Worst Places You Can Rent

Let's take a look at some hilariously bad places available to rent!

December 12, 2022・

17 min read

Anyone who’s ever rented knows that sometimes it can totally suck. But no matter what complaints you have with your apartment, I bet it’s nowhere near as bad as these places are. Let's go on a tour of some of the tiniest, smelliest, and downright worst rentals in the world.

Dreadful Dorms

From partying hard to studying harder, life in a student dorm can be both the best and worst of times. Or, in this case, just the worst. These atrocious abodes are part of the Goce Delchev university accommodation in Skopje, North Macedonia and they’re home to 1,200 very unfortunate students.

From the outside, the building doesn’t look so different from any other. When you go inside however, you’re greeted with a long, dark hallway that looks like something straight out of my worst nightmares. Mold covers the walls, lighting is non-existent, and the whole place is crumbling into depressing disrepair.

Students pay over $65 a month to live in this pseudo-Silent Hill, and that fee doesn’t even include hot water in the winter, they have to heat it themselves!

It wasn’t always this way though. Back in the 1970s, when it was first built, every inch of the place was designed to give students the best possible quality of life. The architect, Georgi Konstantinovski, even won an award for his work!

So, what happened? Over the decades, indifferent university officials coupled with severe understaffing eventually led to the horror show we have today. The only thing distinguishing Goce Delchev from the actual Silent Hill is the lack of monsters unless you want to count the students, of course.

Worst Landlord Ever

Anyone who’s ever rented knows how frustrating landlords can be. But I bet none of yours have been as godawful as the one renting out this next abomination.

A down-and-out couple who’d spent the past few nights sleeping in their truck couldn’t believe their luck when they saw a super-cheap apartment advertised nearby in White Rock, Canada. It didn’t have any photos, but at just shy of US$790 a month, about half the average price for the area, it had to be worth a look.

When they actually visited the property, they got the shock of their lives. Before even entering it was obvious something was horribly wrong, and then they walked in, and things only got worse. The whole place had been utterly destroyed by squatters, covered in graffiti, and filled floor to ceiling with trash.

And here’s the kicker: after showing them around this total wreck, the landlord still tried to gouge a thousand bucks out of them to live in it! Unsurprisingly, they refused.

More surprisingly however is the number of people that post such uninhabitable places online. That last place was atrocious but the shack below in Santa Fe doesn’t even have walls or a roof, and it’s still being advertised for $1,200 a month! It does come furnished with that stylish lawn chair though.

Austere In Austell

Georgia may be the Peach State, but some of its housing is anything but peachy. Costing just over $970 a month, this dingy dive in the city of Austell comes in at about $400 a month less than the local average. That average, however, is for a place four times the size, and hopefully without poop all over the floor - hopefully, the previous tenant had a dog.

The bathroom poses some more troubling questions though, like why is the light that eerie red color? And if I fall asleep in the shower, will I still have my kidneys when I wake up?

Maybe somewhere else in Austell is a better idea, then, pretty much anywhere would be better than that place. But considering you’re over twice as likely to be assaulted in Austell than the national average, I’d probably pass.

Harry Potter Hideaway

Be honest, when you were a kid, you really wanted to go to Hogwarts. But although that’s never gonna happen, you can still be just like Harry Potter in a different way; by paying $475 a month for this cupboard under the stairs in London, England!

You’ll be “the boy who lived” alright, lived in a cramped hidden room inside a warehouse shared by eight other people who apparently love to party. So don’t expect to get any sleep with them running up and down the stairs all the time!

Probably as a coping mechanism, the current tenant has done everything they can to try and make their dank den look more welcoming. But all the lace, stars, and pom-poms in the world can’t hide the fact that this place is less magical than a broken leg at Christmas.

Believe it or not though, that’s not the only time someone in London has tried to rent out a cupboard under the stairs. Back in 2015, 23-year-old Alex Lomax viewed a very similar room that cost the princely sum of $675 a month, a whole $200 more.

