Charlotte Foster
Travel Trouble

Landlord makes incredible gesture to tenant after selling house

A landlord has left an ex-tenant moved to tears after an incredible and unexpected act of kindness. 

Chris Robarge, from Massachusetts in the US, said he was randomly contacted by his former landlord to ask for his current address.

After providing the information, he received a letter from the landlord who wanted to pay him back for the contributions he had made to the home. 

The landlord had recently sold the house, and said to Chris, “I firmly believe that the capitalist tradition of retaining that money after the sale of a property is exploitative and anti-ethical to a just society.”

Enclosed in the letter was a cheque for $3,400AUD and a message explaining that the landlord had tried to keep rent “equivalent to the monthly expenses of keeping the house” for everyone who had lived there. 

The kind landlord wrote, “I calculated the amount of principal you paid each month you lived there, split it by who was living in the house at the time, and added 40 per cent (the increase in value of the home from when I bought it).”

“While it’s not much, it’s yours! It was a great house and I’m glad I was able to share it with you.”

The landlord also shared the same amount of money from the sale of the house to other tenants who lived there, saying, “some of the rent you paid each month contributed to paying off the principle of my mortgage.”

Chris was shocked by the kind gesture, saying he had been thinking about the act of kindness for days. 

He said, “I am still completely beyond an actual way to describe what this act means to me.”

“All that I can say is that there are people who talk about their values and there are people who actually live them, and the reason I wanted to share this is that I want to encourage us all to actually live our values.”

“Do it off the clock, do it when no one is watching, do it always.”

Image credit: Shutterstock

Tags:
landlord, tenant, act of kindness, emotional, selling house