Powelton Properties

Since the sandwich maker came back the sandwiches have been 100% when the sandwich maker was calling the sandwiches was between the scale to 1 to 10 of three Merrio he’s the best

WORST PROPERTY GROUP.
No type of electronic payments. CONSTANTLY LOSING CHECKS or they «didn’t see them», and then penalize the tenants for their lack of organization.
Complete opposite of helpful. They take weeks to send maintenance out for simple issues. The employees are ignorant and rude.
This company should not be in business, and I give them another 2 years before they do under.

RUN AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY AS FAST AS YOU CAN! This company should be out of business long time ago (and it is insulting that it is still doing business)! I stayed at an apartment managed by this company on 43 street for four years. I took a lease from another person, and when I sign the new lease with the company a few months later, they asked for an increase of $ 50 monthly rent given that my rent was $ 600. Quickly after I moved in, I found that there are thousands of cockroaches living in the apartment (there was even a cockroach nest behind the fridge, and hundreds of eggs in the fridge). I asked the company to clean it up, all they did was to come and spray something that didn’t work. It took me months to clean everything up by myself. There were also so many mice in the apartment, and I have killed about 30 – 40 mice by myself in the four years I lived there (once I caught three mice by using one mice sticker at one night)! I called them multiple times to deal with the mice problem, all they did was using something to block the hole and put some mice stickers on the ground. Only after a few days I found that the things they used to block the hole were not working any more. I can’t remember how many times I have been woken up by mice in the middle of the night, and cleaning up mice poop and cockroach eggs all over my apartment. I spent $ 150 to hire a professional cleaner to clean up the apartment before I moved out, and the apartment was even cleaner than when I moved in. But the company still charged me $ 75 blaming me for the stain and nail holes that have been there even before I moved in (The stain was impossible to clean up since the apartment was very old, and it should not be my responsibility)! When I called to ask for the money, they were so rude to tell me that I «got lucky» because they only charged me $ 75, since I «messed up the bathroom floor,» which has already been messed up when I moved in. They called me a disgusting person who does not keep the apartment in a good condition, despite that I left them with a clean apartment and spent $ 150 in cleaning. They were judging me and hung up on me for three times! I have never seen a more disgusting company than this one.

Just walk away now… Honestly it is not worth your time to bother renting from them. They will do nothing but ignore your requests and then blame you for what they never fixed the day you moved in. Their rent rates are through the roof and most of the workers are extremely rude. It took us almost 2 weeks to get a working hot water heater when we moved in. Then because of that they refused to fix anything else… Would give 0 stars if Unilocal allowed…

WORST PROPERTY MANAGMENT GROUP EVER. DO NOT RENT FROM THEM. Powelton is horribly unorganized. They do not care about professionalism or customer service. All they care about is making money. They will inconvenience you, charge you, and bother you. I rented from them for 3 years and they have been nothing but horrible. The people who answer the phones are very sweet and nice and I honestly feel bad for them. The maintenance men are nice and polite however, whoever owns/​runs this company might as well be Ebenezer Scrooge or the Grinch. You have caused us nothing but problems over the past 3 years and I am utterly disgusted. You are cheap, unaccomodating, unorganized and should not own/​run a business. DO NOT RENT FROM POWELTON. There are plenty of other companies in the Philadelphia area who will do A MUCH BETTER JOB of accomodating you.

Disclaimer– I was never a resident of any Powelton apartments. My review is based strictly off of the units I viewed & my interactions with staff.
I viewed, in total, about ten Powelton apartments in the University City area before finally coming to the realization that, even if they had an apartment I really liked, they just weren’t a business I wanted to rent from. The apartments themselves ranged from disgusting to being rather cute, although I realize that much of that has to do with how the tenants takes care of the apartments.
However, the common areas for their units are just straight up disgusting. Like haven’t been cleaned in years disgusting. Like the hallway floors are covered in filth and the white walls are practically brown with smudges, hand marks, and dirt. I know that it is difficult to keep common areas clean in a multi-​unit building, but I don’t think having someone come in once every other month to vacuum, or having the entrance and hallways deep cleaned once a year, is too much to ask for. There was not a single unit of theirs that I visited where the common hallway and entrance areas weren’t filthy. In one building, the hallway reeked of urine because one of the residents hadn’t bothered to clean up after their pets on a few occasions– the stains in the hallway carpet were even still visible. When I inquired about whether or not they ever clean the hallways, I was told that I could try to put in a maintenance request and they would maybe do something about it– which I interpreted as nothing would be done.
Basements w/​the washers and dryers are usually cluttered, dirty, and on a few occasions dangerous due to missing or broken boards on the basement stairs or loose railings. For the properties that have a shared backyard, don’t expect to get much use out of it– they are usually overgrown and not taken care of. The only exception for the units I saw was a backyard space that had been completely stoned over.
Most appliances are outdated and old. Which, really, I could deal with, but some of them were in noticeably poor shape.
Staff are nice enough (at least when showing apartments), although not always very informed about the properties or Powelton’s policies. I asked one agent who took care of snow removal in the front walkway for a multi-​unit I viewed, and she seemed to not know initially, and then told me that she thinks it’s left up to the tenants, which I’m fairly positive is illegal for multi-​units, and not to mention a huge liability for the owner (I’m assuming they do actually have someone take care of snow, and she just didn’t know). They only do showings between 9a-​5p, which is frustrating if you actually have a job.
I’ve had slumlords in the past, and Powelton’s reeks of it. It’s obvious that they do as minimal amount of work as they can get away with, and that they largely rely on the fact that their tenants are usually young college students who need housing and who don’t yet understand what’s acceptable.

