My fiance and I just moved here from Maine. We were working with PMI before we arrived. We made the mistake of signing the lease before seeing the property (a friend had walked through for us, who lived in the area, but he did not inspect the property closely).
Before signing the lease I asked if it has been cleaned. They assured us it had been cleaned.
We walked in and both our hearts sank. The place was dirty and it smelled. The stove/oven had caked on crust/dirt..nothing had been wiped down, crumbs on the floors and counters. Toilet bowls had brown water in them, etc. we brought it to their attention. They apologized and said they would speak with the owner (did not hear back that day).
The next day we came back onto the property, as we had slept elsewhere, and to our horror there were fire ants in 5 out of the 7 rooms! They were coming in through the back walls. They had found the small bowl of cat food we had left out for our cats. We walked around the property and saw 5 extremely big ant mounds. We were truly mortified. I had one ant on my finger and it hurt like the dickens.
We ran back to PMI and told them the property was uninhabitable. Who knows what it would take to get rid of those ants for good. We wanted out of our lease.
We prayed and thank goodness they agreed. They let us out of our lease and now we are living in an adorable home with awesome landlords nearby. All brand new appliances. No ants to be found anywhere!
We learned our lesson. You have to do your homework. We will never sign another lease without thoroughly inspecting a rental inside and out.