Let me start by pointing out that I am a real estate broker in California, and have owned/operated…read morea property management company in California for 25 years, and own investment properties in several states and work with several other property managers that handle my out of state properties. Working with Empire has been a terrible experience on so many levels. Their accounting system is terrible, and cash flow statements are difficult to even comprehend. But this is the least of the problems. Empire is so departmentalized, that nobody in the company has any idea what anyone else in the company is doing. If there is an accounting issue, you deal with one person. If there is a problem with repairs/work orders, you deal with another person. The account rep that signed us up is only in charge of that, so he was out "complaint sounding board" most of the time, as no one else would ever resolve any issues satisfactorily. We eventually started dealing with the owner, Steve, once the problems were getting way out of control. Steve never once went out of his way to pick up the phone and discuss the issues. All he ever did was forward the emails to the "manager" who would cover her ass in the email replies without solving any problems.
Their vendors are terrible and outrageously priced. To give 2 very good examples, the same plumber was sent out to 2 different properties on 2 different dates. First service call, plumber was there for 20 minutes, checking all faucets, flushed toilets, and found no issues that the tenant had called about. They acknowledged that no repairs were done, and tenant confirmed that they were there for 20 minutes. Invoice was $400.00!!!! And we called the plumbing company, acting as a potential customer, and asked what their "service call" fee was to fix a minor issue, and was told $110. On the next job, same plumber went out to investigate a water heater that didn't stay lit. Plumber went out & couldn't fix it, left after 15-20 minutes. I never got a phone call with a recommendation to replace the water heater, or any notification from Empire. That invoice was $250 for a "service call" where nothing was done. So somehow Empire felt it was OK to charge us $400 and $250 for a 20 minute service call that the plumber would charge any other person $110 for. We also found out after everything got cancelled out, that Empire was marking up all vendor invoices by 10% for more fees to go in their pocket....pretty sure that was not in the contract either and never disclosed to us.
After being called out for being incompetent, Empire cancelled services, with no notice, on us--a violation of the contract that requires 30 day notice to cancel. So left us stranded handling unresolved repairs, including the water heater that needs replacement, roof repairs to 2 properties. All tenants had complained to us about Empire, stating that repairs never got completed on multiple occasions. They had called Empire many times for repairs and got ignored on several occasions.
I could go on with more details, but I think I've given enough for any potential customer to be warned about this company. Empire does not understand customer service, and certainly does not have the owner's best interests in mind.