Jamespoint Management

I think a good rule of thumb is, if you live in apartments owned/operated by an individual and they sell to a management company, get out and get out fast. This is the lesson I learned from Jamespoint, who operates rental properties in Bryan/College Station and presumably other parts of Texas.

Just a few of the problems I encountered after they bought out the apartment complex I was living in:

• Almost all routine maintenance work-orders took at least 2-3 repeat calls before someone would reply to fix the problem, no matter how serious it was. Repairs were then typically poorly done and done with cheap material, so that the problem didn't stay fixed for long.
  
  
• When they first took over the complex we had a full-time manager onsite during business hours each day during the week and until noon on Saturdays, so we always had someone available if there was a problem. After she quit however (and later conversations with her indicated that seeing just these kinds of problems was one the reasons she left), we had a series of part-time managers who were now on site all day, and the hours they were there were typically those convenient for students, not those working full time.
  
  
• Maintenance (or pest control, or somebody) cut a square hole through the sheetrock in the bedroom and left it, with the wall insulation hanging out. When I asked the manager to have the hole patched and for an explanation of why it was done in the first place, I was simply told she would have to check with the main office. I never got that answer, despite several followup attempts.
  
  
• Upon returning home one day, I found a note attached to my door from the management saying I had two days to mow my back lawn or they would do it and charge me $50 for it -- I had mowed only 2 days before, I saw what looked like similar notices on almost all the units.
  
  
• My neighbors complained of their lawn dying and requested management resod the yard. They did, after putting down about 2-inches of sand underneath the new grass squares. What they didn't do was take into account that this was the downhill side from me, and the build-up turned my backyard--and then my bedroom--into a pond. Their first solution to the problem was to to install a french drain from the back yard to the street, and in tromping through the mud to do it ruined my lawn as well. Of course, that solution didn't work and the next rainstorm flooded the backyard and my bedroom again. After being shown exactly where the problem areas were, and what it would take to fix it, they finally dug a drainage trench around the side of the house to let the water escape. Then the next week they filled it in with new sod - while ignoring the mud hole the back yard had become. This was still an ongoing problem when I left.
  
  
• Despite living in the same unit for six years, and having a "normal wear and tear" clause in my contract, upon moveout they decided that the walls were "just too dirty" and charged the full price to repaint the place. Nothing was beyond what you'd normally expect for six years worth of normal living, but since this is a (their) judgement call, I suspect everyone is charged for this.
  
  
• Upon moveout, I was charged for the removal of a "doghouse" -- really a small storage shed for a lawnmower, they should have known it wasn't a doghouse since they didn't have the mandatory (and ridiculously priced) pet deposit on file. It didn't seem to bother them that the structure had been there when I moved in and would have been useful for the next tenants, just so long as they could collect the fee.
  
  
• One of the new stipulations that Jamespoint had in their contracts was that the carpets had to be cleaned, either professionally or by a rental unit, before moving out and that a receipt for the cleaning had to be turned in to them. Well, I own a cleaner myself and used it. Despite the fact that I could offer proof of ownership and use of my own cleaner, they nevertheless deducted the cost of professional cleaning from my security deposit because I hadn't followed the letter of the contract in renting one instead of using my own.
  
  

Based on my own experience with this company, I'd have to recommend in the strongest of terms to avoid them. Even beyond the quality of service, the properties which were once relatively nice with modest rents have increased exorbitantly in price, (my rent if I had renewed would have been only $30/month less than my current mortgage payment to purchase a house) and have not kept pace with the incentives being offered by other complexes to bring in tenants.