Tag: student

Review of First Place Properties by TiredTenant

The Lexington Tenant Review4 Comments

“I’ve only live in one of First Place Properties’ units for less than a month, and I do not recommend this property management company to anyone. The administrators of this company are unfriendly and passive aggressive towards residents. My roommates and I have frequently communicated with Aimee and Journey about maintenance issues and fees and every interaction has been unpleasant. We had an incident with maintenance letting themselves into our unit without our knowledge because their was a leak from our unit into the one below us. When we expressed our concern about not being notified and maintenance leaving our door unlocked when they left, management was terse and cold. The unit was unclean upon move-in. First Place Property units are bot well-maintained. My apartment has very poor quality paint, which has cause my roommates and I to have significant issues hanging things on the wall. When I moved in, there were holes and parts of the wall that had paint peeled off that management did not bother to repair. Additionally, the company overcharges residents. They apply a 15% “admin fee” for every charge. Months after signing my lease they required every tenant to secure “$150,000 Limit of Liability for Lessee’s legal liability for damage to Lessor’s property,” which in my case means the unit is triply insured. After only two weeks of living in the unit, Aimee began pushing us to renew our lease for the following year and has begun showing the unit to prospective tenants. This company clearly preys upon young college students who do not have rental experience. The lease is built to completely protect the company, leaving desperate tenants having to agree to violating and unforgivable conditions. I have only been here less than a month and I am already ready to move out. I do not recommend signing a lease with this company.”

Review of Expert Property Management by wright01

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“Unfortunately, I have had issues with the property company since the beginning of my renting process. Disclaimer, I didn't have many options in my price range and had to move on short notice, which is why I was stuck with them. Additionally, they only offer 12-month leases for most of their properties. They didn't let me tour before signing the lease, citing Covid restrictions but wouldn't let me see it even in a socially distanced setting, only after I had paid the deposit and signed the lease. The lease was also an issue at first. I have a doctor-certified emotional support animal that I let them know about at the very beginning. It took about three different drafts of the lease before they correctly added the information for my animal and removed the pet deposit requirement, as per the law. I moved in and the floor was crooked, the windows were not sealed or treated, with wind coming in through the cracks. The doors were also crooked with gaps at the bottom that let air in. I paid 9/12 months rent upfront but was still charged late fees on the first of every month for four months and I had to call each time to get them removed. I suspected an animal was living in my attic, so I put in a maintenance request and was told someone would come check but never heard back. My electric bill 3x the average in the area every single month, even though I used the bare minimum heating and cooling because the windows and doors were incorrectly sealed. During one winter month, my electric bill was over $300 and I still had to put blankets in my windows to keep the wind out. Two weeks before the end of my lease, a plumbing issue revealed itself that should have been caught by the inspection before I moved in, as the plumber told me the entire shower piping was done incorrectly. They took a full week and three different plumbers to fix my shower, and it was still done wrong and took another week to get completely fixed. I was without a shower in my one-bathroom apartment for the entire last two weeks of my lease, with no effort to compensate me for my trouble or provide any alternatives while the issue was being fixed. I deep cleaned the apartment and left it spotless at the end of the lease, but was still charged $150 dollars from my security deposit for "cleaning counters and floors" according to the management office. According to Kentucky state law, refusing to provide a tenant with safe and inhabitable housing is grounds for a lawsuit, but unfortunately, many people in my position do not have the time or resources required to go after such powerful companies. This company does not care about renters, they are only trying to make a quick buck from vulnerable college students."

Review of Lynne Dunn by KaelynH

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“Lynne's alright. She's actually a property manager for the landlord, who lives in California. Her husband was kind of creepy, but luckily we didn't have too many dealings with him. The tenants before my housemates and I left it in poor plumbing condition, but it eventually got fixed. We did have to bug Lynne for six months to get a new dishwasher since the old one was not working at all. The rent's a little much for the place, which has its own foibles (my room is NOT fire-safe, and the house is super drafty). Still, it's bearable enough since it's a 10-minute walk from campus.”

Review of Andrew Potts by kystudent

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"My landlord tried to make me move apartments and leave me homeless for 2 weeks even though it was not in the lease agreement. When people came in to fix issues with and clean the apartment - with no notice, mind you, they left my door open so anyone could come after the left, they left trash on my doorstep, and they left all of the lights on - I pay for electric. Every time I have tried to contact him, I get no answer and he never returns my calls or emails. The one time I was able to speak to him, he was very rude and would often cut me off when talking to him."