And if you thought that was extortionate, an even tinier cupboard somewhere else in the British capital was advertised at a whopping $5,300!

Nano New York

New York City may be the city that never sleeps, but sleeping is just about all you’ll have space to do if you live in some of its smallest rentals. Coming in at $1,650 a month, this apartment comes with a mini fridge, a closet, and nothing else. It doesn’t even have a bathroom.

When real estate agent Cameron Knowlton tried to rent the puny place out on Facebook, he got absolutely torn apart by the internet. So much so, that he changed tac and made it part of a series on TikTok about worst rentals!

As well as being tiny, the prospective tenant has to share their toilet, shower and even soap with every other apartment in the building. I’m sure that was super popular during the height of the COVID pandemic.

South Korea’s Smallest Spaces

When you think of South Korea, you might imagine Korean barbecue, K-pop, and, more recently, Squid Game. But I’m here to introduce you to another uniquely Korean thing: goshiwon.

These depressing, windowless cubes in Seoul are part of a building originally designed as temporary student accommodation. Because of their affordability though, the tiny boxlike rooms, called goshiwon, attract lots of other, more permanent, residents.

One such den-dweller, YouTuber Annyeong Cuk, uploaded a review of his $175 a month goshiwon. He explains that although thirty men live in the complex, there are only two measly bathrooms, so you really wouldn’t want to be the last guy in that queue.

Though, with a bedroom the same size as the average American laundry room, a trip to the restroom might be a welcome reprieve from claustrophobia. It is so small that without moving your feet at all, you can touch both walls with one hand!

Kilburn Killjoy

Picture a fully furnished studio apartment with an open-plan kitchen, high ceilings, and bright décor throughout. Got that image in your mind? I bet it’s nothing like this apartment, in Kilburn, London.

Unbelievably though, it was given that exact description by the landlord advertising it! It’s got a grand total of two rooms, although the bathroom can only be accessed after clambering over a grubby fold-out bed.

As for the bathroom, you could almost sit on the toilet without having the sink uncomfortably pressing against your hip. Almost, that is. And for just a shade off $700 a month, the small, grimy space could be all yours!

Don’t worry though. If that place hasn’t tickled your fancy, there’s more. Only a few miles east you’ll find another apartment that just might.

For a whopping $1,200 a month, you’d expect this place to be significantly better than the last. And I guess it is, if you happen to think that shower placement is convenient rather than utterly ridiculous.

The actual bathroom isn’t any better, with dirty walls, a dangerous step up onto the toilet, and a washing machine? Whoever came up with the layout for this place should’ve dropped out instead.

Toilet Troubles

If I were to ask you where the absolute worst place you could put a toilet was, where would you say? I think right next to your bed would be pretty high up the list, like in this grim apartment somewhere in China.

You’d better hope that flush works, or you’ll be trying to sleep mere feet from your stinky, poopy payload.

Or, in the case of this even smaller apartment, just inches from it! You could literally roll off the bed and get a face full of feces if you were really unlucky.

Though, whoever designed this “bathroom”, has a lot to answer for as well. Seriously? In the middle of the staircase? You’d be getting a lot of stares alright.

Alternatively, if you want a slightly more covert approach, this perching toilet might be just the ticket! Nobody will be able to see you if they’re coming down the stairs but if they slip and fall down that gaping hole, they’re not going to be able to see anything.

The most disgusting toilet placement though has to go to these two guys’ apartment. They’ve decided to embrace their toilet-kitchen combo and aren’t letting a simple poop get in the way of some classy cooking. There’s no way I’d be popping round their place for food.

San Fran Sham

San Francisco is a fun place to visit, not least for its vibrant culture and famous landmarks. But if you were a resident of 1751 Market Street back in 2014, there was nothing fun about the place. That’s because you’d have been living in some of the most abhorred conditions imaginable.

The mold-covered ceilings were falling apart, bed bug nests covered one of the door hinges, and, worst of all, bloodstains splattered the walls and staircases. What’s more, the people living in this waking nightmare paid up to $2,000 a month for it!

