Property Management Systems

Update: Another issue has come up. I found dead rats in my apartment. I have asked them to please take a look and help find out why. I removed the corpses.
They moved to a different address on Fillmore and didn’t get my rent check right away so they put a 3 day notice on my door. They are very quick to collect money but that is all they are quick about.
After telling them four times about the rat problem and being told each time that somebody would come to assess the problem, there is still no action taken.

I had the pleasure of attending a terrific class taught by Michelle. She is very knowledgeable and eager to share her wealth of experience. There is no doubt that she is a pragmatic champion of owner rights. I really appreciated her direct suggestions, thoughtful answers to questions, and clear interest in fairness to both tenants and owners.

Very inconsistent, terrible communication and an overall lack of respect for tenants.

Michelle Horneff-​Cohen is engaging in unethical behavior. Last month she listed a very large one bedroom apartment for $ 1,660 on Craigslist. This price is incredibly underpriced being that average one bedrooms go for $ 2,100 a month. Why did she do this? She did it to spark a bidding war. Why? So 150 would apply and she can collect $ 30 from each person. Cha-​ching!

As an owner of a single rental house, I had an OK overall experience with Property Management Sys. They handled tenant screening for me and the tenant they found stayed five years until I ultimately sold the building. PropMgmt handled bookkeeping and maintenance duties and my tenant never had any complaints. I had some bookkeeping issues during the period they were changing financial systems I think. We worked it out but I had to bring my own records and walk through each of the previous few months’ statements to get it resolved.
They weren’t always on top of their game, but for five years I didn’t have to take a single weekend maintenance call or schlep to the hardware store to fix a faucet. And the people were always pleasant to deal with. So, all in all that’s three stars from me.

This review is long overdue. This rating is for the superb teachings by Michelle! I recently got certified as a CCRM and have her to thank as she was extremely resourceful, kept the class entertaining and provided examples of how things are ran at Property Management Systems. I was extremely attentive and will utilize what I learned further in my profession!

–5 rating if it were up to me. The worst property management company ever. Staff in general is very unresponsive and I’m sure the supervisor as well as landlord are pretty much an absentee landlord and/​or supervisor. The communication gap with PMS and their tenants is degrading and unprofessional.
They should not be in business and not sure how on earth they have an A+ with the BBB.

I dealt directly with this company that my landlord hired to do a passthrough. They lied and obfuscated the situation and acted as and was my landlord’s representative at a rent board hearing when I challenged the passthrough. They had no involvement in the repair that was being passed through but acted like she did and that she knew all about it and basically lied to the hearing officer due to the fact she didn’t understand the case or what happened. I had to directly call her out that she knew nothing about what she was talking about, and had sent me official letters that contained factual mistakes as evidence for their side. The takeaway is to get buisiness, they give poor advice and direction to landlords —and mine ended up not using them further.
UPDATE: My landlord will most certainly will not be using them again, despite the deluded response. I was clear in the first sentence I said my landlord hired this company to perform a pass-​through. I, as the tenant, won the ‘case’ and the pass-​through claim was dismissed handily and easily by the judge. I believe in part because of the confusion that this company created in the hearing, mis –representing their involvement, the fact that they didn’t know the details of the case, and most clearly aggravated the hearing officer. This was fortunate for me, but it still aggravated me to have to deal with this company that tried to use bullying tactics to perform their work. They rely on that to in lieu of doing their due diligence. They should have known that the pass-​through was not going to fly as it was clearly maintenance, which isn’t able to be passed through to the tenant. PMS (haha, appropriate acronym) didn’t offer great advice and wasted everyone’s time, including the rent board judge, so that is what happened s0 we most certainly will not be crossing paths again. Its unethical to state that you are an expert on the SF Rental laws yet display poor knowledge, give poor advice about what is allowed under the law. Taking money under that pretense is not right and they as experts should have known better than to take the job to represent the case, but it seems they get money either way. Wasting time and money of the city rent board resources as well as mine is not appreciated.

Minus stars! This so-​called company is terrible. Avoid at all costs.
I had the tremendous misfortune to deal with PMS as «management» for the building in which I lived. They have to be the most money-​oriented, self-​centered property management business around. Their incompetence is shocking and the arrogance of Michelle Horneff-​Cohen is palpable. Perhaps that is her printed word persona, as she seems to like to hide behind letters. Yes, letters.
It’s not the 1900s anymore people!
PMS are always on the ball when it comes to collecting money, but they seem to have notable difficulty with their documentation, accuracy of facts, dates, names and even correct locations. This last one is astonishing given that they are supposed to manage property. One would think it behooves a property management company to know where the property is!
If you need any emergency repairs done forget about it!
Just hope nothing ever goes wrong that you need fixed quickly. Flood in the bathroom? Try calling PMS — no answer. Tough luck, learn how to swim and write letters at the same time. Is water seeping through your floor into the downstairs neighbors’ apartment? Maybe they can mop it up with the pile of abusive mail they received from PMS too!
Oh yes, it’s impossible to overlook the sporadic, acerbic mail that arrives from the office. Fortunately for me I don’t pay rent late, but PMS seem able to manage to misplace others’ checks in their own office, then swiftly send eviction notices. I’ve seen this happen on several occasions to responsible tenants who were my neighbors.
Other highlights of their harassment include abusive, threatening letters from Michelle concerning excessive occupancy of my apartment. No Michelle, when there are a few people over watching a football game it does not mean that they have moved in, they are simply visiting. Visiting, do you understand that concept? If a couple become too drunk to safely get home and stay the night on the couch it does not mean that they are never leaving. Sometimes, Michelle, you have to care about other people and their situations. Try it.

