Terry And Lisa Messelhiser thieving ripoff rental property owners LeMars Iowa

We rented our first apartment about a year ago from these two untrustworthy thieves. The "Royal Park Apartments" was a former college dorm that they converted into apartments. Since day one we had nothing but problems. First our dishwasher was installed wrong. We notified Lisa a couple days after we moved in who sent her husband Terry to our apartment. Rather than take a look at the dishwasher he assumed we were just using it wrong and handed us a manual that we already had.

We called again. Finally they sent a repairman, who confirmed that the dishwasher was installed wrong. Lisa then left us a revised lease that included "cost of repairs" for the dishwasher against our deposit. Before that she had told us the dishwasher was still under warranty...and the cost was not even written on our "revised" lease agreement. The apartment facility also housed many children. On numerous occasions children would knock on our door and run away or they'd just open up the door and run away. We called Lisa several times about this. She sounded annoyed with us and said she couldn't do anything about it.

The apartment also had a "party room" where tenants could hold gatherings as long as they reserved it with Lisa. We did this and the so-called "apartment manager" called the police on us and said that we broke into the facility and we were trespassing. This was not even a wild party it was in the afternoon with our parents and some friends to eat for the 4th of July! The landlords had wilder parties out in the yard of the apartments! When we gave Lisa our notice that we were moving out we had looked at a house that she had shown us. We said we'd take it because we were miserable in the apartment. Then one day we were home when we would usually be at work and our apartment door is being unlocked and in walks a man we had never seen. Lisa had arranged for an inspection on our apartment without even notifiying us!

This made us wonder how many other times this had been done without us knowing. The inspection was conveniently scheduled for a time when the both of us would usually be at work. Lisa claimed that she called us, but neither of us talked to her and we have caller-id and her number was never on there, nor was there a message on our answering machine. The inspector was going through our apartment to determine if it was suitible for state assisted rent. When it looked like the person Lisa had found to rent the place wasn't going to be able to get it because of the inspection Lisa told us we were welcome to stay in the apartment because she hadn't heard anything from the people in the house we were supposed to move into. We decided this was the last straw with these dishonest people. We called her the next day and said we did not want to rent from her at all.

She was furious and told us she was going to keep our deposit from the apartment for the house. We never signed a lease or any kind of rental agreement for the house and she had told us that she wasn't even sure if the people in it were actually moving out. Then when it seemed we were not going to rent from her no matter what she said she called us and said to go ahead and clean so she can get us our deposit back. Silly us, we fall for this and clean the place to her expectations, which she left in front of our door telling us the exact cleaning products she wanted us to use. We followed these directions. However, we never received our deposit back nor a receipt explaining the deductions from our deposit. I would never recommend anyone renting from these horrible people and many other people I've talked to have had similar experiences with them.

First time renters
LeMars, Iowa
U.S.A.