Connected Property Management

I think my cancellation email to the owner, Paul, pretty much summed it up. While Paul did hold a call with me, and said he would look into our issues, nothing got done and we ended up going back to self managing (since we had to do pretty much everything ourselves anyway!). -- I?m writing to let you know that we?ve decided to terminate our relationship with Connected Management. We?ve been quite disappointed with the service provided and don?t feel we are receiving the value for our money. I?ll detail a few of my concerns here, and if you?re able to address them to my satisfaction we?ll consider staying. - Leasing and move-in/move-out ? Connected did place one tenant for us for a one-month commission (Unit #2) but has since declined to re-rent this unit, and we had to do this on our own with Apartment People just like we were doing on our own. Further, we had to conduct the move-out inspection and hire our own cleaners, because we were told this service was not included. - Property maintenance - we had vendors lined up for HVAC maintenance and pest control, but it doesn?t seem Connected has maintained these relationships, or has taken them to another inside vendor. I was there yesterday and the weeds in the gangway (between the sidewalk and a fence) had overgrown the whole gangway, and the gangway was littered with dirt, rubbish, and small pieces from the tree. I sprayed Roundup weed killer and shoveled up all the trash and dirt. We also have to pay our own person to shovel after each snowfall. - Repairs ? Connected doesn?t seem to have a ?general handyman? on staff to take care of small requests or provide any sort of basic maintenance. In each case we have needed work completed (even small things like running toilets, well under the pre-authorized $500 limit) a trade specialist has been required. Most recently my partner asked about the aforementioned weeds on 8/2 and he was told a landscaper would have to be consulted (and he never heard back). - Emergencies ? When we had the great water heater failure last Thanksgiving it took several hours for Connected to get back to the tenants, and it ended up being me going over to their house to survey the scene and determine an action plan. I realize it?s a holiday, but you guys are big enough that I expect someone to be on-call and responsive. About a month ago a tenant complained about another tenant being unruly and throwing heavy objects from their balcony, but what did Connected do? Nothing - the complaint was forwarded to us, at which time I had to offer up the sage advice of calling the police if they felt their personal safety was threatened. - Collections ? we have a tenant who?s a perpetual problem, and Connected?s methods don?t seem to be effective. When we asked to explore our remedies for eviction, the answer was to pay more money to serve notice and then more money to pursue the eviction. - Accounting ? your invoices are nearly impossible to read or understand. In summary, it doesn?t feel like we are getting anything from the relationship other than a lockbox payment service and a minimally responsive call center that ends up simply relaying messages from the tenants to us, and occasionally hiring contractors that I would otherwise find myself on angieslist. Have a look at the attached manual we were given ? it looked great when we got it. Is anything in this document being done? Connected wouldn?t find renters, isn?t conducting the bi-monthly inspections (or if you are, you aren?t acting on them) and wouldn?t conduct the move-out inspection or cleaning. If we can get this relationship into a position where I feel proactive care and preventative maintenance are being taken of the property and that communication is good all around, I will consider continuing the business. Otherwise please consider this our 60 day notice of cancellation.

If I wrote this review before October 2012, I would have given all C and D ratings. Luckily our original property manager left. He had 4-5 years experience and was merely adequate - no sense of urgency and we had to constantly follow up with him. Our current property manager is more experienced, very responsive, and proactive - ranks as an A. The accounting department is also merely adequate, I'd give them C. The Board has had to follow up with them regarding getting bills paid on time (they claimed since we didn't use Chase as our bank, they had to create a special "procedure". But since fixing that "procedure", we haven't had any issues - knock on wood). Various unit owners have had to follow up with them to correct the date that their assessment payment was received. Some unit owners have started to pay a few days early just to avoid the headache of sorting out their account. The inspections are usually good and insightful, about a B. Some issues they have pointed out are things we never knew were wrong (such as safety codes). However, they lately have put a lot of disclaimers such as "testing smoke detectors and fire extinguishers not Connected's responsibility". The vendors they have recommended for repairs/enhancements have been hit or miss. Some great, others not so much. I highly suggest checking out the vendor's reputation on Angie's list before hiring. Note: since Connected is not on-site, I highly recommending having a Board member or unit owner volunteer meet with any prospective vendor to show/describe the issue (when we haven't had a owner show the issue, the job was not done well). Therefore, our experience is averaged out to be B.

