If you're hoping to hire a property management company that operates with a high level of organization, communication, responsiveness, transparency, and integrity, then keep on looking because Real Property Management South San Fernando Valley is NOT the company for you.
Its owner, George Golovin, has greatly restricted owners' participation in our HOA, disappeared for a month on an unannounced vacation, and refused to take responsibility for failing to perform some of the most basic functions of a property management company. He is short-tempered, defensive, and less than collaborative.
Within a month of our board hiring George Golovin in January 2025, it was obvious they made a mistake. He was either overextended with other clients, overwhelmed by the responsibilities, or generally incompetent. Here are some of the many ways he has failed our HOA, and should serve as a warning to any other condominium association to NOT hire his company:
1. At his first board meeting, George suggested the board stop holding in-person monthly meetings (resorting to virtual meetings only), presumably to reduce owner participation and to shield the board from criticism. After succeeding with that pursuit, six months later George successfully urged the board to limit the public portion of board meetings to 60 minutes, which resulted in only 20 minutes for owner questions and comments (in a building with 209 units). When one owner confronted the company for unnecessarily silencing owners' voices, George kicked the owner off the Zoom call.
2. George started working for our HOA just as a group of owners filed a petition to recall the board, and while the law required the HOA to announce an election date within 10 days of receiving the petition, George failed to announce it for 40 days. And then he chose an election date that was 30 days later than normal--wrongly extending the terms of the board that hired him. When George was confronted during a board meeting for failing to follow the law, he got defensive and muted the owner on Zoom.
3. During the recall election period, George violated all norms of conduct by serving as the de facto campaign manager for the board of directors. He routinely used HOA resources to distribute campaign messages to owners on behalf of the board--and rejected similar requests from the opposition.
4. In the lead-up to the recall election, George started sending weekly updates to owners about the board's performance on various issues. However, after the board prevailed in the election, he stopped sending updates to owners. In the three months since the election, he has sent only one update via email.
5. George failed to pay a contractor for 28 days, stalling a pool renovation project that had already dragged on for more than five years. Worse, he banned the one owner in our HOA who has decades of construction project management experience from interacting with the contractor (to get the project back on track).
6. George was required to prepare a budget and submit it to the board by July 15, but failed to do so for 45 days because he went on an unannounced vacation for a month. And while he criticized the budget submitted a year earlier by the HOA's previous property management company, he submitted an initial budget with a $200,000+ deficit, and had the nerve to claim that a deficit budget would actually help the HOA secure a loan for renovation projects.
7. Despite rampant violations of the HOA's policy against short-term rentals--and the board voting to institute a warning and fine schedule--George failed to notify the owners in violation for 45 days--all the while more short-term renters streamed into the building and created chaos.
8. George regularly fails to respond to owners' voicemail messages, email messages, and maintenance requests. And when he occasionally responds, he acts as if everything is under control and being handled--even though his lack of follow through proves otherwise.
9. There is no indication George is obtaining multiple bids for contract work in the building (as is required in our guiding documents). As a result, the board often chooses its preferred contractor for all sorts of work, and that contractor has charged as much as 13 times more for the same type of work provided just a year earlier by a different company. We are wasting tens of thousands of dollars in the process.
10. In our HOA, there are several owners who are many months behind in paying their dues. For six months, George claims he has hired a collections agency and is making progress on the situation, but that ignores the fact the dues owed by that group of owners has remained nearly constant for that entire time (between $51,000 and $54,000). George has never provided any proof that letters were sent to the delinquent owners, or that any outstanding money was paid. read more
