I have to agree this property management company is terrible. When I was HOA Board President I made the mistake of hiring them. They look pretty slick, and they can close a deal like no one. But once they have your property under management they are rude and inconsiderate and unprofessional and care little about your community. They do the bare minimum. Most of our home owners don't even bother contacting them because they are of so little help.
After I left the Board, I made a simple landscaping request, to have some weeds removed by the landscaper. Our smart-aleckey property manager from Community One, Millicent sent an e-mail to the landscaper stating I was always "popping off" about these kinds of things; and I was accidently copied on the e-mail. That was my first interaction with Millicent ever. It's hard to imagine that someone that has never to spoken to me and never corresponded with me could be so condescending.
That was 6 months ago. So I went 6 months without contacting them. Then when we had a freeze warning I noticed a vacant condo with the windows open, so I contacted Millicent at Community One to let them know we had a potential pipe bursting situation in our building. I asked Community One to enforce the by-law provision about maintaining the minimum temperature. Well Millicent the Community One property manager decided to forward my e-mail to the home owner with my name attached to the e-mail. I guess she was too lazy to verify anything, or more than likely she was just being spiteful. Now the home owner, one of my neighbors is pissed at me.
We have had 2 different property managers from Community One they both were terrible, they do the bare minimum. Community One has no vision or ideas, and they hate it when you ask them to do the job they are contractually obligated to do. It seems their policy is to be rude, direspectful and unprofessional to make you regret you ever asked them to do anything.
As someone who hired them, even getting them to fulfill the basic elements of their contrractal obligations I found to be a very frustrating experience. Certainly don't expect them to do anything extra, and you will be lucky if they even come close to honoring the details of the contract they sign to manage your property.
Don't believe for a minute they will help your community, if you don't have a fancy high rise for them to use in their advertisements you might as forget about hiring them.
Update : in January 2012 Community One lost one my HOA dues payments, I have never missed a payment, and generally send them 2 weeks early because of how they conduct business. So I obtained a copy of the check from my bank and contacted Community One. I spoke to 5 people over a week, I faxed copies of the check twice, with confirmations as received by Community One, yet they denied ever receiving the faxes. I was then referred to the head of collections, Lillian. Lillian never apologized for the inconvenience, and was generally annoyed that she had to deal with this kind of thing. I (not Lillian) requested that I be able to send an e-mail copy of my check, because something was obviously wrong with Community One's fax machine and she agreed to accept my e-mail(how gracious!). Lillian was clearly bothered by having to deal with this problem. I sent the e-mail and Lillian went off to investigate, I called Lillian the next day to see if my payment had been found, and Lillian told me there was no evidence of my payment in their system, this despite Lillian holding a copy of my canceled check with Community One's bank account number printed on the back! Seriously! They did find my payment on another account the next day. But imagine sending a copy of canceled a check and being told by the head of collections there was no evidence of them receiving payment.
This brings up another subject. Late Fees. Every year Community One changes the payment address for your HOA dues. They say every year this is to improve your service, it's just a payment drop box somewhere. How can changing a PO Box every year improve your service? I suspect they change payment addresses every year because their property management contract calls for them to get all of the late fees, and home owners get caught up in the address change, and make a late payment and get assessed a late fees, which go straight to Community One by contract. read more