The service has gotten progressively worse over the course of the time we've spent using this company. They seem to have a high turnover rate of Operation Managers, which makes building valuable client relationships very difficult. My biggest issue is that everyone at the company seems to lack any sort of sense of urgency. It takes days, sometimes a week or weeks plural, to receive responses to emails. And even when they do respond, they rarely contain solutions, only meaningless, generic "I'm working to resolve this" responses....to which I have to follow up on AGAIN trying to get results. There is a pattern of requests falling thru the cracks, mistakes & communication breakdowns--i.e. not all members of board being included on communication, not all board members being consulted for decision making regarding the building, extreme health hazard issues to tenants going unaddressed for weeks, just to name a few... If I had made mistakes of this magnitude at my own position, I can guarantee you I wouldn't be employed. I even went so far as to address my concerns with the President of Connected Management, Paul Houillon, and these too have fallen on deaf ears as I emailed him 3 days ago & followed up again this morning in typical fashion. Apparently my concerns don't even warrant a response as I still haven't heard back from him. Here is my email with more details and specific examples of service issues. Please know as you read that I really was trying very hard to not be too harsh as I realize I'm 9 months pregnant as I write this & certainly hormonal. However, I just don't think the undue stress their lack of adequate customer service has caused me is fair, which is why I felt the need to warn the masses against using this company for their property management needs. Hi Paul, I'm writing you because I have a few grievances regarding the *****************Condo Association's Operations Manager Pauline Lima. If this should be directed to someone else, please let me know, but I didn't think Bonnie sounded like Pauline's manager when I went to leave her a VM; she sounded very young and she also has the exact same title as Pauline. I'll start on a positive note by saying Pauline is very polite, but that is unfortunately where the positives end for me. I feel that she has no sense of urgency, and her response time is always unreasonably long. When we ask her for something, we're constantly having to follow up to get the status. The last straw for me was when our water heater wasn't working and we went days without hot water, she didn't deem that as urgent and was "still working on getting a vendor out." I had to pointedly ask her why she thought it was okay to take days to get a vendor out for something like that, and how did she not recognize that as urgent? It seems like common sense to me that people need hot water in order to live comfortably, and especially in cold weather, tenants could withhold rent for something like that. She also was completely unaware that we'd had an issue with it the week before since she was out of office, for which she didn't give us a heads up ahead of time either, so we were scrambling trying to find out whom to contact in her absence. Wouldn't whoever was backing her up have informed her of this upon her return so she could check in on the issue? I don't think I'm expecting too much in thinking that she should be able to keep us updated on the status for specific issues & to complete tasks that are a function of her position. Why would we have to ask for anything twice if she was doing her job? I don't think we should have to hound her. She seems to lack the basic knowledge she should have in her role, has poor record keeping, and gives too many excuses why she can't get things completed in a timely manner. Communication is majorly lacking, and I feel like either she is A) not qualified or B) too overwhelmed by her workload to give the level of service to which we're accustomed. If Alex Fraher were still our contact, I doubt we would be having to wait weeks to get basic requests accomplished, let alone emergencies. He wasn't perfect, but he and Pauline are on two totally different levels as far as the level of service provided. If there is a way we could have someone more experienced assigned to our association, I would welcome the change. If that is not a possibility for some reason, I'd appreciate it if steps were taken to ensure that she performs her role to a satisfactory level. Please let me know your thoughts and if you have any questions.

I hired this property management company so that I would not have to deal with the day to day issues of my tenant while I was living 1000 miles away from Chicago. In the end, I ended up having to do almost as much work on my own as if I didn't have them as a property management company. They supposedly hired a snow removal team. They never removed any snow and my tenant ended up removing all the snow on his own. I ask them to find a plumber and they take days to return my call. I ended up finding my own plumber. What's the deal with receiving my rent so late in the month? The tenant pays at the beginning of the month, but I only receive the money almost at the end of the month.

Unfortunately I stuck with this management company thinking that things would get better. I should have known from the day our leasing agent stepped in my apartment (several hours late) and the place not renting in time because it was priced too high...I should have went elsewhere. I believe their business concept is good (very flexible contract), but their resources are not true property management individuals...they are just there to have a job. Often times, I had to call back several times because no one returned my phone call. Then, the one person who actually answered his phone left the company. I was then assigned a property manager who on average returned emails a couple days later. I guess, the most frustrating thing for me...was waiting to receive my rent payment from my tenant. When rent is due on the 1st, but the tenant has until the 6th to pay without a late fee....why do I get the funds almost at the end of the month. I was told by the owner that I should receive the funds by the 15th or 16th of the month depending on when the tenant paid. However, twice I received the funds close to the end of the month, and the tenant paid on time. When I finally asked myself..."why am I paying them money when I'm worried that they are not doing their job?"...I decided to terminate my contract. So, I received my tenant's security deposit back...and it was in the amount of the actual security deposit paid by the tenant. I sent an email today asking my property manager why interest was not included in the check because my understanding is that the City of Chicago requires interest on security deposits if you have it longer than 6 months...That email was sent at 11:52 am this morning...it is now 6pm... no response yet.