Apartment Review for Preferred Management Llc

The unit we rented was modest but clean and seemed well maintained. When we had found our unit at the time it was being managed by the family that owned the property, but shortly before our move they had turned that over to Preferred Management. Understandably there was some initial confusion in regards to the rent amount, keys, leasing terms, etc. But all went smooth enough.

That is until we got some upstairs neighbors. We don't have any real problem with P.M. LLC as a company, just the woman that the company put in charge of the property. She just didn't really seem to care or have any follow through.

These neighbors moved in about 6 mos. after us and they were NOISY to say the least. In P.M's lease it states that if the authorities are called to your unit twice for any violation you would be evicted immediately. Well, about 20 calls to the police later for various complaints (noise, phyiscal fighting, strong marijuana odor, upstairs neighbor passed out drunk at our door, etc.) they are still living there. The first dozen or so times we had to call the cops we alerted the property manager as soon as possible, but we would just get the run around. Eventually my husband asked her about the "2 strikes and your out" policy and she adopted a sort of "don't tell me how to do my job" attitude. After that she never seemed to be in the office when we called or came by, so we just gave up on telling her about these incidents.

Also, with having upstairs neighbors that basically did whatever they wanted without any fear of eviction, safety became huge concern with us. We were afraid to leave our dogs outside for more than a couple of minutes. At times both doors to the building would randomly be deadbolted by the nieghbors with no explanation. At one point the back door to the building (which is about 2 feet from the back door to our unit) was kicked in during the night by someone who "knew" the neighbors. The maintenance man came out to look at it and filed a police report, but 3 months later it remains broken. Again, we called several times to ask about the repair and we were given the indication that other properties were far more important than the broken back door that let snow blow into the hallway.

What definitley gave me the impression that the property manager stopped caring was the day my husband and I came home to find the water to the building shut off. Not because of any maintenance issue, but because the property manager hadn't paid the water bill for 3 months!!!

The only time that we have ever been able to talk to the property manager on the phone since was after our 12-month lease expired. We started looking for a new place to rent and when we submitted an application to another management company the next morning we get a call from our property manager telling us we need to give a 60 day notice before we move! We looked at our lease and indeed there is clause about a 60 day notice, but that's if you are breaking your lease. Our lease ended at the end of 2010 (as we were specifically told by our property manager) and we started applying elsewhere in January of 2011.

There are various other minor problems we had with the property manager either not knowing what she was doing, or miscommunication with us or the owners of the property.

I loved our unit, and am sad that we had to leave, but we just could not live in a place where these sort of problems are just shrugged off. If the management had been better we mave have even renewed our lease for another year, but it seemed to us that our problems were of no importance to the property manager.