Imagine living in an apartment owned by an annoying landlord who has a lot of equally annoying rules. When it was finally time to move out, would you be honest about any problems that currently existed with the apartment, or would you just leave?

In this story, one couple was in this situation, and they chose the second option. In fact, they’re pretty happy to know the apartment has a problem that the landlord doesn’t know about.

Let’s read all about the landlord’s annoying ways and the secret they kept when they moved out.

Leaving the old landlord with ants because HAH!

My boyfriend and I recently bought a house, yay! Before that we lived in a third floor walk up in the city I grew up in and we had another roommate.

The roommate and I moved in October 2015, and boyfriend moved in January 2016.

The landlord is a bit odd.

Upon meeting the landlord the first time, roommate (RM) and I realized a few things.

1. She was old as dirt. The house was built in 1920 and her parents were probably the first owners.

2. She put us through a vetting process for our credit checks that may as well have been us applying to Trump for refugee status.

3. The rules in the lease provided were a little strange.

There were a LOT of strange rules!

No overnight guests for more than 4 days a month, NO EXCEPTIONS.

No one was to be physically in the apartment if a lease holder was not also in the apartment, this extended to don’t even go to your car and leave the friend in the apartment for a minute unattended.

No animals of any kind. The lease specifically mentioned dogs, cats, birds, and FISH. Not even a goldfish.

No parties. That’s all the lease stated. She verbally informed us that more than 5 people would constitute a party. If we ever had the need to have more than five people over, we had to call her and ask permission first.

That’s not all!

No musical instruments allowed on the premises. You could not have so much as a guitar or a triangle within the apartment whether you played it or not.

Visitors CANNOT park in front of the house. On the public street. Where anyone is allowed to park.

She had multiple cars towed in the time we live there by telling the police that the car had been “abandoned”.

But they still decided to move in.

BUT, the apartment was massive and EXTREMELY cheap. A three bedroom in Massachusetts for $990 with 1000sq ft. And we knew the tenants on the second floor already, which was just coincidental.

So we took it and decided we could tolerate a little crazy.

Then she started ticking us off.

All of these things sound really annoying.

She had mentioned there was oil heat, but the tanks “rarely” had to be filled. Turned out, we were paying at minimum $600 extra per month to maintain our apartment to barely above frigid.

She had to “inspect” all AC units before putting them in the windows– which would be fine if she wasn’t the least technologically inclined person and her inspection didn’t involve us trying to find a date/time for days just for her to check for frayed wires.

The first month and a half we were there she had a handyman in our apartment EVERY SINGLE DAY making “improvements” to the apartment.

These improvements included painting over window frames (which must have 30 layers of paint on them with lead paint at the bottom), repainting the perfectly fine kitchen, adding paneling to our bonus room because she didn’t like the paint color and paneling is easier, re-wallpapering most of the apartment OVER the existing wallpaper, and “fixing” cracks in the ceiling– though the job wasn’t done well because they reappeared rather quickly.

These things sound even more frustrating!

Upon moving in, she had us sign a paper acknowledging that there was lead paint in the property. Which was fine– we don’t have kids. But she told me to my face multiple times that “it would become a problem for me” if I were to become pregnant.

She had us each pay $10 extra October through April for snow removal, which I’m 90% sure is illegal in Massachusetts. But she would not have the front steps leading to the front entrance and mailboxes shoveled– leading to our mail not being delivered many times.

Towards the end of our time there, we were sick of her.

She would call us at all hours of the day asking us to open jars for her, or whether it was okay for a handyman to come out on a Saturday to “fix” something that didn’t actually need to be fixed, and generally was just annoying.

They’re finally getting out of there!

My boyfriend and I put an offer in on a house at the beginning of May and it was accepted. We closed on May 28th and our roommate had decided to move in with his girlfriend and already had most of his things out by then.

Landlord comes by just after our offer was accepted and decided to try and have us sign an addendum to the lease that we could not smoke or have marijuana on the property and I was no longer allowed to smoke cigarettes on the porch.

We told her we had secured a new residence, our notice to vacate would be arriving soon, and we would not be signing anything for her.

There was another problem.

A day or so after we told her this, we started noticing carpenter ants. First it was just a couple. But by day five, they were absolutely everywhere.

It should be noted that this house is VERY old and very poorly maintained. There was rotting wood everywhere. We weren’t allowed to so much as step foot on the front porch due to it being structurally unsafe, and the back porch was starting to go as well.

We toyed with the idea of letting her know about the ants– but decided against it and we began moving a few days later.

They moved out even quicker than they had originally planned.

We put our notice in on May 30th with intent to vacate by June 30th. We moved all our items out of the apartment by June 10th– not including the ants.

We went back and did a big cleaning all together and the ants apparently dissipated after the cleaning, probably because of the massive amounts of bleach I used.

Yesterday, August 2nd… almost two months since we have stepped foot in this apartment, I receive a phone call. It was the landlord. I ignored it, because we’ve received our deposit back and she’s no longer my problem.

She called my boyfriend after I ignored two calls from her.

This is an odd question to ask someone who has moved out.

Apparently, the second floor tenants have been complaining about ants and she was wondering if we had seen any.

My boyfriend stuttered out a no, confused as to why she would be calling us knowing we moved two months ago.

And she mentioned to him she would then only be spraying the second floor for ants, rather than the 2nd and 3rd.

He had to think about what to say next.

He contemplated retracting his statement and telling her that yes, we had seen ants. But then remembered how awful she was and reiterated we had never seen a single ant.

This woman will have ants forever.

She is not planning on spraying the foundation. And she’s not planning on spraying the third floor… where the infestation started. Hahaha, enjoy your ants.

That landlord does sound really annoying. It’s also so strange that she would call someone who moved out to see if they say ants. Why doesn’t she just go look herself?

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Here’s another story about a renter who had an annoying landlady.

This person has a question.

Another person agrees that she sounded annoying.

One person has a question about the other tenants.

It’s not their problem anymore!

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.