Are Latin American Landlords Invasive With Your Apartment?

Over a year ago, I was living in Roma Norte of Mexico City and met some older European woman.

Though I don't remember her story perfectly, I believe she had not lived in Mexico for the longest of time but had some experience anyhow.

Not quite sure how long.

And, while we didn't talk too much whatsoever on most days, I remember near the end of my time in Roma Norte where she walked upstairs as I was eating lunch.

She began cooking something and we made small talk.

I had told her that I was leaving the area soon to another neighborhood of Mexico City.

And we got talking about that.

Then she gave me a warning about being careful with whoever I choose to be my next landlord.

From which she gave me a little story that she had somewhere in Mexico that was effectively one of which the landlord would constantly enter her apartment without her permission.

She told me that she always had some camera recording the room and, for whatever reason that I don't remember, suspected the dude of entering her room when she wasn't there.

The video evidence did exist.

She checked the footage and there he was!

Literally doing nothing except just occasionally entering the room, walking around, checking everything, etc.

Going through her desk, clothes, etc.

Not taking anything.

Not secretly stealing her panties and jacking off inside them.

Not even going through her laptop.

Nothing.

Just felt the need, for whatever reason, to "snoop" around.

Suffice to say, they had a conversation. He denied it all apparently.

And she obviously left the place immediately.

Now, to be fair, that is just one isolated incident with one creepy ass motherfucker.

Every country has creepy ass motherfuckers.

Every country has shit landlords.

But, over the years of living in Latin America, there has been moments where I have genuinely wondered if the landlords here are more invasive than back home.

Unfortunately, I cannot answer that question because I have never had a landlord in the US because I never rented an apartment up there.

As soon as I turned 18, I left Iowa and that was that.

But, when I listen to my sister for example talk about renting up there, obviously I've heard occasionally a bad story here and there.

Nothing involving a landlord snooping through the clothing.

But bad management of the apartment and other things you hear about sometimes.

Still, while living in Latin America, it does seem to me that sometimes the landlords here can be a little bit too invasive or that, at the very least, landlords with privacy issues is seemingly quite common.

Worse than in other countries?

Well, obviously it depends on which country in Latin America we are comparing to which country out there.

Are Mexican landlords more invasive than North Korean ones?

Probably not.

I have no idea but let's go with it.

More invasive than landlords in a country with probably more tenant rights enforced like perhaps Sweden or something?

Yeah, I could see it.

At any rate, let's get into my own personal experiences and wrap this quick topic up.

My Experiences with Latin American Landlords

When I lived in a Guatemalan city known as Xela, I lived in a homestay that you can read about here.

It was the first Latin American city I lived in all by myself.

Was it invasive?

No. I don't remember them doing anything that felt like they violated my privacy.

Next, I remember living in a Bolivian city known as Cochabamba.

I also lived in two different homestays over there.

In one of them, they were not invasive at all. Very friendly family.

In the other, they had a dad who was socially retarded and hated me from the first second he saw me (in part because I wasn't a Latino who spoke native Spanish and he wanted someone with perfect Spanish but we later had other issues).

With him, he had a tendency to repeatedly go into my bedroom that I was renting out to disconnect the phone charger when I wasn't there.

His excuse when I confronted him about it was that "IT MAKES TOO MUCH NOISE!!"

The Narrator: The phone charger, in fact, did not make any noise.

But that was literally his fucking excuse.

So, if you were to live in his house and leave behind the phone to charge up, you could expect the motherfucker to literally walk in and, at the very least, disconnect it.

Outside of that, I don't know if he ever did anything else in the room.

I didn't have any footage of him doing anything in my room so I don't know if he ever felt like snooping around.

Wouldn't surprise me if he's always walking in to fuck with my phone charger.

But that was that.

Later on, I lived in Argentina at another homestay.

No privacy issues with her whatsoever.

Though, near the end of my time there, I did walk into the bedroom to find the bed completely made, floor cleaned, notebooks placed on the top shelf where they were not typically, etc.

For whatever reason, she felt the need to clean the room without telling me first near the end of my time in Argentina while I was away from Buenos Aires to see Iguazu Falls.

I didn't protest. She did do a little mini clean but obviously, for some people, something like that without notifying you first would be a red flag.

After all, what if she stole something?

She didn't but you never know.

Next, I was in Colombia but never had any privacy issues there.

After Colombia, I began living in Mexico City and Pachuca.

And here is where you'll find a common issue with Latin American landlords that is more frequently cited when foreigners discuss privacy issues with them.

The issue at hand is basically whenever you notify your landlord that you'll be leaving in a month and they have random people walk into the place to check it out before you leave.

