‘We’ve still never met this lady’: Woman demands answers from Zillow after moving into nightmare rental
This woman found a steal of an apartment on Zillow. But commenters are pointing out there was a reason the deal felt too good to be true.
In a viral video with more than 614,000 views, TikTok user Alyssa (@alyssacardib) shared the predicament she's in with her new Florida home.
"I'm in a weird situation, and something just feels really off, like somethings not right," Alyssa said. "I don't know if I'm tripping or if I have some kind of legal grounds or rights to take action because the whole thing has been super sus from the start."
Alyssa explained that she found a beautiful, fully furnished condo on Zillow with a low rental price for the market and utilities included.
Zillow apartment turns into 'nightmare' rental
The first red flag Alyssa noticed was the rent amount. She only needed a six-month lease instead of the standard year. Usually, the shorter your lease is, the higher the rental cost. But in this instance, the lease length didn't affect the price.
The second flag was when the day of the apartment viewing came, and the realtor said she had to tag in her husband to show them the place. But then, at the showing, the husband didn't have the answers to any of Alyssa's questions.
On top of that, when Alyssa pointed out what needed repair, the husband said he'd fix those before move in.
Why would the realtors be in charge of fixing something? That responsibility should fall on the owner. "You're also our maintenance man?" Alyssa questioned in her brain.
Viewers offer advice
"Is she your landlord or your realtor??" a commenter asked.
"Check the tax rolls and see who owns the condo, she is probably the owner if her husband is fixing stuff," another recommended.
Alyssa needed to move on the apartment quickly since she only had 30 days to move and the homeowner's association needed 30 days for the approval process, so she tried to continue with the process and sent the realtor some questions.
But the woman ghosted her for a few days before completely circumventing Alyssa's questions and letting her know she was approved. Alyssa replied quickly, ready to send her deposit, but the woman ghosted again.
"Keep in mind I've never met her," Alyssa said, adding that all their interactions were on Zillow's messaging system.
The day before move-in, she finally popped back up and told Alyssa she's flying back that day and will inspect the place to ensure it's clean and ready for move-in.
"It better be because we're moving in tomorrow morning," Alyssa said.
The realtor tells her she went by the place and wasn't happy with the cleaning crew's work, so she claimed she and her husband cleaned it again themselves.
Move-in day comes
Finally, the woman handed over the keys to the property for move-in, but she doesn't give them to Alyssa directly. She just gave her the code to the door, so Alyssa still hasn't met her in person.
"We show up, and it's clean, but it's not thoroughly clean. It's not like professionally clean. The toilets were not, like, it was gross," Alyssa said.
To make it worse, within five minutes of being there they see a big cockroach.
As they start to fully unpack Alyssa's nose starts burning, she gets a huge headache, and starts to sneeze uncontrollably.
At first, she thinks it's the dust from moving. As she's lying in bed with her fiance, they see four more roaches. Disgusted, they end up sleeping in the car that night, and she's rapidly Googling about signs of a roach infestation.
Her searches led her to find out that roaches can contaminate the air and surface with allergens.
The other issue Alyssa noticed (and she put in video proof) was that the lights throughout the house were constantly flickering.
Problem solved?
Alyssa reaches out to the realtor about the pest issue, and she said she'd get them an exterminator right away without asking questions about what type of pest it was.
"Part of me was like, 'Did she already know there was a problem, and she was kinda waiting for me to bring it up?'" Alyssa thought.
In between, when the exterminator was scheduled, Alyssa and her fiance ended up getting a hotel because they kept seeing more roaches.
"We just put $6,000 down to live here, but I'm gonna go and spend a hundred more dollars to sleep in a hotel room so I don't have to deal with [expletive] cockroaches in my bed."
When the exterminator did arrive, he thought he was there for ants, not roaches, since the realtor's husband told him that's what he'd seen in the house.
With the chaos, Alyssa hadn't noticed that one of their walls was covered in ants.
The exterminator treated for both pests and told Alyssa that if the roach issue continued, it might mean there was a water leak issue.
Alyssa reached back out to the realtor about the issues, and the woman didn't seem to believe her, saying that she and her husband didn't notice those pests or electric issues when they were there.
"There's actually no away that you guys were here for six hours the night before we moved in ... And you didn't see any sheddings?" Alyssa said, adding that they've been "all over the walls."
It all makes sense
"Now everything is just kind of coming together. Did you know about these problems? Is that why the asking price was so low? Because you don't wanna face us because you know what we just moved into?" Alyssa said.
Now, Alyssa is trying to figure out if she can get a refund on the $6,000 they put down, the hotel room they had to rent, and a portion of their rent back.
"Is there anything that we can do because it's borderline uninhabitable. I have to drug myself with Tylenol PM or Nyquil to go to sleep at night," Alyssa said.
"I just need to know, am [expletive] just [expletive] out of luck?"
You can legally break a lease under certain circumstances, including uninhabitable conditions, although the parameters will be determined by the state in which you're renting. However, according to U.S. News and World Report, it may benefit you to seek legal advice when attempting to do so.
Commenters react
"If it seems too good to be true, it is too good to be true," the top comment read.
"You need to contact a lawyer immediately. I’ll bet you were never approved, the condo association doesn’t know that you’re living there, and if they find out, you’re going to be evicted," a person said.
"Think maybe they were tenants and needed to get out of lease due to issues," another speculated.
@alyssacardib Sorry for the long video, but if you made it to the end, thank you for listening
The Daily Dot reached out to Alyssa for comment via email and Instagram direct message and to Zillow via email.
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