coach needs a raise. Instead, they’ll post a vague infographic about finding off-campus housing that links to an application portal for The James. But never fear, dear readers, for we at the Misnomer, brave veterans of the campus housing search, are here to help. We have compiled a list of the top ways to identify the perfect landlord, one so corrupt that you know the second you sign the lease, you will already be blamed for some pre-existing damages that will be used as justification for not returning your security deposit:

1. Sketchy Website

Most students’ housing search begins online, and a property’s website often provides a crucial first impression of the type of landlord and quality of housing you’ll be getting. If you want a landlord that’s going to try to scam you out of every penny possible, their website needs to be as suspicious as possible. Only accessible from some obscure housing search website and doesn’t actually appear on Google? Check. Completely devoid of color and made with HTML so basic a CS major could recreate it in under 2 minutes and would probably do it for less than a dollar? Perfect. Clicking on the link to apply floods your computer with pop-ups and installs at least six pieces of malware? All the better.

2. Doesn’t Let You Tour the Unit

After finding a place, the logical next step would be to tour it, right? After all, sometimes the pictures online just don’t do it justice. Well, think again, because the truly ethical landlords will have none of that. Maybe it’s “emergency maintenance” that’s closing the building for the next 12 months. Perhaps the availability doesn’t quite line up with you or your roommates’ schedules (4 am - 6 am on Wednesdays is tough, but I’m sure the leasing agent is just very busy). Or it’s the classic response: “If you try to schedule a tour, someone will sign the lease before you can.” No matter the reason, you know you’ve found the right one when the odds of you seeing the property before signing are slimmer than the odds of finding an open bench at the Nick at 5 pm on a weekday.

3. Lack of Previous Tenants

An underrated move in the housing search is reaching out to others who’ve lived in properties you’re interested in. It can help you get a feel for the neighborhood, learn more about the landlord, or even discover some useful tips you would’ve never known about. But don’t worry if you can’t find anyone who seems to have ever lived in this property before; you wouldn’t want any Debbie Downers trying to rain on your parade. There was that one guy you found through Craigslist who curled up in a ball and kept mumbling, “the birds, the birds, the birds” when you mentioned the landlord’s name, but he probably just got out of a rough zoology midterm or something.

4. Unusual Payment Methods

You did it! You’ve signed the lease! Take a deep breath because the race is now over. You can sit back, relax, and focus on less pressing matters like school and finding a job. But first, you need to pay the security deposit. Sure, some of your friends living elsewhere have cute little payment portals where they can set up automatic rent payments from a bank account. But your place does things a little differently. Credit cards, bank accounts? Ew. Crypto is clearly the future, so if you want to pay online, you can do so with Bitcoin or Ethereum (with a 10% service fee, of course). Don’t have a crypto wallet yet? No worries; just send a check to a PO box at a random strip mall in Vietnam. If you’re a Finance major, you can even say you have experience handling multinational transactions!

5. The Locked Door in the Basement

Move-in day has officially arrived, and while you're exploring your new domicile, you notice a locked door next to the washer and dryer in the basement with a large “STAY OUT” sign taped to it. There’s a bit of a funny smell coming from that area, but someone probably didn’t leave the washer open to air out after using it. And that red stain on the floor could just be some spaghetti sauce someone spilled on their clothes. Who knows, you might even see your landlord go downstairs one night with a heavy garbage bag and come back empty-handed. He was probably just throwing away those batteries that need to go in the special trash. What a quirky, unique part of the property!

Those snobs over in the high-rises downtown may look down on you because their parents pay for their tuition and $1800 rent each month. And sure, their apartment may have its own gym, rooftop hot tub, and private study lounges on every floor, but they lack the quaint charm yours has. I bet they don’t have the occasional roach on the floor, do they? And their landlord probably doesn’t bear a vague resemblance to someone wanted for kidnapping and murder in the 80s. Come to think of it, where has your roommate been these past couple of days? They must be locked in at the library for midterms, or locked out because the lock likes to play games.