I really should have paid attention to these reviews before applying here, there is some shady business going on.
I toured an apartment the day after it was posted (Saturday). We immediately ran into issues with the mojolock, as it required you to be within a certain vicinity of the building for a self guided tour, but were told as we stood at the front door that we were not in range. We tried using different phones and different browsers, and kept getting the same result. After 15 minutes of trying from all sides of the unit, and calling multiple numbers that went to voicemail as it was a weekend and no one was available, we gave up and headed back to our car. I gave it a last ditch effort once we were driving away and, miraculously, it worked. I should have taken that ordeal as a sign that it was not meant to be and moved on, but I did not, and we toured the unit (to their credit, the number I called did call me back on Monday to say they expanded the range for the lockbox, so they did make an effort to fix the problem).
Nothing wrong with the unit itself aside from the fact that it was obviously not cleaned prior to our tour. There were rings of grime left in the bathroom medicine cabinet, food waste in the dishwasher, glitter and paint on the floor of the attic storage, etc. Regardless of these issues, we liked the unit and submitted an application.
Our assigned property manager, Nilay Goncu, contacted us once we were approved on Wednesday to confirm our desired move-in date. I replied to her email that evening with my desired move in date, and said I would like to see a draft of the lease.
She responds to my email the next day in the late afternoon asking me to confirm again that the date I provided in my last email was, in fact, my desired start date. I once again stated my desired move in date.
The next day, I still had not received a draft lease by 1pm. So I sent a follow up email asking a question regarding how we would navigate me signing the lease going into the weekend (this was on a Friday) considering the Joseph group requires the lease be signed within 24 hours, but I still had not even seen a draft and might have questions.
I then received an email an hour and a half later from Nilay (2:30pm) saying that if I did not confirm I wanted to move forward with the application by 3:00pm that day, they would cancel my application, and if I agreed but did not sign the lease by 4:30 that day, they would move on to the next applicant. What????
She gives me 30 minutes, in the middle of a workday, to respond to her request which I had already answered twice, so that she can THEN begin to draft the lease (what was she doing for the last two days?) and have it signed within TWO HOURS?
This was so beyond unprofessional, I'm truly appalled. I stepped out of my meeting to respond to Nilay's email, and told her that her timeline was completely unrealistic and would not be moving forward with such an insane demand. She then reminded me that she "had been holding the unit for 48 hours while awaiting confirmation of [our] move-in date and final decision." What confirmation? What "final decision?" I told her my desired move in date, TWICE. There was no final decision to be made because I had not received the lease.
This company demands I respond to their emails immediately in the middle of a workday, but cannot even answer my questions until it is, apparently, the midnight hour. It seems to me as though my emails were purposefully ignored and questions went unanswered to pressure me into signing a lease without being given time to review it. I guess they want uninformed tenants. I truly feel sorry for whichever applicant is after me, I hope that they see this review and decide not to go forward with the Joseph group; I can't imagine how much worse it would have been as a tenant if this is how bad communication is during the application stage. A complete waste of my time and money. read more