We’re currently in the midst of closing out with PMS. The story of the water bill is a clear example of why we are closing out.
It started when we discovered in November 2013 that the water bill had been unpaid for several months. So we notified PMS and received this response.
From: Michelle Horneff-​Cohen
Date: Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:06 PM
Alex,
I received your voicemail and am so sorry that Maherah did not take care of this back in July. As you know, she is no longer with the company — so, hopefully from here on out it will be smooth sailing. Regardless, I do accept full responsibility and we will personally be paying the late fees.
Again, so sorry.
Michelle
— - — - -
So the water bill finally got paid in November, and we thought this was the end of it. Then in February we discovered that ONCE AGAIN, the water bill had not been paid since November! Instead of walking in the payment or sending an electronic payment, PMS mailed a check, and never followed up. The check never arrived. We discovered this a few days ago when, as a precaution, we called SF Water. Our bill still had not been paid since November and our property was just about to get hit with a lien.
More emails and voice mails to PMS ensued. The epilogue on this saga is that yesterday the water bill finally got paid. Halleluyah.
To sum this up, between July 9^th 2013 and March 18^th, 2014, PMS allowed our water bill to fall delinquent for 9 out of 10 months. There is just no excuse for this.
And there were lots of other problems too. For several months the gardening invoices were never paid, so that became another bit of drama. Eventually to avoid losing their services we had to pay start paying the gardener directly.
And when you are paying vendors directly because your property management company just can’t get it together to get them paid, it’s time to close out with your property management company.
So this is what we’re doing.
Today was supposed to be the final close out day with PMS. Michelle assured us several times this week that everything will be closed out by today. Yet the financial reports we keep requesting haven’t yet been sent over, and by the looks of it, various other close out tasks haven’t yet been completed. Also, we still need to get reimbursed for all the late fees applied against all these unpaid bills in the past 6 months.
Hopefully it will all get done tomorrow. It’s time to shut this door, and move on.

PMS has made my living situation feel like a scam.
Not a single time have they ever responded to the many requests for maintenance I’ve submitted through their online portal. To get anything done here, I have to call the landlord directly.
They filled our heads with false promises upon signing, and never cared to follow through. They don’t do anything but force you to sign a 50 page lease and take your money. Don’t believe anything they say.
We’ve experienced countless plumbing back ups, sewage pooling in our garage, hundreds of flies festering in the sewage. Most recently our downstairs neighbor had sewage fill his entire apartment. Affected area rugs had been moved outside, presumably to be cleaned. They have been sitting there, rancid for almost a week.
They sent a letter threatening a fine if they found out we were responsible for plumbing issues. What’s hysterical is the plumbing is not too code, it’s illegally done.
Joanne (maintenance) shows no interest in doing her job professionally. She’s emotionally rash and makes me uncomfortable living here. She doesn’t take a minute out of her day to respond… It’s your job lady. How do you wake up feeling human when you project such negativity into the world?
I’ve never had any serious issues with previous property management companies. Do anything you can not to sign a lease or contract your property to them.

Generally speaking, PMS are very hands off landlords. That’s just the way you want it. The trouble is, it’s almost IMPOSSIBLE to get in touch with them when you actually need to. They seem to think it’s about 1984 and insist on phone calls and physical letters as the only want to communicate.
They simply refuse to answer emails — this is completely bizarre when you realize most problems could be resolved in minutes that way. Instead you’re forced to find a time and place to make a phone call during narrow business hours, generally get voice mail, and then trade back and forth voice mails for days getting nowhere…
It’s just bizarre. Other than that (which is automatically with the loss of two stars) I really don’t have a problem with PMS, they’ve been a perfectly ordinary landlord with no major issues.
Anyway, if they’re reading this, I hope it’ll provide a nudge to get into the 21^st century with regards to communicating. Everyone would save a lot of time and hassle.

We are currently renting from Property Management Systems and I am very unhappy and would definitely not recommend them. Their management is simply unprofessional… When communicating with them, we usually don’t even get an answer. Maintenance requests? They ignore them completely… When applying the annual rent increase, they «miscalculated» the new rent and tried to overcharge us.
We had several break-​ins into the garage. When we informed them about the break in and thefts, the only thing they sent was a lawyer-​style letter that we cannot sue them, no empathy, no motivation to resolve the security issues.
When you pay more than $ 21 000 a year for a small one bedroom apartment you would expect some level of professionalism and service.

