Our condo association used Centennial Property Management from 4/1/2015 to 3/31/2016 after being self-managed for 10 years. This company must go through employees and property contracts every year. Even though the owner, Chris Gripe, comes from a CPA background, his staff member, Melodie Crider, has no idea how to account for special assessment payments, interest or reimbursements to an association. At least not how our governing documents were written. That being said, our property manager, Christina Griffin, did not care what our documents said and would argue with us about them until we cited the source. At that time, they would go silent and not admit any wrongdoing, just silence and would ignore the questions and emails. You will also not be able to keep your own vendors, they will recommend their own vendors that are related to Centennial in some way, maybe not in name but the phone numbers and contacts for the invoices all go to the same place. If you insist on getting a bid and using your vendor, Christina will run them through a ringer. She put our concrete guy and roofer through hours of questioning and drilling "to make sure they knew what they were doing." These were professionals we had been using for years. It was embarrassing. I was afraid she was going to ruin our business relationships.
After our contract ended, some "repairs" by their handyman needed to be corrected. Gutter seams were filled with clear silicone caulk instead of a gutter seam material. Don't let them talk you into doing liens for collections because your attorney will just need to do more work. Every time they convinced our board they would save us time and money, we ended up spending more money and are now spending time this year fixing all of their damage.
Because I have more intimate knowledge of our experience from a board member's perspective I believe my review is fair and accurate. There are personal accounts from our vendors and residents equally negative but for different reasons.
We have gone back to a self-managed system but have incorporated it with a paid position for the administrative/management tasks related to the maintenance free living provided to our members. read more