And if they didn’t pay the extortionate amount on time, they’d be brutally harassed by their landlords, who’d let themselves in through the front door at 7.30 in the morning and enter their rooms demanding money.

These same landlords also refused to fix any of the insane issues with the property. Unsurprisingly then, 40 of the fed-up tenants teamed up and sued them for $10 million. Take the money and run has never been a more appropriate phrase.

Claustrophobic Closet

London, the home of fish ‘n’ chips, the King, and you; if you want to pay $220 a month to live in a cupboard, that is. Or a “cute little loft conversion” as the advert puts it.

The floor space can barely fit a twin-sized mattress, and you can forget about headroom, this glorified storage shelf is hardly two feet tall! You’ll need to climb a ladder to even get to the door, if you can call it a door, and once inside well, at least it has its own “freshly washed bedding”, according to the description.

Craziest of all, it looks like someone actually did live here before the advert was posted and apparently, they survived on a nourishing diet of ketchup and oats.

So, if you’re “less than 5ft 4in tall and with no history of claustrophobia” you could be this closet’s perfect tenant. The only problem is that the ad was posted on the British online marketplace Gumtree over 7 years ago.

One Doller Doozy

So, we’ve seen a lot of terrible overpriced hell holes now but how about something half-livable? Japan’s capital, Tokyo, is known for its teeny-tiny apartments, but rarely do they come as stylish as this.

Swedish furniture company IKEA bought a miniscule 100-square-foot space in the fashionable Shinjuku neighborhood and filled it with everything you could possibly need, even a personal laundry machine!

As part of a promotion on products for small homes, IKEA loyalty card members could apply to live in the room, at just ¥99 a month. That’s an insanely cheap US$1, or the same price as one of their blue tote bags.

Now, there’s no denying the incredible value for money, but even so I really couldn’t imagine myself living there. It’s still very cramped and everything in it is made by IKEA, so it’d be like selling your soul to a cheap furniture supplier.

Toront-no

Canada’s largest city, Toronto, has some incredible places you can rent but with rent prices on the rise, you’re more likely to find yourself looking at somewhere a little less grand. Even so, you’d hope not to be stuck with anything quite as bad as this.

Despite publishing an advert claiming that the house came fully furnished, the landlord couldn’t even be bothered to provide a bedframe. So, going to sleep in this dive would mean being real close to the rats that probably scamper all about inside it.

And looking at the other rooms, you wouldn’t be any better off in those either. The one in the image below has the bedframe at least! So, any guesses on how much this bad boy was priced at when it went on the market back in 2015? It went for a ginormous $3,100 a month!

Treehouse of Horror

Everybody loves a house with a unique defining feature such as a marble fireplace, wooden beams, a tree ripping through the walls. Indeed, this London property was on the rental market for over $500 a month back in 2014, despite having a whopping great tree growing through it!

The tree had first smashed through one of the windows before continuing unchecked through the so-called “living room” and into the walls. The house had been illegally converted into flats by the landlord and was shared by eight residents with just one toilet between them.

Worst of all, electricity was supplied throughout the property by cables that had been drilled inside the tree. Believe it or not, this isn’t very safe. An electrician coming to assess the place even went as far as to say it was the most dangerous site he’d seen in 35 years!

Petite In Paris

If you’ve watched the Netflix show, Emily in Paris, you might remember the chambres de bonne, French for “maid’s room”. The spacious apartment depicted in the show is nothing like the real ones though.

More cramped than cozy, these miniature abodes can be found on the top floor of mega-expensive Paris townhouses, and back in the nineteenth century were occupied by live-in maids.

Nowadays however, landlords rent them out to people looking for cheap accommodation. This one, for example, went up a few years ago for about $225 a month, and it includes a bathroom-kitchen combo.

Because we all get cravings to make pancakes while we’re sat on the pooper, right? Hygiene obviously wasn’t top of the designer’s list here. Even so, some chambres de bonne were a whole 10 square feet smaller than this, but in 2002 these were banned from being rented.

