Passive Aggressive Princess

Posted 3 years ago

Jen was a relatively good landlord unless she didn't feel like it that day, or god forbid you knew something she didn't. She is unwilling to admit when something in her house is broken, even if you send her pictures and videos of the broken appliance/structure. She would take weeks to get back to us when we asked for something to be fixed, and more often than not it was fixed improperly by her own handyman which lead to more problems. Those problems were often blamed on the tenants for "excessive wear and tear" even though it would be the exact same problem as before. Once she did finally hire professionals to fix the plumbing/AC/appliance/etc., they would usually find that something was installed incorrectly which had resulted in sky-high utility bills that the tenants have to pay. For example, she neglected to fix the bathroom plumbing after we had reached out to her for months about it. When it came time to return our security deposit, the water bill was 4X what we ever paid monthly because when we left the house the toilet was still unfixed. Conveniently, the Water department can’t show you your daily usage so we got stuck with the entire bill EVEN THOUGH we moved out 15 days prior to the end of the billing cycle. When I tried to tell her that PWD said there had to be a leaking appliance she said that was impossible. Then I reminded her that she said she was going to fix the toilet after we moved out, and I never heard from her again. She charges an arm and a leg for pets, so if you have one don't even bother looking at her properties. The tenants before us definitely had cats, which we could tell by the urine smell in the basement and the random toys we would find in small hiding places. When we mentioned it to her she would refuse it's the truth, which to be fair the previous tenants probably lied about having the cat to avoid the astronomical fees. When we told her we were moving out she insisted that we hire a cleaning company to tidy up the apartment for her viewings. I understand and respect wanting the home to look nice so she can rent it out faster, and we did our best to make it look nice despite having much of our furniture/decorations moved out already, but I have never had a landlord threaten me with my security deposit to hire a cleaning company before. On top of that, two days before we moved out I called to confirm the date and time the company would come out and the owner told me the landlord had called them herself and moved the cleaning date to July (we moved out end of May) so that Jen could have construction done on the house prior to the cleaning. Fine, I understand that, but our verbal agreement was that she would take the cleaned house under consideration when determining what portion of the security deposit she would return. The cleaning bill came to $400. She also blamed us for the grout in the bathroom falling out of the wall, and she claimed Philly does not have hard tap water so any rust stains under the grout must have been us being "disgusting". Jen, if you're reading this, I suggest you look at the PWD FAQ page where they clearly state that the water is in fact "hard-very hard": https://www.phila.gov/water/wu/drinkingwater/FAQ/Pages/default.aspx. She was usually too busy to remember anything important, such as the fact that we had renewed our lease after the first year, and she had scheduled viewings for the apartment, even though we had told her months earlier we wanted to stay. There were days when she would talk to us like we were idiots, and whenever one of us returned her insults with evidence she would laugh at us and tell us we didn’t know how things worked. The fact of the matter is I have been renting in Philadelphia for 10 years, and during 4 of those years I was a legal secretary for a landlord-tenant lawyer; I have seen slum lords, I have seen scammers, and now I have seen Jen. She is one of the most sugar-coated, low attention, blame-centric landlords I have ever met. Nothing is her fault, it’s always your fault or the fault of her former partner/significant other whom she cheated out of the houses they purchased together (according to the Philadelphia property website). All that aside, her properties are lovely (aside from plumbing and some electricity issues), and if you can manage to deal with her as little as possible, it will be a very enjoyable experience. Just don’t let her fast talk you, and always record your phone conversations - that’s when she makes promises she denies ever happened down the road. Jen, if you’re reading this, I hope you change the way you treat not only your tenants but everyone in your life. For someone who's mission statement claims to empower women, you really have an odd way of showing it. Have fun on all your “Mollys”.

• 0
• 
• 
• 

Nice... when it is in her benefit

Posted 3 years ago

• 0
• 
• 
•