[elipsey]

Yep. I recently lived in a Greystar property in San Rafael. The garage gate broke and was tied open with a rope for several months. The front security gate latch broke and my key card didn't work on half of the doors. The mailboxes' latch broke and post office repeatedly notified management and stopped delivering mail for weeks at a time on several separate occasions. Same with the package room. There was no on site security -- you can guess how that turned out in the bay area.

When I moved in, the place was riddled with broken stuff. The toilet, sink, dish washer, and washing machine were broken. It took months of email and "support tickets", to get that stuff fixed, I fixed the toilet myself, and let the small stuff slide. Management was almost unreachable and seemed disorganized at the local level. It was totally surreal.

All for the bargain price of 3400/mo. Luckily it was a short lease. This was mid 2020, so I was happy not to be downtown for while, and San Rafael was wonderful, but I was out of that place as soon as the short lease was up. It took them six months to figure out how to cash my final check.

When looking for my next rental, Greystar managament was an instant deal breaker, and I would recommend avoiding at all cost.

[johnebgd]

I lived in a Greystar building starting in 2013 for three years in Chicago and one year in Sacramento before moving into a different rental company building in San Francisco. They were excellent, extremely attentive to problems. The buildings were well maintained. Not saying your experience wasn’t valid just that mine was very different.

[onphonenow]

It can be heavily dependent on area etc. Rent control areas / for-cause eviction areas - you can get some pretty horrific maintenance situations. San Rafael I think is now for cause, required mediation on rent increases and "bad faith" means that the increase is not valid.

That said, these guys look like scum - but I've seen nongreystar crap properties as well.

One thing - I wish review sites would not let them change names and start fresh on reviews for a property at a given address.

[elipsey]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were considerable variation between properties. My observation was that there seemed to be a remote higher level management office that was out of state, and out of touch with local conditions, but still trying to control costs aggressively. So the one local property manager was grossly overworked and under-resourced. She actually seemed quite pitiably desperate (and there was turnover in that role).

Also, maybe in lower COL areas than SF bay it might be easier for them to source labor and services at a cost they were willing to pay. They kept saying it was because of covid, but my previous and following landlords both managed to provide basic essential services like legal mailboxes and working toilets. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mimikatz]

I can 2nd this. I lived at a Greystar building for a couple years and it was a much better experience than the one I moved to afterwards.

[ricardobayes]

Wow. Sorry to have this takeaway from your story, but HCOL areas really don't make sense anymore. I recently calculated mortgage for a really, really nice house in coastal Spain. 5 bedrooms, 3200 sqft, pool, garage the whole shebang. The mortgage came to 1300/month if you put down the minimum.

[elipsey]

Agree. I just bought a house outside of the bay area. :) OTHO, if I didn't live there I probably couldn't have saved for the house...