My first one star review? Eep! I was fortunate enough that PMS was on the way out as the property managers for the complex I moved into earlier this year, so I wasn’t personally subject to a lot of the ridiculous problems the fellow residents in my building experienced — Alisha H’s review sums up most of their frustrations quite well.
On my end, I definitely experienced the lack of communication and responsiveness from the people at PMS. Reaching out to them to coordinate my move-​in was unnecessarily difficult, for the simple reason that they would never call me back with confirmations or answers to question, despite saying otherwise.
This led to delays in getting elevator pads set up, as well as my name into the buzzer system, which effectively resulted in FedEx, UPS, etc not delivery my packages to me for a week since they couldn’t find me in the system. Fed up with having to wait, someone on my HOA learned how to program the system themselves, and put me in. A week later, PMS finally decided to come out to program me in, only to override things with the wrong info, leading to another week of delivery persons not being able to contact me.

Unprofessional service when trying to get your security deposit back. Joann had done the walk through of my studio and told me everything looked fine, I would be be getting my entire security deposit back. Then 1 month goes by and I don’t hear a peep from them. I call Joann to follow-​up on the status and she immediately hands me off to some young guys who has no clue what is going on and repeats exactly what joann says like a parrot. A week and a half goes by and finally receive a notice of
Pending notice of Security deposit and it looks like they charged me $ 300 for cleaning services, even though I cleaned it pretty thoroughly before I left the studio. $ 300 was an outragous amount to charge for a studio apartment given that it was already clean when I turned in the keys. On top of that, I still have not received my security deposit and it is going on a month and a half later.

Property Management Systems (PMS) was contracted by the developer to serve as the property manager of our resident-​owned condos. Our building was completed last summer and required competent and timely management assistance to get our HOA set up and moving efficiently. However, incompetence and ineffectiveness have been the norm in the majority of our interactions with PMS. I will give several examples of interactions with PMS that have caused us to terminate our relationship with them and employ a new property management company.
1. The HOA contacted PMS to request that they assist us in getting a TaxID number. They responded that they would not be able to help us. This is a basic step in establishing and fully functioning HOA and is certainly the responsibility of the property management company to assist in getting this set up. After several back and forth emails, it was clear they were unqualified to handle this request, so we asked another property management company to assist us. They spent 40 minutes gathering documents and filed the papers; they were not even on contract with us!
2. Our CFO repeatedly asked to be sent bank statements and financial documents from over a 5 week period. His requests were ignored. Finally, the property management replied that they had been sent to the president of the HOA and that they could find no record that the CFO has requested the documents. This ineffectiveness has delayed getting our budget implemented and left us with no information about our financial status.
3. Each month many residents are notified that HOA dues have not been paid and are assessed late fees, when those same residents have electronic bill pay set up to deliver HOA dues in a timely manner. In addition, no notification was ever given to homeowners about how to start paying the HOA dues in the first place. PMS maintains that they posted notices on each door, but given the email traffic and confusion amongst homeowners, we cannot imagine that so many notices would have gone unseen. I personally never received a notice. When confronted with this problem, we were met with a defensive response instead of a cooperative attitude that would have indicated PMS’ desire to build a positive relationship.
4. Repeated requested for particular housekeeping services not honored. For example, over a 1 ½ month period from early December to late-​January, we made at least 5 requests for spot cleaning on the carpets. None was ever done — and even now has not been done. PMS is responsible for the quality of the housekeeping services that they contract. After so many requests, they should have walked the premises, noted the incomplete work, and addressed the situation.
5. In general, the tone and attitude of employees of PMS is unprofessional. Questions, if addressed, are responded to with one-​line answers that do not give sufficient information. We have such an extensive email trail of these unhelpful responses, that I cannot enumerate them.

PMS is an outstanding property management firm in SF. As a former tenant and landlord, I value someone that understands the industry and can effectively deal with both parties.
Michelle’s staff is well trained and there is nothing that they cannot answer. After working with PMS, the tenants in my building are HAPPY! Very hard to believe in the SF Rental market. I have witnessed first hand, the staff dealings with tenants and they have been nothing short of courteous and gracious.
I’m delighted with my choice to use Property Management Systems and I highly recommend them.

Michelle and her team is a great property management firm in San Francisco. I rented from them and never had any issues. If there was a problem with the apartment, they were prompt and professional. Michelle is well networked within the industry so she has people available to remedy situations– large and small.
I am surprised to see so many bad reviews– everyone on the staff is friendly and supportive. A lot of these neg reviews sound like isolated events.

These people would sell your soul for a dollar.
Renters: BEWARE!!!
They will nickel and dime you for everything you have, not to mention one lady that works there is on the renters board, meaning her other job is to raise the rent for san franciscans. In other words, she works strictly for landlords. Conflict of interest???

No, seriously, please don’t. No, I mean it. I don’t really want my bathroom fixed. I like showering in a pool of dirty shower water. I do, really. No, no, I’m not just being polite. I mean, I react the same way with the broken blinds right? I mean, that’s been broken for at least 6 months. I didn’t even bother to get heated up, when it fell the other day. It damaged my plant but hey, it didn’t kill a dog or a cat so why get heated up.
Really, seriously, I mean it. No need to come over and fix all these things after all these months. I’ve gotten used to them.