“Misty has always been super responsive to messages but honestly nothing ever comes out of what we discuss. Our rent was raised more than the agreed-upon terms, we’ve had cockroaches for almost an entire year, and in the last six months, we’ve spent over a month without hot water and heat. Routine maintenance is never addressed.”
“Has been the worst experience of my life. Michael Huber et al., enter my rental unit unannounced repeatedly. Other tenants have had the same unannounced entry issue. Tenants who resist Huber Real Estate entries are threatened with eviction. He has Boomer generational control problems micro-managing everyone within his purview. Sadly, Huber Real Estate property manages several University of Kentucky neighborhood properties. Properties on the surface are beautiful, but there are (deliberately hidden) code violations.”
“There are so many things wrong with the house, to the point that the City of Lexington left a long list of required repairs. When I asked the building manager (Jey) about a repair schedule, he didn't seem to care about being cited by the city. Instead, he said something about "new windows". Meanwhile, my ceiling is caving and the hallways, porch, and yard are full of junk. I moved here because of the location, but soon found it wasn't worth it. 9 months into the lease Jey tried to add an additional $50 for parking that had always been free. I was told it was the "other management company that mishandled things'" and that I was still on the hook. Also, my upstairs neighbor has ordered large cases of prepped meals that have sat unopened in the hallways until they rotted so badly that the other tenants were vomiting in their apartments. I've avoided making maintenance requests because Jey gives me the creeps, doesn't respect anyone else's time, and ignores COVID safety precautions. Another tenant had to help me move an air conditioner (that we found just sitting in the hallway) into my window so that my apartment would stay below 90 degrees last summer. This was after a service request with no response for days. I have a dog, and every day was dangerous for both of us. Since moving here in 2021, he has never worn a mask upon entering my apartment, nor cared when I was once quarantined and tried to enter with a random contractor. After knocking on my door continuously to wake me up, he then harassed me to be allowed entry (with no prior notice or emergency situation) in order to let the cable guy "look around". I then watched through the peephole as he knocked a few times and then entered my neighbor's apartment (a young woman living alone), assuming she wasn't home. She was home. She had been asleep and was awakened by 2 strange men walking into her apartment. It made my skin crawl worse than the rotten meat. If it had been me, I would have gone into self-defense mode, so I guess he lucked out on that one. The best (aka worst) part of renting with Urban Vigor/Jey Marks is that the building manager is also a "managing" partner", and all communications go directly to Jey. In fact, when I tried to complain about my neighbor's rights being stomped on, I was told by Jey's assistant how important Jey was in the company, and basically to get over it. In order to hold him accountable, the company doesn't even have a way to complain about the many ways I feel unsafe here. Since that is the case, my only course of action is to file a legal complaint and warn as many people as possible. DO NOT RENT FROM THIS COMPANY!”
“Multiple units in the house, maintenance work that impacts everyone are not communicated spanning from noise disturbances from hammering on the exterior to entering my unit and cutting holes in the ceiling. In my time here I've had leaking pipes drench my belongs, bats enter my bedroom through unrepaired holes in the ceiling at night, removed gas leak advisories tags placed on our stove by Columbia Gas to delay repairing it, unflushable toilet for a couple weeks, and zero parking within a block of the residence due to construction (not fault of the landlord but no solutions offered). Old home hasn't been updated in years and the owner is resistant to spending funds for big repairs for quality of life.”
“UPM is the worst management company I have ever dealt with. I have lived in the apartment for seven years, the last five of which they have "managed." I pay my rent on time every single month. Their office staff is astonishingly rude and unprofessional. Maintenance is essentially non-existent; they have raised the rent twice in the last six months, claiming "below market value." However, their units are ALSO "below market quality." The building is falling apart, they employed maintenance personnel who blatantly steal from apartments. They do not screen their tenants except financially. Out-of-state fugitive with pending Rx Fraud charges? Come on over, UPM will not even bother with a ten-second Google search on you. Drug dealers welcome! Do not bother with a "noise complaint" because they will tell you there is nothing they can do. (Untrue, btw). But you can be dang sure they will look into your income, and as long as you can pay the deposit and first month, you are GOLDEN. After that, you will become just another revolving door tenant ripe for eviction. They will not care, they will just evict you to move another trash tenant in and get their deposit and month 1. The apartment has not been painted in seven years, carpet is at least that old, appliances are sh*t. Outside maintenance is mostly non-existent. Overgrown bushes, trees, and parking lot is filled with trash and potholes. Snow removal is non-existent. Broken furnace? Tough. Coldest night of the year? Tough. Avoid this "business" at all costs.”
“We moved into this ”house” on October 1, 2021. The place was absolutely filthy, we had to scrub the floors, walls, and baseboards before moving our things into the house. Immediately, we had issues with the furnace. Lexington Code Enforcement states that a property owner must maintain a 65° temperature in EACH living space, from October 1-May 15. Many times we woke up and the house was below 60°. Recently, (last week of January 2022) we woke up to the thermostat reading 46°. There was an impending ice storm on the way. We put in 10+ maintenance requests to PERMANENTLY fix the issue. We texted, emailed, and even sent multiple letters in the mail to our landlord, to no avail. She ignored us. She left our group chat THREE times. She was combative and apathetic and has clearly gotten away with this. Lexington Code Enforcement gave them 5 days (until February 5) to fix the issue. They disobeyed this order and we were within our legal rights to move out. We were interviewed by LEX18 for this. We have ample proof and the furnace issue is not even the only thing. We were illegally charged $100 a day for a security system we had permission to install. The lease states, “The tenant may have a security system and pay a one-time $75 fee and give the landlord access to the code.” We offered this to our landlord and maintenance multiple times and we were rejected. We obtained a lawyer who guided us through this process so as to not break any laws, otherwise, we would be lost and FREEZING inside of that trash dump on Park Avenue with the YELLOW DOOR. I do have pictures but no links to them. They’re saved onto my phone.”
