There's a reason for reviews, recommended or not. I read ALL of them. Too bad I didn't even think to yelp HMS before we rented with them. Our experience resonated more with the negative than positive and closer to the "not recommended reviews".
They have some nice people like Jilene and Stephanie who responded to most of the problems like a garage door battery dying and quirky light bulb replacement fixes for older homes. The difficulty appears to be handling more complex matters like a crack on an exterior wall that caused moisture and leaking issues, and early lease termination. Their solution was to caulk and then paint over. We didn't think that would solve the problem and of course a year later the hardwood floors buckled. Then we started to see more pests like silverfish enter the bedroom. Pretty gross. HMS sent out a maintenance guy twice within the year to take measurements to replace the window and fix the problem, but it never happened. There was mention they would replace the old sliding glass doors and that didn't happen either. The frames of the doors were extremely dirty with caked in dirt and cobwebs, but we didn't notice them at first until we moved in. We just saw the bathroom upgrades, new blinds and new paint. We were eventually told the house was not professionally cleaned when we moved in (which explains a lot) and yet they expect us to do that upon moving out!
Kathryn was our contact and seemed nice, but after a year seemed distracted and forgetful about the fixes that were being done. She would forget maintenance appointments and text me assuming they weren't done when they were. Then she forgot to show up for an appointment which was a waste of my time. These probably aren't a big deal for some, but people like my husband and I who really stay on top of stuff were surprised. We are busy parents, my husband travels a lot, moved to the area for a private school and like everyone else life is pretty hectic. We consider ourselves excellent tenants never late on rent, kept the place cleaner than when we got it, and have credit scores above 800. We tired of managing fixes not to mention the warping floor, and we moved at the end of the second year having to "break our lease". We decided to buy again and it's hard to time that with a nice clean finish to a lease, but with such a hot rental market in Los Gatos a landlord can't complain of not finding a new tenant. I can see the upset on their part as we had just renewed the lease, but HMS likes to send you a request to renew 1.5 months before the lease actually ends and only gives you 7 days to respond to it. Well it coincided with our months of home buying and most should know what that's like here in the valley. We ended our lease before it actually expired, but they wanted us on the hook under a technicality. There was no ill intent to leave HMS/landlord high and dry as that's not who we are, but HMS is dealing with this unethically with Kathryn telling us our rent will stop once the house is cleaned and keys turned over, but she did not honor that. She also told us the new tenant was assuming our lease and will move in a few weeks after we vacate, and that the landlord wanted to make the fixes to the house they've neglected to make before the new tenants moved in! Kathryn said she told the landlord that charging us rent while we've already vacated to do their fixes was not legal and we agreed.
Then we get a call from Carrie who seems to be from their accounting end after we've moved out, telling us we missed our last month's rent when in fact it was their error. It appeared they closed us out of their auto-pay system, but weren't aware of it. Either way, no one from HMS cared to elaborate. Carrie is rude and her job must be to deal with collections, but we didn't deserve that. Now, Kathryn is nowhere to be found and they've sent us a bill in the amount exceeding what we we've agreed upon which is paying rent up until the new tenant moves in. So in reality, they're making fixes they should've made a year ago, but doing it on our dime. This is disgusting. We've informed our realtor to have their rental clients stay away from HMS! As homeowners we will never, ever hire them to manage our rental when the time comes. We would never advise our friends to use them either. They're clearly disorganized and unethical when things don't go their way. It doesn't pay to be a good tenant with them and these folks deserve tenants who destroy property.
Update: It's funny how they say all we needed to do was to just talk to them. Well that only helps if they return your call! We disputed their additional charges and like another Yelper, they sent us to the collection agency. Wow. That was their way of dealing with the issue and forcing you to give them what they want. Nasty folks. We will remember them. read more