Crosstown Properties

Jim Wilson, at Crosstown Properties has managed our rental for many years. We live out of the area and simply can’t handle the maintenance, leasing and day-​to-​day management of the property. Jim and his team have done an excellent job. There is little or no down time between tenants. He is very professional and keeps us well informed. He works efficiently with his vendors to get the property made ready for the next renters. He does a thorough job of screening/​qualifying good tenants for minimal issues. His monthly accounting arrives like clockwork and he lets us know of any major issues or recommendations for repairs/​replace items. He provides helpful suggestions as well as a comprehensive rental market analysis when time to renew or re-​list. He handles all the little stuff, keeping safety issues foremost, while also being mindful of expenses. I highly recommend Jim, he has made owning an investment property carefree. If you are an owner and want a trustworthy source to handle your property expertly, Jim Wilson at Crosstown is it!

Oh I would absolutely not recommend these guys. They send in the girl first who is sooo sweet and helpful, until she gets your money. They show the home before move out. She promises they’ll have it made ready. Move in day comes and hardly anything is done. While you live there they will refuse to repair anything. The guy is just plain stupid and rude. When you move out they will absolutely steal all of your money. They get paid a set fee and then maintenance, etc. is deducted from that so they are literally paid NOT to manage the property. The poor owners whose homes are quickly losing value due to these scamsters. Oh and they are NEVER in the office. The guy closely resembles Pee Wee Herman. Just stay far from these guys — property owners and renters.

Jim and his team successfully managed our home while we were away for 4 years. We were concerned about how the property would look when we returned — we were coming back with a brand new baby and needed it to be move in ready. Everything is extremely clean, in working order and 100% ready for move in. We did not expect it to look this good after we had been gone almost 4 years. We truly appreciate the work of Jim and the entire Crosstown team.

Jim at Crosstown has managed a rental property for us since about 2004. He is amazing. They’re not the cheapest in town, but they are worth it! The short turnover time between tenants (generally less than a week) more than paid for his reasonable fees. They took care of small repairs without bothering us and through their relationships with repair people, the charges seemed reasonable. When tenants were leaving, Jim would review the going rental rates in the area and recommend a fair market rent to charge, subject to our approval, generally a little bit lower than the going rates in order to get the most and most qualified tenants to apply. He didn’t ask our opinion of tenant applications, which was a relief – they select tenants for a living, we don’t, and then it’s never our «fault» if something goes south with the tenant (which only had happened with our prior management company – never with Crosstown). New tenants would be moved in before we would even think to ask how the tenant search was going!
Crosstown is so good at managing property, we wish we could have Jim manage the home we own and live in!
Two thumbs up!

We rented a house from crosstown properties for a few years. They were helpful in getting approval and getting our lease signed in a courteous and quick manner.
Once in the house the faucet fell off the bathtub so we put it on our move in form. We didn’t call for repair since we just used the shower. There is a yearly inspection, that person is nice and does a good job. When he came for the inspection he saw the missing faucet and said he would put it back on for us and he did. Very good experience. Until two weeks later I got a bill from Crosstown asking for $ 100 to put the faucet back on. 1^st of all the inspection guy didn’t tell us there would be a charge and 2^nd it was on my move in form. Good thing is Crosstown didn’t make me pay the bill once I asked them to look at the move in form.
The house we were in was big and the air conditioning wouldn’t cool it in the summer. We told the inspector every year and were told that the house was just too big for the air conditioner and to use fans.
Now move out is where you need to be super careful and document everything. We took photos of everything and had someone come in and clean the house after all our stuff was out. We were still charged over $ 300 by Crosstown properties for cleaning. We were charged for things like crumbs in the fridge, dust behind the fridge, dust on the underside of the blind caps. Things I have never been charged for in the years we have rented at multiple places. Some of the things they cleaned were valid, like grease on the vent hood but others seemed excessive like hard water ring around faucet and changing a light bulb.
They also charged to replace batteries in the garage door opener and reprogramming it for the new tenants! really?!
Jim the property manager doesn’t have a good bedside manner. Sometimes he answers emails and other times it could take a few days to get a response. I understand he doesn’t have to be our friend, but I would expect some level of friendly service.

Absolutely horrific.

It seems as though Crosstown Properities has bad reviews across the board through the web, but what gets me is that there are only about 7 reviewers in total. Crosstown manages well over 250 properties through Austin. Most of the reviews are from people who either could not get approved or got dinged on their deposit.
My family lived in a nice 3bed/​3bath in SW Austin. We just recently finished our lease becuase we bought, but we would have kept renting from Jim if needed. First off, Jim is not a guy that is going to stop by and have coffee with you, he runs a business. Anytime we had any issues, from the stove to the washer/​dryer breaking down, there was someone that contacted us within normally 12 hours and were there to service the issue within 48 hours. The service is what you are paying for, not Jim’s pleasant personality.
The other issue I keep seeing is that Crosstown is difficult to rent from and their standards are too high. People really need to look around and notice that we are in a sellers market. Nice house rentals are hard to come by, if you don’t have good credit or good refferences they don’t need to rent to you, there are thousands of people moving to Austin every month so they can be picky, but if you are lucky enough to get a house from Crosstown, you will be taken care of.
Note to people looking at Crosstown to manage there property, I would definately recommend these guys. The reason people complain is that Jim makes sure there are no issues with the people he rents to, while you are there or when you move out.
It sucks that some people have had issues with Crosstown, but if you are looking to rent (not for a buddy of a landlord) and have read all the reviews, you will know Jim is hard ass when it comes to the contract, read it and know what you are expected to do. If you know this going in, everything will be just fine. Happy House Hunting