“Horrible. Smooth talker, car salesman type. Liar and does not care about the state of the conditions that tenants live in. Bellefontaine is filled with bugs, drugs, and poor maintenance. Please DO NOT RENT FROM THESE SLUM LORDS.”
“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.”
"Maintenance issues were frequent. Once a month we would not have hot water or water at all building-wide, with little to no communication on the issue. Power outages, limbs falling out of trees on the property. A tree fell over through a fence and blocked an entrance to the parking lot, and it wasn't removed for 2 weeks. Took weeks to get the internet hooked up because Jey was unresponsive to the cable company. Can't get Metronet fiber because Jey won't talk to them. Jey would enter my apartment unannounced, frequently, including once walking in on me in my underwear. I had to install security cameras to document this behavior. My toilet tank broke because it was installed improperly and the tank was rubbing against the wall, and Jey said I "used the toilet improperly" and said I would have to pay for the repair. It was not repaired for over 2 weeks. This was the only toilet in my apartment, so I had to go to a local restaurant to use the bathroom. 7 months into a 12-month lease, a pet rent fee was added to my account on the online rent payment system. My signed lease did not mention a pet rent, at all. When I brought this up, Jey said there was a "typo" in my lease. There's no such thing as a typo in a signed contract. When I refused to pay these illegal fees, he added late fees to my account and then took those late fees out of my deposit. Jey took the house across from the apartment building and listed it on AirBnB, so there were loud wild parties every weekend, even during covid. And there's no sound insolation on exterior walls, at all, so I knew every song that was being played, even though it was on the other side of a small driveway. I was an ideal tenant. Paid my rent on time. Never threw loud parties. Kept my place clean and quiet. Jey always treated me like I was the biggest bother in the whole world. Jey always looks like he's having the worst time, even when giving tours to prospective new tenants. My sincere hope is that he really is having the worst time, all the time because that's exactly what he deserves. Don't rent from Jey Marks or Urban Vigor. And don't use the rent from them on AirBnB."
“It was a cheap place to rent, so that's why I went for it. I was asleep in bed one day (no work that day!), and I woke up hearing keys in the door and my landlord starts to open the door. I had to yell to him not to come in, and he luckily closed the door and left. I couldn't help but wonder how often this happened when I wasn't home, since this was an unscheduled day off for me. Another time, I had just gotten out of the shower and he did the same thing. I was still in the bathroom and had to yell at him I just got out of the shower and he left. What gives? The lease stated he was to give you 48-hour notice before coming into your apartment, but I wasn't afforded that luxury. I texted him after that incident and told him he needs to text me in advance if he needs to come into the apartment or it will keep inconveniencing him. During the last month of renting, to keep prices low, he said, you are supposed to be open the entire month for possible new tenants to come in and look at the place. I could get behind that. But I was given zero notice that anyone would possibly want to come to look at the place. I was not given the 48 hours. He knocked on the door WITH someone next to him. I had him wait about 5 minutes since I wasn't dressed and he definitely seemed annoyed with me since the viewer had to spend that 10 minutes waiting. That's why you give the 48 hours notice? Hell, 12 or 24 hours would have been sufficient. I didn't feel safe being alone, there was always that threat that he or maintenance would just come in. Other important things to mention: A pipe above my bathroom was leaking and my bathroom ceiling sagged down and was filled with water. He cut out that part of the ceiling and fixed the pipe for the person upstairs (they had problems, too). But for 7 of the 12 months I rented there, I had a huge, gaping hole in my bathroom ceiling that was never fixed. When the apartment viewer (mentioned above) came inside and the landlord brought him into the bathroom, he was very lighthearted and said he was working to fix that and said it in a way where I was supposed to agree he's on top of it. I didn't. I was told to do certain things to avoid mold in the winter, which I did, but there was black mold (not sure if it was THE black mold) in every room of the apartment. It wasn't clean when I moved in. The stove was missing one of its knobs. There was a cartoon-size mouse hole by the floor I had to stuff to keep anything in the walls out. This was a one-bedroom with a living room, but the AC was only in the bedroom, so it was more like a studio unless you wanted to be dripping in sweat in the living room during the summer and ice cold in the winter. No matter how much I cleaned, it still felt and looked dirty. My upstairs neighbor had a dog she left alone all the time. This poor dog barked incessantly. I put up with it, as we were allowed to have pets until I started losing sleep and my sanity. It was literally more than a week after I talked to him that he even mentioned it to my neighbor--I had to follow up with him to see that he had done nothing about it. I didn't feel respected or safe living here. I do not recommend living here. Even though the landlord is a nice guy, and it appears you'll have no problems living here when you tour it and talk to Marty, don't be deceived. He's neglectful and disrespectful of the space you pay to live in.”
The Lexington Tenant Review 