Normally, that's perfectly OK.

The dude needs to find a replacement.

But it seems common enough from what I've heard over the years for landlords to fail to notify you that they are bringing someone in to look at it.

For example, when I visited a little expat gathering over a month ago before moving to Tlahuac, I remember this random expat chick from Canada giving us all a story about it.

She was basically just taking a nap in her apartment in Condesa when she heard a bunch of noise below that woke her up.

She, being a woman especially, was a perhaps a bit more worried of an invader.

Or that's how she emphasized it repeatedly -- "as a WOMAN, I was scared!"

Ahhh women ... bunch of pussies, aren't they?

Anyway, there are two doors to her apartment and apparently the second door was not able to be unlocked while the landlord was fucking with it.

The landlord had the key to the first door but the second door had some gate mechanism that the landlord could not unlock from the outside.

So basically the landlord got past the first door and is literally trying to barge her way in.

Literally shoving herself aggressively against it apparently.

Almost like she was roleplaying as an intruder looking to break in, steal shit, maybe rape the tenant, etc.

So, long story short, the chick apparently grabs her phone to notify whoever but sees a text from the landlord demanding to be let in.

 And then drama unfolds -- yelling and all between the two.

While I wasn't there, the landlord sounded like some stereotypical boomer Spanish descended Mexican -- "I own the place, your ass belongs to me, I can barge right in WHENEVER I want, god damn it!"

And the rest is history.

Now, putting aside that story, have I ever had this experience?

Well, not quite as, if I'm being honest, I think I've only told like maybe one landlord EVER in Mexico that I am leaving ahead of time.

Usually I just stop paying last month's rent with whatever excuse and then ditch without telling them.

However, I had had several experiences where the landlord would show me the place of some possible spot I might move in and I'm not always sure obviously if the landlord notified the tenant or not that we are stopping by.

In one case, I'm pretty confident he didn't.

It was a spot in Roma Norte that I lived in over a year ago (where I met that European lady) and I remember the landlord fumbling around trying to get the door to the place open but seemingly forgot to notify the dude that we're coming in (who didn't seem to be there when we forced our way into the place).

Outside of that, the only other moment that was weird to me was in the last place I lived at in Pedregal de Santo Domingo.

I was literally just laying in my bed watching some Youtube videos late at night at around 11 PM and the landlord unlocks the door with another woman behind her.

I obviously jumped out of bed immediately with "who the fuck is this?" when I heard someone trying to unlock the door.

Right away, I saw the both of them.

The woman behind her actually did rent out a nearby room for a month or two at most.

But I obviously didn't get any notification that they were going to visit me.

Didn't even get a knock on the door (which would've been fine even though 11 PM is late for most people but I do work nights).

Instead, the bitch just felt like unlocking the door -- without a knock -- to introduce me to the other chick.

I said hi. They said hi. I told her to knock. We said bye. That was it.

So, when it comes to Latin American landlords being invasive or not, some of them in my experience really DO have no concept of privacy or personal space.

It does seem, at the very least, to not be terribly uncommon to find a landlord with the mindset of "I own this place, I can walk THE FUCK IN WHENEVER I WANT, BITCH!"

But more invasive than those in other countries or regions?

You be the judge. I have no idea.

Anything to Add?

That's it!

This topic was something I got reminded of due to this here posted on Facebook recently.

Basically, some chick accusing a landlord of being invasive.

Not just with walking in whenever but also trying to control when you can enter and leave the place.

I've actually seen the last bit of behavior among some landlords also.

When I was looking for a new apartment recently in the east of Mexico City, I came across a family run place where this Spanish descended looking boomer Mexican had some rule of not being out of the building past 8 PM.

Obviously, I didn't live there.

And that brings up another point real quick -- perhaps for obvious reasons, landlords in places where they also live in or, even worse, have their family living in also tend to be more invasive than landlords who don't live in the same building and don't have their family living there either.

Perhaps for obvious reasons, they just feel the need to be more invasive and more entitled to breaking your privacy.

But, over the years here, I've seen stories of such odd behavior in places where the landlord did not live there either.

For purposes of this article, I did ask two people I know who rent down here.

One of them is an American named Blayde and he told he never had privacy issues with any landlords over his 5 years in Mexico City.

Another person is a Mexican chick named Angie. I do remember her having privacy issues with some old woman that rented her an apartment in her first year living in Mexico City as I knew her then and visited her place.

But, outside of that, her only complaint has been when a few previous landlords would bring someone to check her place out without notifying her first. 

Anyway, if you got anything to add, drop a comment below.

And follow my Twitter here.

Thanks for reading.

Best regards,

Matt