We rented with Crown Management for 5 years. There are a lot of things they were satisfactory with, but in general they treated us like we were irresponsible college students for no reason. Patrick acted like their units were the creme of the crop and we should be SOO lucky to be renting from them, when they were generally far from it. We rented 2 different units in North PB over the span of 5 years. We always paid our rent on time and if we were cutting it close we dropped it off personally to their office in La Jolla. They expected us to answer our phones every time they called with an issue, like if they needed to get into our unit for electrical or roofing fixes for instance, yet never answer their own phone and call back when it's convenient for them.
We are in our early 30s now, renting from them since our late 20s. We have jobs. We could not be on call for them, and who really can be? They acted like we should be easier to get a hold of when they clearly are not. For example, when we moved from one unit to the other they called giving us a hard time about not dropping off our old keys - again, like we were idiots and irresponsible. My husband told them I dropped them off in their mail slot and after going through the envelopes again, they indeed found them. Why they can't just talk to people with respect and common courtesy I don't know. Then they claimed we didn't clean the apartment well enough and since they couldn't get a hold of either of us immediately, they hired a cleaning service which would come out of our deposit. They based this on the TOP OF THE REFRIGERATOR having dust!!! Everything else, baseboards, showers, cupboards, etc. was immaculate. We even touched up the walls where there were scuffs. When we talked to the cleaning woman, she agreed that she didn't need to be there but was hired to clean x, y, and z so was doing it all anyways. After a lot of arguing with Crown, we didn't have to pay for the additional cleaning, but why couldn't they have at least waited to talk to us, even give us 30 min to return their call about the top of the refrigerator having dirt on it, before calling a cleaning service I don't know.
They freaked out over everything yet they were very difficult to get a hold of!! I will say when they had the roof redone and the tar machine was parked in our parking spot for 24hrs w/o any notification, and the fumes were coming into our apt. through our back window, they gave us a night of rent for free and answered our call about it immediately. We were not happy about breathing that crap in all night, but at that point the roofing crew was already gone for the day and they didn't know how to move it or where they could store it. I was not pleased and I still wonder what breathing that crap did to us, but at least they were willing to compensate us somewhat.
Overall we are very happy to be renting from someone else and know that whenever we move out, it won't be such a freaking fiasco!! And since they require really good credit ratings to live in their properties in the first place, obviously they only rent to people that have been very responsible in the past. Why treat their renters otherwise??? read more
