Barry D. Willard

Absolutely the worst landlord experience in my life.
I think he thought my housemate and I were undergrad students, but we both were working professionals. He would harass us about the most mundane things, and cite made-​up laws that didn’t even apply to us. He would always say things in his notes like «do we need to bring your parents into this?» when he was clearly being irrational in the first place, and I haven’t had parents to for over a decade, friend, thanks for bringing it up.
He would leave nasty notes about the lawn being too tall within days of having it mowed by a landscaping crew – in fact, THE overpriced landscaping crew he forced us to use since they’re friends of his.
He threatened to have my car towed from the driveway when the inspection sticker expired by a couple days while I was out of town.
After we were a month in, he said having a girlfriend over for the night more than 4 times in a calendar year was a breach in contract and threatened to evict us if he caught us doing something like that. He revealed proudly that he often drives by multiple times a day, saying he checks up on all his properties like that. He would come over unannounced and keyed in without notice on two occasions in the middle of our lease.
Our neighbors complained to us that he would come over frequently to fish for things We were doing wrong, when we were friends with all of them. These same neighbors had piles of complaints about promises this Landlord had made about trimming trees back, paying to have the leaves from his trees removed from their lawns, fixing fences, etc. when We were the ones who regularly raked for and did odd-​jobs for these same neighbors, for free.
He would go out of his way to only confront only the one housemate that would let him yell at him. When he was at his most amicable, he would quote bible verses, pop TV icons and football commentators, and get them all wrong.
My housemate and I both worked for the University, and we ran across people who had worked with this landlord character prior to his inheriting this apartment business from his mother, and they all had the same things to say about him: absolutely impossible to work with, dumb as nails, and completely illogical.
It was not until a particularly venomous visit he made to our place about halfway into our year’s lease, again in my absence, that I threatened to sic my lawyer on him – citing many of these things and more – that he left us completely alone for the rest of our time there. I absolutely suggest getting some real law advice when he starts pretending to have an arsenal of little-​known laws at his disposal to inflict his warped religious views on you.
He did not give us the option to renew =)