We used HH to list 2 different properties at the same time as owners. One was a duplex unit that rented pretty easily, and the other began as a short-term furnished corporate rental, where we expected to rent it out furnished for 6 months in July and then use HH again in January to rent it unfurnished for 12 months. After nearly a month on the market with one showing, I came to the realization that I did not want to deal with renting it out in winter and deal with HH stress again. It ends up being cheaper for us to leave it vacant a month and find a tenant for August ourselves than pay the commission to them. For the first apartment, we should have just used craigslist and saved both the money & headache!
Overall, we were very disappointed with HH, particularly the lack of coordination & internal communication, and the lack of professionalism. I was informed by the new tenant on Stanford that the agent who pressured me to sign a lease by "end of the day today" is no longer working for HH, so my questions/emails to her are still unanswered. No one from HH followed up with us or the tenant. I was also pressured by another agent to sign a lease with a tenant who had omitted information and then blatantly lied on her application- both these experiences made it quite clear that HH does not share my interest or viewpoint in terms of finding a suitable tenant.
We de-activated the condo we'd listed and I found tenants almost immediately on Craigslist. Using HH to rent the first condo was an expensive mistake, but HH added no value, period. For our other property, in the first 6 weeks that it was listed, there were perhaps 3 showings, and I listed it myself and had 3 showings set up within 24 hours. Again, HH's idea of a suitable tenant seems to be very different than ours, and this seems like a conflict of interest. I found HH to be pretty uncommunicative, and not very proactive about returning phone calls, answering questions, or being open to speaking to me in person or on the phone. This is odd, because HH seeks to help owners find good tenants, it seems logical they would be more open to listening and understanding the needs of the owners they are representing. I am not sure what the experience of working with HH would be like from a renter's perspective, but after working with HH on two separate properties as landlords, we won't work with them again.
For one property we listed, a condo in downtown Boulder, I had to state multiple times that the HOA did not allow the sign to be placed on the lawn, but it must be placed in the window. I got in trouble with the HOA when the sign was placed on the lawn 3 times. I stated that all showings for both units were to be coordinated with the tenant, but frequently received calls (sometimes even to my husband at work) asking if HH could come by and show the unit. There were 3 different issues with the keys as well, where agents called me to ask if we could bring keys, when they had already been in their possession for weeks. Fortunately, HH did not actually lose the keys, just misplaced them. I also had a lot of trouble with the online system. I would make changes to the listing, which would not be reflected. For example, I had corrected what the agent had put that the tenant pays for sewer, but not water, and this never got updated. The online description repeatedly truncated after a certain number of characters as well.
We used HH to help us find new tenants thinking that the process would save us time, energy, and help us avoid much of the hassle of finding good tenants by outsourcing the process. We found nearly the opposite to be true- working with HH ended up being extremely stressful, particularly because I was forced to spend so much time correcting the mis-information agents had provided to clients, fielding requests about showing and the location of keys, and still having to screen clients before having even met them after realizing that our interests are not the same. Again, HH seems to have a different standard of a good tenant than we do, and we realized that our values are not aligned. Overall, we were disappointed with our experience working with HH, and frankly feel like it was money poorly spent. We do not feel like we got our money's worth at all, and HH did not in the end provide any value to us. We have learned through this process that we are much better off going through the process of finding a tenant directly (Craigslist), and will not be working with HH in the future. I certainly hope they can improve the process of internal communication, professionalism, and systems & procedures to improve the quality of their services in the future, for both landlords and tenant read more