If Emily in Paris was at all realistic, she wouldn’t have bothered going to Paris at all.

Boxy Bedroom

When you think about an English countryside mansion, you probably picture the interior to be full of grand chandeliers, rich carpets, and silky curtains. I bet you don’t picture this.

Called Foley Hall, it’s basically the Dollar Tree version of Downton Abbey, complete with overgrown, neglected gardens! The once-fancy manor house was converted into a home for international students in the 1940s and has since been split into loads of tiny apartments.

Like the image below, where someone has taken an already pitiful kitchen and shoved a bed straight into it. The barely believable bedroom is on the market for a whopping $800 a month, way too much for a glorified pantry.

But I guess its proximity to the University of Reading might make it hot property for some undergrads who really dont want a roommate.

Squashed in St Petersburg

Russia has a reputation for being a pretty crazy place and trying to find somewhere decent to live there can drive you just as crazy.

In the bustling city of St Petersburg, the suspiciously low sum of $120 a month can net you a whole “studio apartment”! If your definition of a studio apartment is a windowless cubbyhole in an old warehouse.

The bed is crammed in between water pipes and a dodgy looking heater, so at least you won’t get cold, especially not if that thing goes up in flames.

As for the toilet? Using that death trap would be hard enough at the best of times but imagine after a huge curry! One wrong bowel movement and your poop wouldn’t be the only thing crashing down onto the tiles below.

Adding to this flagrant disregard for safety, there’s a microwave and clothes iron directly beneath the shower. So, if you don’t fall to your premature doom, don’t worry, you could still electrocute yourself!

Though, with no sink in sight, I wouldn’t be surprised if this hovel doesn’t have running water either. The only thing running would be me, far, far away.

Cramped Cube

This $1,000 a month studio in London has taken the cabin bed concept to a whole new level. You’ve still got the raised bed, but underneath it, there’s a whole lot more than a children’s den.

In fact, almost all the utilities in the room are under there! That squashed kitchen has just enough space to open the oven door, and there’s a fridge and washing machine crammed in too.

Plus, in case you were wondering where the toilet is, the whole cubicle is also under the bed! It’s like someone got a regular-sized apartment and tossed it into one of those car-cubing machines.

It’s kind of impressive, though. And whoever designed it must’ve thought so too because there is a couch too just beside the bunk bed! Who needs TV when you can sit and marvel at the wonders of your kitchen-toilet-bed?

Only a couple of miles north-east however, an even smaller flat went on sale. This joke of an abode was advertised for about the same price, and makes the cube look like luxury! Where's the fridge at?

If not being able to store food for longer than a day is a dealbreaker for you, you could opt to stay elsewhere in London.

Like the delightful little loft conversion below! There’s a fridge, sure, but it appears to come at the price of everything else. Is that a bed for ants?

Compact Capsules

If you’re ever in Tokyo’s Shinbashi district, in Japan, you might come across a supremely strange building. It may look like a 13-story pile of washing machines, but it’s actually a mega weird housing block called the Nakagin Capsule Tower.

The tower is made from 140 tiny apartments, or capsules, and each one is designed to be removed and replaced, so the whole thing can grow and change like a plant. At least, that’s the idea. In reality, none of these capsules have been replaced since the tower was completed back in 1972.

And now? Well, it’s scheduled for demolition because it’s riddled with asbestos. Even so, 20 of the least asbestossy capsules are still rented out at around $600 a month for those people daring enough to take them, that is.

Each pod is around 100 square feet and originally came tricked out with a wall of retro appliances that would look right at home in a spaceship. Many of the capsules have since been modded though, with lighting rigs and all sorts of other crazy setups.

Just in case you were thinking this sounds pretty cool, even if you manage to avoid the asbestos, the building has no hot water and you’d be living in constant anxiety due to the looming threat of demolition.

The one place that does have hot water is the garbage disposal room and, showering there sounds pretty trashy to me.