If it were possible, I would give Powelton Properties, of Philadelphia, 0 stars. If you are considering renting a property from them and have come to this page, do yourself a favor and RUN. The term «slum-​lord» comes to mind. In my experience in the past 5 years with 5 different landlords, Powelton’s workers are the rudest, least professional, and by far a classic example of a predatory business model. As to the previous reviewer, who has had a «good» experience with them, you are likely the exception to rule.
In my experience this past year at a house on 43^rd street, we have experienced many and multiple code violations as well as structural deficiencies in the property. When alerted to these, they will scoff at you and blame you for them. Powelton will routinely do as little work as possible with the cheapest of supplies. Continuining, they will ignore major structural issues in favor of minor issues which are simple to repair.
If you rent from Powelton, you will undoubtedly experience vermin, heating and cooling issues, electrical issues, fire-​safety issues, utility bills (in their name) not being delivered in any timely fashion… the list goes on. Do yourself a favor and rent from anyone else. Otherwise, you will enjoy the headaches of being shouted at on the phone by their office staff, having requests for work ignored by their office staff, and having your money taken without any going to the property, itself.
If you take pride in your living space, do not rent from Powelton because they take no pride in the property they rent to you or the repairs the properties WILL routinely require. You would best spend your money elsewhere.

The staff at Powelton Properties are horrifyingly unprofessional. They often barge into the apartment without advance notice, the maintenance people are all drug addicts and criminals, the office staff yell and scream at the top of their lungs when you ask them basic questions. There really are no redeeming qualities here. Our apartment is nice, but the people managing it are inept, angry, and unprofessional.

I have had a good experience renting from Powelton. A shame for the other reviewers that they had bad experiences, but I would suggest that is an exception, not the rule.
I went to their office initially because I knew someone who was moving out of an apartment that I really wanted, but, when I got to the office, it had already been rented. Not to worry, the agent working in the office immediately had a suggestion for a place that had just been listed the day before that had a lot of the features we were looking for. Within 10 minutes, an agent was there to take me to see the place. He was incredibly patient with me. My boyfriend was traveling at the time, so I sent him photos and talked on the phone for close to a half hour debating if we wanted it even without him seeing it. I never felt rushed in the slightest. Anyway, we chose it and moved in a few weeks later.
The apartment is pretty well maintained, but we did a little work to make it more modern (painted the fake wood paneling, replaced a light fixture, etc.). Any problems we’ve had (like a leaky pipe in the bathroom), were fixed incredibly promptly. As in, we filled out the maintenance request form online and the maintenance men came in the same day. Additionally, the maintenance men are very nice and always play with our cats when they visit.
Concluding thoughts:
In order to have a good rental experience, take some initiative of your own. This is a contract between two parties, so do your part.
Prices are reasonable.
Maintenance requests are satisfied very promptly.
Property is well maintained (especially considering I live in a house that is about 120 years old!)
Agents are nice, laid back, and know all of their renters.

Powelton manages a bunch of houses and apartments in University City. I get the impression that they do most of their business with Drexel and Penn students. The claims I’ll make about the business are based strictly on my experience as a renter in one of their 43^rd Street row-​homes, when I was a senior in college — I can’t really make broader claims about the company as a whole.
Anyway. My roommate and I should have seen it coming. We were able to move in early because, for reasons we didn’t understand at the time, the people before us anxiously wanted to get out. The place looked great when we went to the open house, but when we moved in a few weeks later, all the imperfections on the walls and floor were dreadfully exposed — and unlike the crafty girls who’d lived there before us, my roommate and I didn’t have the know-​how to cover up all these eye sores. Nor did the realtor ever make an attempt to fix these things for us as, I believe, the contract suggested they would.
That year, 2005, Winter came early and my poorly insulated bedroom on the third floor of the house turned frigid — literally, it was dangerously cold, the sort of cold that the homeless flee to heated shelters to avoid. I would cover myself in three or four layers of blankets to go to sleep, and I’d still wake up freezing in the middle of the night. And my roommate and I must have called Powelton’s central office ten times to ask them to have the heat turned on. I think, after a long time trying, we went to the office ourselves to demand that they send someone out immediately, and, finally, it got done. The problem with the heat in the building was, there was no way to control it; it was standardized for the whole house. And since heat rises, our third floor apartment became sauna-​Esq. (But, okay, that was just the reality of the building: not really Powelton’s fault.)
And then there was the problem with the front door. The old locks got jammed one day, and I found myself locked out of my own apartment. I had to scream for the guys on the second floor to let me in. We called Powelton to fix the doors, but they never came. Two weeks later, the same thing happened again. Then we went to the office to complain and, finally, after more waiting they came.
So, yes, the service sucked. Across the board. At one point, my roommate and I suggested that we ought to get a rent free month in exchange for our troubles, and we were, essentially, laughed at. Ha!
But look, I didn’t have a terrible experience in that apartment. The guys across the street threw these incredible retro-​funk parties — where the hell were those guys from? — and, I remember, there was this really cool girl named Vicky who lived with them who could roll her own cigarettes in like 3 seconds flat. And the parties my roommate and I had in that place, shit, I think they were memorable. But, then again, we always laid out the change for good bear, not, ya know, Pabst.
But we were thrilled to get out of there. In Spring, just before my graduation, the realtor started bringing new potential renters through the place. (I was mainly working on my thesis then, not getting out much, and he would sometimes surprise me with people when I was sitting at my computer in my underpants.) I never had the chutzpa to tell those kids about my experience, not there, not in front of the realtor. But I’m telling you, so I guess I am, in some way, maintaining justice in this world.