The Bancroft House

I’ve lived here four years, and have had so much experience with the Bancroft House. As a public service, I must tell you about the company who owns it, HM properties (also owns New Californian apartments on MLK and the Metropolitan apartments on durant). I stayed so long because I thought the convenience was worth it. It was so close to campus, it has cleaning every other week, the facilites are nice. I happened upon this page and noticed that their one review (1 star) was hidden. But people should know, if you want to stay here you must be prepared to be stressed and screwed over by HM properties. They are honestly too busy exanding to properly care and maintain their existing properties. Be smart and protect yourself by demanding audits before you move in and documenting all of your communication with them. You don’t know what you’ll be hit with. They take advantage of students because we usually let things slide, but it’s really unethical. My extended experience is the following:
1) The housing managers are horrible at communicating
My 2^nd year in the house, the mgmt dropped the ball in sending my new housemmate the lease, though I called and emailed them every week to send it to him. I ended up losing a housemate because he was abroad and wanted to know with certainity that he had housing. However, the rest of us were already signed on of course, and had to split the rent of the extra room the first month while we found an new housemate. HM did not even comp this even though it was their fault. I did not leave after this year, because the property managers were gone, and HM hired new ones. I thought it would get better. It didn’t. Communication was always a pain. I moved upstairs the 3^rd year, which was a place more lived in, with appliances broken. I told the new managers that the place needed fixing. They never came until multiple housemates called and emailed almost everyday. Even when they came to fix the appliances, the job was so shoddy and didn’t make a difference.
2) They are there to milk so much money from you. Protect yourself.
In Berkeley, its not uncommon to get your rent kicked up every year. And trust me the rent at Bancroft House is HIGH. But it’s the horrible renting market, so I dealed. However, I realized that the property managers are going to do horrible stuff to get all the money from you. I moved from the downstairs unit to the upstairs unit my 3^rd year. The charged me over a $ 1000 for the deposit. The receipt was mostly for trash bags and vague «cleaning fees». Even though this seemed ridiculous, I dealed because I wasn’t there for the final move out day, so who knows what my housemates left? Then I moved out after the 4^th, last year. We urged them to do an audit in advance so we could properly discuss how they would deduct our security deposit. They didn’t do the audit until most of us moved out. Then they hit us with a bill that would take all of our security deposit and then some. Of the list of things they would charge us for, they claimed normal wear and tear (which is illegal) AND things that we begged them to fix for us throughout the previous 2 years. I was livid and did not take this. Eventually they gave us most of our deposit back, but it was not without major pain and time.
If you are not prepared to fight for what you deserve or deal with the shitty taste of being wronged, I’d avoid HM properties altogether.