My husband and I moved back to Austin last year and just recently wrapped up a one year lease with Crosstown on a pretty nice house in Grand Oaks at a decent rental rate. I’d like to take this opportunity to give some future tenants of Crosstown some tips on how to possibly, maybe avoid being ripped off by Jim Wilson and Crosstown. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t even know of Jim’s existence until we had already signed on the dotted line with Debbie. After you sign the lease, you deal exclusively with Jim. Jim is the type of person who really seems to enjoy being unnecessarily condescending and rude. I don’t really play well with that type, so I found every single interaction with him to be extremely unpleasant. If you are already locked into a lease with Crosstown and haven’t learned this yet, you soon will. Towards the end of your lease, Jim will send you an excruciatingly detailed two page letter with move-​out instructions, which we actually took very seriously. When you move out, make sure you thoroughly scrub every inch of the house. I am by nature a «neat freak» and love the smell of Clorox. We spent about 10 man hours cleaning what was already a pretty dang clean house. Still not good enough — make sure you move and clean UNDER the frig (I missed that one) and dust your blinds, ceiling fans, and window sills about 5 minutes before you vacate the house. I dusted my blinds the day before move out and the fans/​sills the morning of move out. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for Jim because he charged us for all of that. Also, Jim berated me in a series of about 15 emails post-​move out for 5 or 6 brown spots in the front yard that were about 2 feet in diameter. Jim seemed completely unaware that we are in a record-​breaking drought this summer. Even though we faithfully watered with the in-​ground sprinkler system twice a week per the city guidelines and paid for 15,000 gallons of water the last month we lived there, he said the brown spots were our fault for not hand-​watering in between our scheduled water days. We both work full-​time and have 2 small children, so my bad for not having time to stand in my yard holding a hose for hours on end. Be prepared to do a lot of that until this drought ends! Lastly, even though the Texas Property Code forbids property owners from charging tenants for «normal wear and tear,» Jim will charge juuuuuust enough so that it won’t be worth your time to take him to small claims court but enough so that you’ll be thinking WTF?! Seriously?! We were charged for replacing weather stripping, shower caulking, the A/​C filter, and clogged bathroom sinks that had actually been draining just fine, thank you very much. If you haven’t yet signed a lease with them, do yourself a favor and let some other sucka do that instead. I sincerely hope I help you save the $ 125ish in unfair charged we had to pay.

We moved to Austin and were amazed at how nice people are here. Our buzz was killed by Jim and Debbie from Crosstown Properties.
Debbie is nice and peppy when trying to get your money for applications $ 40 per person in the home you are trying to lease. Knowing already that they will make it impossible to get approved. Once they have your money, they are demeaning and blow you off until you get tired of trying to do business with them.
Jim, an older man with white hair with a dry personality and was straight faced when «helping» us fill our applications as if it was such a bearing on his day. While there, a young man came in for some helping filling out his application and he talked to him like he was dumb for asking the questions he was asking. «Luckily» I didn’t have many questions, otherwise I might’ve gotten the same demeaning treatment.
We were not approved for a typo I made on the application which I tried to rectify after and was not given a chance to resubmit with the correction. They had already used the overpriced $ 80 to run our applications and blew us off. Sorry, not our fault. For a typo that could’ve been easily correct and re-​submitted!
The whole experience with them was insipid. Sure enough, after, we found great Real Estate Agencies that were helpful, kind, and accepted our applications without a hassle. We found a lovely home that we’ve been living in for 6 months and they’re very happy with us as we always pay rent early.
You’d think they’d want to make money huh? I guess they must be in the business of making a quick buck on applications and blowing people off.
Do NOT go to these people. They don’t deserve to be running an agency. And by the looks for the reviews from actual tenats, I am not surprised of the treatment even if you do get to be one.
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

Moving into Austin a couple years ago Crosstown properties made us a pretty square deal on renting a place while we got our bearings. Something like 1150/​mo for a 1-​br family home in Brentwood with last-​months down as a deposit. Lots of paperwork, and fees were explained, and the whole time I felt like I had to sell them on the fact that I was bon-​a-​fide (lots of passive aggressive statements from them about my dog etc…). However, in the end it worked out.
The house wasn’t a dump really, but over the next few months things would go wrong, but they had a good group of folks ready to come over at a moments notice to fix things up.
Then one day a tree in the back (that was in bad shape to begin with) cut loose in a wind storm and knocked off the rather shabby carport onto our car. Worse, it landed on the neighbors house. An ‘act of god’ but the carport and tree had been in bad shape and I think we even alerted crosstown to the need to fix these things up.
So, a major drag but who can you blame…
Well, Jim Wilson, Crosstown’s director now showed his ugly side. Jim is a quiet, reserved guy, so its kind of hard to tell he’s a major tool until something goes wrong. He proceeded to leave the mess for days on end, and left a note on the neighbors door that they should ‘stay somewhere else for while’. Eventually we just sicked a roving band of tree trimmers on the matter, at which Jim chewed my wife out for having taken initiative on the cleanup.
Things swiftly deteriorated to the point that I was thinking of something between a poop-​in-​the-​paperbag trick to fire-​bombing their office when calmer tendencies prevailed. We scraped some money together, bought a place, and swallowed the 900 $ we were out for breaking the lease. Jim was about as understanding as a mob boss at a construction site. We had more words, and its only now I can write this review without seeing red.
Is any of this really Crosstown’s fault? Or Jim’s? I think the guy is just not a people person. The business is otherwise legitimate, and gives a square deal on the rent and a place to stay. But if you do call them, ask for Deb…