Review of David Olster by NoMoreCops

The Lexington Tenant Review3 Comments

"This man, my former landlord, current UK History professor, should be held accountable for his actions of being an extremely exploitative, money-hungry, racist, and sexist landlord. Please avoid 428 E Maxwell Street and any of his properties. His lease may be tempting. He does not require a co-signer, previous rental or landlord references, employment info, and does not do credit/background checks. Allows pets. This was good for me as a student moving into their first housing, however, in hindsight, I should have seen these as red flags. Before delving into house issues, let me speak on the character of this wretched man. He is explicitly racist in saying when we first met that women from my (Muslim, Middle Eastern) country are oppressed by the tradition of wearing headscarves. He talked at me for hours, a Middle Eastern woman, lecturing me on what was good in the history of my country and people of my gender. Previous female tenants have also complained about him coming into their units without warning or notice, and one has even complained of personal items (intimate personal items…) being moved around and misplaced. He also treats his female tenants differently, and female of color tenants differently, often very dismissive and treating us like we do not know anything and are dumb. We are not, I was not, taken seriously about anything. Now, the house. I lived on 428 E Maxwell Street. It is the decrepit red house across from Michlers nursery and Kentucky Native Cafe. Upon moving in, I was confronted with a disgusting apartment that smelled so intensely of animals (and their shit) due to the previous tenants who owned 10+ pets including many cats and many dogs. It is honestly too traumatic to go into details of having to figure out what to do. The place was inhospitable. Shortly after, I discovered there were squirrels living in the walls. This was a months+ ordeal to get rid of them. During this process, the animal control person discovered there was more shit literally inside the walls. I also could smell dog shit in other parts of the unit (likely lodged in between another set of walls). The house has been on the brink of condemnation before, and has been called on MANY code violations in its years. Fake AC vents are screwed into the walls. I'm sure the fire alarm does not work. There was a problem of rats. Why does animal control recognize this house? I suffered from mysterious spider bites. Undoubtedly there was mold growing, and likely a host of other toxins leeching. The windows had no screens. Many windows would not open or close properly. The door is on its last legs of life. The house door has been kicked in many times. Burglaries have occurred many times in this house, once during my living there but in a different unit. When the summer began I discovered that the AC did not work. That never got fixed despite my desperate pleas to have my basic human right of livable temperatures be met. I lived in the attic. We are talking 85-90 degrees inside with a broken AC shooing in hot air. There were only 2 tiny vents for 1000+ sqft. He made me go and buy a fan. That was the solution. There were many holes in the floorboards. Big enough for a child to fall through. Holes in the walls revealing the outdoors. The walls had many holes in them, likely from former domestic violence incidents. The floors paint were half scratched off. The bathroom sink was missing a leg and the sink never drained. The bathroom ceiling could not fit a tall person in it. The shower was also on its last legs of life. The entire house is on its last legs of life. I wish nothing but for the house to burn down and for this man to lose every cent of wealth he's extracted from tenants. David Olster is a filthy scumbag. It is a shame he is employed by the University of Kentucky. I am likely forgetting many things. Oh, when I moved out, he threw my deposit check at me. A deposit check I had to beg for and threaten lawyers on my side in order to get it back. Once he realized it would be more expensive to take me to court than to just give me my deposit back, he gave it back. He has no moral compass. His desire to exploit and flip a profit, even if it is $10, is greater than his understanding of human beings' human rights, basic needs, and survival. He told me on many occasions that it would be better if I moved out of the unit far before my lease was set to be over. He has made me cry and get angry with anxiety on multiple occasions due to his dismissal of my requests for ^ these things to be changed and fixed. This housing and his behavior dramatically worsened my mental health. He has also expressed to me that he is very wealthy. Last thoughts: when I moved in, the oven did not work and the knobs were broken. The sink faucet was completely detached from the sink plumbing. The refrigerator had broken shelving. A move-in cleaning company had to be hired to clean out the place and after I moved in, I spent hours and $$$ cleaning the place myself to make it livable. The moving company was disgusted and could hardly breathe when they came in. I just wanted it to be livable. Just livable. We are talking a very meager and simple "livable" standard here. He never did a walk-in when we moved in despite for one when I asked. I don't think he's spent any time in the unit. When I got my deposit back at the end, however, we did do a walk-through, and he seemed disgusted by the state it was in, despite me adding property value to it by re-painting the walls, thoroughly cleaning as much as I could humanly stand when I moved in, and leaving lights and a fan for the next tenant. This was nothing short of a slum house. I do not forgive myself for moving here. I would rather be in debt than to degrade myself to such dehumanizing living conditions and dehumanizing power exploitative controlling landlord again. AVOID!"

