Complaint Review: JRK Properties - Los Angeles California

I rent at a property that was formerly managed by JRK Properties. Another management company has since bought the property, and they can't possibly be any worse. I mean what I said in that there were too many problems with the company to put into a brief description--in fact, there are so many, I'm sure I'm going to forget some in the course of this description.

When I first moved in, I was not informed that there had recently been a fire in the apartment adjacent to mine, and that my apartment had sat vacant for a number of months since then--meaning that it likely sat and stewed in the smoke and fire damage before it was rented out to me. The inside of the furnace was filthy and the vents were covered in black dust, smoke particles, no doubt. Additionally, JRK made serious mistakes when rewiring the apartment after the fire--the electrical connections in the attic were completely wrong. Getting Internet was a several week saga with various people coming out and telling me the apartment was literally not wired for cable or Internet. Eventually, the Internet company had to get into my neighbors' attic because when JRK had the wiring "repaired," they apparently somehow had all the wires running there instead of into my apartment.

But even this was minor. The heating didn't work, and I had to have that repaired, which took forever--far longer than the 48 hours promised for emergency issues in the text of the lease. (The air conditioning didn't work at first in the summer for that matter either.) And speaking of the furnace--there was a giant hole in the ceiling above the furnace, through which wood and what appears to be the attic are visible. The hole constantly leaked insulation and dust onto the floor of the closet. Needless to say, having copious amounts of dust and fluff around a furnace and hot water heater is a fire hazard. They were informed of the issue, but chose to do nothing about it, meaning that my cousin/roommate and I had to sweep it up periodically and check on it to make sure everything looked safe to us.

The windows and the screens were practically falling out of the walls, and there was next to no insulation. Maintenance eventually came and fixed it, but such an issue really ought to have been handled long before I moved in, especially given that the apartment was vacant for so long. The rental office lied to me repeatedly and told me they had inspected the apartment prior to me moving in--but if that's true, why were there so many issues? How could they possibly have overlooked them?

I didn't receive a key to my mailbox or my garage for weeks, and this only after constantly hounding the rental office, despite the fact that not providing me with a garage is against the terms of my lease.

Perhaps the most concerning thing directly after moving in was the fire alarms, however. They immediately started beeping and wouldn't stop, no matter how many batteries I put in them. It's deeply disconcerting to know that, in an apartment complex where there have been two fires in recent memory (the one in the apartment next to mine, and another, separate incident), that your fire detectors don't work. After notifying the rental office about this, it took three days to resolve it--again slightly longer than the 48 hours promised.

To make matters worse, the same happened in my neighbors' apartment. I could hear constant beeping at all hours of the night--5 am, 2 am, 6 am. It happened on and off for weeks. I informed the rental office about it and told them it was the fire alarms again. They laughed at me and told me it was my neighbors' alarm clock. Some three or four weeks later I finally managed to get them to listen to it, and sure enough it was malfunctioning smoke detectors again. No wonder this place had multiple fires.

At that time, I tried calling the corporate number multiple times, and each time I was simply transferred to a tenant hotline that they clearly never listen to. I left them a tear-filled, heartfelt message asking them to get into contact with me. They never did.

Another issue I had was with the washer and dryer hookup. I had been told a standard sized washer and dryer would fit in the laundry space, so I bought a standard size of both, the smallest size I could find, in fact. When the washer and dryer came I was told by the delivery man that they wouldn't fit. The issue? The closet meant to house the washer and dryer is so poorly built in my apartment that one side is deeper than the other, and the two couldn't possibly fit into it together. I had to order special small models, which took a long time to arrive and were much more expensive. Even then they didn't fit properly--maintenance had to pop the doors off the closet.

On another occasion, the door to my garage stopped working, and when I told the rental office about it, they took the opener from me and told me they would fix it. There was silence from them for weeks. I tried filing maintenance reports and eventually received a new opener--but it was to someone else's garage. When I told them this, they took the opener away again. Still no garage. I finally called the rental office and asked what was going on. They told me they had no record of me ever having the original garage, and that that other person's must be mine. Mind you, the garage was full of somebody's things, bikes, etc. It was most definitely not mine. I told them my original garage door number, and again silence. It was only a few weeks later when I got the full story: the construction workers working on the apartment renovations (you know, the renovations they had to do after the fire) had commandeered my garage and used it to store their equipment, without my permission. Needless to say I was upset.

Later on, the rental office insisted on doing a key audit--they called me and claimed they had no copies of the keys to my property--not exactly the most comforting thing to hear from your rental office. Apparently, they did this to multiple people. In conjunction with the above mishap with the construction workers, that begs the question: what happened to the "missing" keys? Who took them, and what kind of security did they have at this place to protect their tenants' safety? Apparently not much, as my cousin (my roommate) and I found out one night when we tried to access the workout room using our key. The lock there is broken and it opens for anyone, regardless of whether they're a tenant or not, meaning that that door to the clubhouse is effectively never locked.

Speaking of the clubhouse, the much-advertised pool was closed down by the sanitation department over the summer, for good reason. Every time I drove past it, was a toxic shade of green. No one ever took care of it, which proves how little JRK valued their residents' health and comfort.

JRK Properties even managed to make their tenants suffer to the very end. Before selling the property, they let maintenace requests, even emergency ones, go unanswered for weeks. I had several non-emergency (but nonetheless urgent) maintenance requests, including the lights in the parking lot being burned out, meaning that driving there at night during the winter, trying to spot ice, was like running an obstacle course. The maintenance requests went unchecked for 16 days, until the new management took over and started having to clean up after JRK's incompetence--or, rather, malicious neglect.

I was told by the new management company that JRK was supposed to have contacted us about the new management. They didn't. I was also told by the new company that JRK shredded files and concealed information from them--no doubt to protect themselves from legal action.

JRK never sent a bill for water, sewage, pest control, or trash removal for this month either, which should have been their responsibility. I checked with the City, and the entire property is listed as delinquent in their water bills. Were they taking money from me for water and not paying the city, in effect stealing?

I tried calling their corporate number to resolve the issue. I was afraid, given, the horror stories I'd heard in the past about such apartment companies, that they might try to send me to a collection agency for nonpayment of services when I never even got a bill for the water, etc. in the first place. I called multiple times and I was repeatedly transferred to the tenant relations hotline, even though I explained I wasn't a tenant (anymore). I got frustrated, left an admittedly nasty message on the line that no one listens to anyway, and kept calling the main line, figuring that persistence would pay off. I finally got through to a woman named Carolina and had perhaps one of the rudest conversations of my life. She told me she was trying to put me on hold but I just kept calling, as if it were my fault that every time I called the phone went dead or else led to the tenant hotline. I explained to her the issue, finally, and she got exceedingly snippy and gave me the number for their collections agency. She kept asking what I expected her to do about it. Far be it from me to expect a management company to... manage things. I eventually told her that renting at JRK had been one of the worst experiences of my life. Her response: "We feel the same way about dealing with you." Lovely customer service, no?

Luckily, I called the collections agency and they had nothing under my name, but you can be sure I'll keep checking back. Knowing JRK, nothing is past them, not even charging a person for a bill they never received.

Hopefully that's the end of the story. Honestly, if other tenants in my particular complex were willing to file some sort of action against JRK, I'd be open to it. I've had enough. They were clearly up to something shady.