This is not meant to be a hateful review, just a matter-of-fact account of what awaits anyone who…read morerents one of Eck's properties. I was their tenant for 4 years, so I had sufficient time to get acquainted with the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, here are some tips to you, future Eck tenants:
(1) THE GOOD: I rented a 3-bedroom house. Location was great, house was in very good shape for its age (it's built in the 60s), rent was affordable. And, I should mention, they did not increase the rent throughout my stay there (more on that below).
(2) THE UGLY: If you look up some of the other Google or Yelp reviews about Eck, you will notice several complaints about poor response to maintenance requests. Sadly, all these are accurate. I was lucky enough to have very few maintenance issues over the 4 years, but Eck were always very slow to address them (except for one time when the AC broke in the middle of the summer - that was fixed within 24 hours), and on a few occasions nothing was done at all (the gutters remained clogged for more than two years, in spite of my 2 separate requests). Yes, they would email almost immediately in response to a request and promise that it would be addressed - so they were prompt to "respond" in that manner - but nothing was done. I found that irritating, but not as bad as what comes below.
(3) THE BAD: Be prepared that you will NOT receive back your full security deposit. It just won't happen. There is no such thing as "wear and tear" in these people's codebook. If the unit is in any way found to be in worse shape than they determined it at move-in, you will get charged. In my case, I spent hours and hours vacuuming and wiping down the house, and yet I still got charged for things like: "dust on bath cabinets", "dust on bath mirror", "hall light fixture not clean", "bedroom door not wiped down" (I've posted a snapshot of some of these ridiculous charges below), etc. And the "best" part is, they cover up very nicely upfront by including a list of "possible deductions" from tenants' damage deposit in the lease, so don't even bother arguing.
My first reaction was disbelief and anger. But after giving this more thought, it started to make some sense. This is their entire business model: the rent is kept at affordable levels (for the square footage offered), but part or all of your security deposit will be added to the overall cost. It's less transparent, but seems to work well in a rental market, such as Lawrence, where decent options are not widespread. And if you, future Eck tenants, try to adopt the same view (just accept that you will never see all that deposit money back), it will hurt less, I promise!
My overall Rating:
House: 3/5
Management: 1/5