In spite of reading a previous review by B.C. I went ahead with an application here, because I…read morethought "it was written in 2019, so things might be different". Well, turns out things are not different. I had a very similar experience.
I submitted a rental application to one of their properties in Mountain View. One person on the California Property Services team reached out with tentative lease terms, which looked fine, and I thought "ok, they are pretty responsive, my fears were unfounded". Not so fast. I then received an email from another person asking to submit some more documents to verify my employment and income. I had already submitted most of them with my application, so I was confused, but it's fine, it's another lost-in-translation scenario perhaps, I thought. I re-sent my documents.
And then no news for a couple of days. I reached out and they said they were waiting for my employer to verify via email. I clarified that my employer, a very large tech company, does not handle individual employment verifications via email but uses www.theworknumber.com, a standard third party service by Equifax, and shared the guidance provided specifically for prospective landlords. The person responded that they do use TheWorkNumber, so I was relieved to know that this is standard procedure for them. And then no news for a couple more days. I reach out again, and the person again responded that they were waiting for my employer to respond to their verification email. I was semi-exasperated already but I referred them to our earlier conversation about TheWorkNumber. I had to follow-up again in a day, and I kid you not, the person emailed me "I followed your instructions for TheWorkNumber but I'm stuck at password. what do I do?". I was completely baffled by this email but tried to help out, but then was shortly told that they "could not find my employment data on the website". Baffled again, I logged in, and not only I could see my data, I could even see their request to access it. I shared all this information and the contact information for TheWorkNumber support specific to my employer. Alas, no progress for two more days. I bit the bullet, and reached out to the TheWorkNumber support myself, cc-ing the management in the emails. Not only were the support staff responsive, they even confirmed that my data was indeed available on their website.
But no response from my prospective landlord. I reached out again, and guess what I received as response? No prizes for guessing "we are waiting for your employer to respond to our email". I was beyond exasperated. By this time, I had shared 4 recent pay stubs, 2 bank account statements showing direct deposits from my employer, a signed "employment verification letter" from my HR, a personal copy of the employment data from TheWorkNumber (and an email from their support confirming that my employment record was available), among other information. I said that there is nothing more I can do from my side. The person responded that they are now waiting for upper management to reach a decision. I thought "maybe someone from upper management will have better sense" and offered that I was happy to chat anytime.
Of course, nothing again for two more days. I reached out again, and you got it, they said "we are unable to verify your employment"!!!
This whole ordeal took 12 days! (Edit: Forgot to mention, over this time, I could never reach anyone on the phone. I left 5 voicemails in total, and not one was returned.) Soon after, I thankfully found another apartment, filed an application and signed a contract in 2 days. And of course, before doing that I told California Property Services that I'm withdrawing my rental application, bringing this saga of my worst rental application experience to an end. I have rented 9 apartments across 5 cities in the past two decades and nothing comes close to this horror show. All in all, the application fee was a really small cost to pay to learn about the completely incompetent and borderline-scammy behavior from this management company.
Avoid at all costs! (My first ever yelp review too, so that others are spared of this horrible experience.)