Michael Bupp Realty

My experience with renting an apartment from Mr. B[redacted] and his realty company was horrible. I rented an apartment in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittburgh from him and quickly learned that Mr. B[redacted] is a rude landlord that shows no concern for tenants or maintaining his properties. Just to provide a few examples of this bad experience, during late October, I noticed that the heat was not working properly and asked him politely if he could fix it. Three weeks later, a repairman was sent to address the problem. The repair to the heating system was questionable; sometimes it worked while most of the time the apartment was freezing cold (there was no thermostat in the apartment). I decided to accept the condition of the heat to avoid confrontation with Mr. B[redacted]. Also, when he scheduled showings of the apartment to potential tenants for the next year, he would send me a text message in broken and misspelled English 10 minutes before showing up. It was completely unacceptable. Upon signing the lease agreement, I made it clear to Mr. B[redacted] that I intended to sublet the apartment for the final 6 months of the lease term and he agreed. When the time came for the subtenant to move in, Mr. B[redacted] sent me a letter, again in misspelled and broken English which was a common theme for communication with him, that stated I had not paid rent during a month that I had lived at the apartment. He also stated that he was deducting a portion of my security deposit for "writing out te deposit checks time sending forms etc.", which is a direct quote from the letter. First, a landlord that is not fully cognizant of tenant rent payments is again unacceptable; I had to send him copies from my bank of the rent checks he cashed to prove my rent was paid early and in full. Second, withholding a portion of my security deposit for reasons completely unrelated to property maintenance is illegal under Landlord-Tenant statutes. Some research into his realty ventures show similar shady activities involving scamming young college students out of rent and security deposits. Lawsuits were even brought against him for this. I would highly advise anyone that is renting or considering renting from Mr. B[redacted] to expect the same issues that I enountered. He is a landlord that is only interested in getting money, regardless of whether it is legal or not.