Review of Phil Henry Sadlo (PVH Real Estate) by CM

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"I lived in the attic apartment at 411 East Maxwell from August 2015 to July 2016 while I finished up my last year of grad school at UK. It was disgusting when I moved in. I had to do a ton of cleaning because the landlord leaves it up to the previous tenant to clean. I heard squirrels constantly running around in the walls and under the floor. The heat never worked, instead of an actual heating system there was an insert- but it wasn’t inserted in the wall, it just sat out. Anyway it didn’t work so they brought me a space heater. The apartment was pretty large for a one-bedroom so that one space heater was not enough, I had to buy a couple more and hope that I didn’t short out the electricity all winter long. At the time I was living there, Phil used a property manager (Tamara, I think? Can’t remember her name). She was a nice person but all the maintenance stuff was so sloppy. At one point my living room window broke, due to the ancient wood framing around it. I had to live with a piece of cardboard in the window for a couple weeks while she figured it out. There were 2 particularly awful incidents while I lived there that make this place the official worst place I have ever lived (and this is from someone who has moved around a lot and been renting for 20 years). The first was the bathroom plumbing. The neighbor downstairs kept calling her to say that they had water leaking from their ceiling (so below my apartment). But I was really careful not to get water on the floor. They kept accusing me of splashing water out of the tub when taking a bath- but it was OBVIOUSLY something with the pipes inside the building- I would surround the tub with towels and be super careful- but then they would still text me to say the neighbors had water coming in. It got worse the longer I lived there. I stopped taking baths because that seemed to be when the issues happened- but then by the last couple months I was there it was happening even when I took very quick showers. At one point the manager came with a plumber- he was messing with the toilet and didn’t see anything. They kept accusing me of just being messy when I definitely was not. I felt really bad for my downstairs neighbors but I had to be able to shower. The bathroom floor was super spongy and discolored from previous water damage. Near the end of the time I lived there the people in the first-floor apartment had some major water leaking in (from my place or the 2nd floor- I don’t know) and it ruined a bunch of their stuff. The second awful thing was when I was moving out. I was moving out of state so had arranged with the manager to do my walk-through the day before I would be leaving since I would head out at like 6:00 am the next day. All my stuff had been shipped out already, I was just living in the bedroom on an air mattress with my cats for the last couple days. She showed up for the final walk-through and I said something about how the stuff in the bedroom would be gone when I left in the morning. She said, “well the new tenants are on their way over, they’ll be here in 15 minutes”. I was SO PISSED. I had specifically set it up with her (via text, I still had the texts on my phone and showed her) so that we’d do the walk-through the afternoon before I had to leave town. But then there was nothing I could do about it. The new tenant showed up with her truck and a bunch of people to help her move in. I just stayed in the bedroom and waited for them to finish, then I spent a strange night surrounded by this other person’s stuff. Also- I never received any pro-rated rent or anything for that, even though I was leaving the day before my lease was up so the apartment was still legally mine. Do not rent from PVH Real Estate. It was a year of things being a total shit show and I could not wait to get out of there."

Review of Micah Poston / David Burton (Burton Properties) by thxalot

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"Micah frequently sent maintenance out without responding to my texts. I would think I was being ignored, only to be woken up by the maintenance guy. A little heads up would have gone a long way. On one occasion, maintenance entered while I wasn't home and I had not been told they were coming that day. I left the apartment in better shape than I got it in, but I was not given any of my deposit back. Micah stopped responding to me. I never got an itemized explanation nor any kind of explanation. Thanks for preying on poor students!"

Review of Steve Stahlman by weoutiee

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"We moved into 463 Maxwell Street KNOWING that we should have gotten a lease BECAUSE of things like this, but we were 19 and anxious to move close to UK... something everyone who moves in to places like that are thinking... and BOY did we learn our lesson. Y'ALL GET A FORMAL LEASE!!! Because of this you might or might not want to post my review, but I know he has rented to others when we moved out. Same deal, no lease. Our landlord was furloughed at one point and lived in the attic while we were there. When our roommate got fleas, the entire house had to be bug bombed multiple times, a cost we paid for. In the process of washing everything we owned, the dryer (from the late 60s) gave out and our landlord told us to hang the clothes on the line out back.... as if the fleas weren't also outside... on east maxwell... with an unfenced backyard... Then in the winter, one of the pipes must have burst under the house in the crawl space with a dirt floor. Because none of the stuff down there was ours, and that there wasn't an easy way to get down there, we didn't notice anything happened until Summer when the house started smelling foul. Our landlord asked us to fix it ourselves... the basement was full of mold and water and likely sewage. The toilet on multiple occasions would break, and the first time we noticed, it was being held together by A TACK and AN ERASER to make it plunge... a $20 kit from walmart fixed it, something we also paid for. The rest of the toilet was leaking water into the grout in the bathroom (I think this is the pipe that burst (GROSS)). The stove (probably from the 1900's) leaks Carbon Monoxide into the house, something my room mate's mom tested for. I hope he replaced that thing. Lastly, and the part that salted the wound, is that while we gave (27 days so I get that it was under a month) notice, and after our landlord came back to the house, AFTER someone had already moved in (so there was no formal look through) he accused us of stealing forks and cups and a bookshelf? (none of which we did.) He threatened to sue us in small claims court, but as he had no lease and we DIDN'T, I think he realized there was not a case. I love this site, and BEWARE OF PEOPLE WHO RENT WITHOUT LEASES."

Review of Newtown Crossing Apartments by NewReviewer

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"Terrible experience living in these apartments. The only good part about them is that they are close to the UK campus. Maintenance and other office staff would enter our apartment whenever they wanted without a 24 hour notice. It made me feel very uncomfortable and unsafe. There were constantly ants everywhere even with no food or anything lying around. The managers are so disrespectful and rude. They do not care about your wellbeing. They just care about sucking money from you. They were also doing work on the roof for two weeks straight before finals week and it was extremely loud. There was constant stomping and music playing during this time. I also filed a complaint about our neighbors because they constantly had parties and were loud 24/7. NOTHING was done. Do NOT live here."