Walker Rentals is by far the worst landlord I've ever had. They are rude, dishonest, inconsiderate,…read moreand frankly downright shady -- avoid them at all costs. A sampling of my experiences with them:
- The house sprung leaks right around the time we moved in. Their idea of fixing it was to tar the roof, patch the plaster ceiling, and shove a bunch of junk cardboard in between (it was literally a folded-up box from some paper towels or something like that). Which we discovered when the ceiling proceeded to leak again in the same spot towards the end of our tenancy.
- We strongly suspect that the house had mold. I had five or six consecutive sinus infections over the course of the winter we lived there -- I even got mild pneumonia at one point and had to go to the hospital for antibiotics. Also, the ceiling sagged in several places, we got occasional patches of visible mold growing on the walls, and mold would grow on dirty dishes exceptionally quickly (after only 24 hours or so). We brought in a mold inspector to check for us, and his equipment detected moisture above the shoddily patched ceiling leaks (shocker), but he was unable to actually confirm mold without cutting into the plaster to check above it. We asked Walker if we could do this (offering to re-patch the plaster afterwards) and they refused, claiming that their owner "had checked" and there was no mold. (I have no idea what sort of check he supposedly performed given that the certified mold inspector could not give us an answer without cutting into the plaster.)
- They do not believe that they have any obligation to give you any notice of entry to the apartment unless it's written into the lease. In the words of an office worker I spoke to, advance notice of entry is "a courtesy we provide sometimes." They would regularly show the apartment to prospective tenants on as little as five minutes' notice. I work remotely and took calls from my home office, so needless to say this was extremely inconvenient and disruptive (and a regular invasion of our privacy).
- Their maintenance workers are rude and unprofessional. They rarely knocked before entering our home, preferring to use their key to open the door and shout "maintenance!" as they walked in. On one occasion, this happened while my wife was home alone and in the shower, which obviously felt like a massive invasion of privacy and left her feeling unsafe in our home. On a different occasion, their maintenance worker left his dip cup (i.e. spittle from chewing tobacco) on the counter.
- We ended up moving out two months before the end of our lease because my wife was accepted to grad school in a different state. The apartment was vacant for a month and then they re-rented it to a new tenant. This was great (because we obviously preferred not to keep paying rent on a vacant apartment) but there was one big problem -- they didn't tell us about it! As a result, my mother-in-law (who lives in the area and still had our keys) went to check up on the place one day and walked in on the poor new tenant.
- We moved most of our stuff out at the end of April but took a few weeks to finish moving our things. At the end of April, the ceiling sprung a leak again, so we stuck a bucket under it which incidentally contained some potting soil from some gardening my wife had done (it was the only bucket we had handy). At some point during the month of May, somebody entered the house, carried the bucket of mud water into the next room, spilled the entire thing on the floor, and then just left it there. My mother-in-law discovered this a few days later when she went to check in on the place. Needless to say, Walker denied that their maintenance workers would do such a thing.
- After we moved out, they tried to ghost us on the security deposit (which was $800 -- nothing to sneeze at). Our lease ended on July 31 so we figured we'd get it in 30-45 days. In mid-September, my wife started sporadically calling the office and asking when we were getting our deposit back. On October 19, she got ahold of somebody at the office who told her that the check was going in the mail that week. The check never arrived, but they did stop answering her calls; they also ignored a subsequent email from me. In December, I sent them a certified letter threatening small claims court if they didn't return my money -- they finally sent the check a few days later.
- We left the house in equal or better shape as when we moved in -- I hired a professional cleaning service to perform a move-out clean and my mother-in-law even shampooed the carpets for them. However, they only returned $615 out of the $800 security deposit. They included a handwritten list of things they had supposedly cleaned after we moved out... dated August 3rd. The new surprise tenant moved in at the beginning of July, so either they entirely fabricated the deductions or they deducted from our security deposit for cleaning up after a different tenant.
