Jones and Forrest

I really do not understand why Unilocal would leave that five years old, one-​off, five star rating from JeannieRae up. I owned a property at Hampton Place in San Jose, managed by Pat Forrest. My first impression of her was «sketchy». The fact that my wife and I were the only homeowners at most of the meetings, other than the board, should have been a warning. As time passed, I began to realized just how dissatisfying she was as a property manager. I sat in HOA meetings where she talked down to homeowners, including me, as if she was the guru about all matters HOA/​property management. When I would ask her direct questions about insurance subrogation to an owner, whose tenant had caused extensive water damage to the unit below (paid for by the HOA’s insurance carrier), she was vague (and wrong). She was often unresponsive and ineffectual to issues raised by the owners. Often her responses to my queries were out of context with my question/​request.
I became highly suspicious of how our finances were being handled and made a demand for all of the HOA financials to which I was entitled. She charged me several hundred dollars for the document request and then promptly chose to terminate her contract with our HOA. What do you suppose that was about? I could go on for pages about all of the irregularities I found in the financials.
So I was curious about the five star rating by JeannieRae and I wrote to her, now a full two years ago. This is what I wrote:
JR,
Hello. I hope you are doing well.
My name is Greg. I am a property owner at a small HOA managed by Jones & Forrest. I was reading reviews for this firm and found yours is a rare positive. Your review is a few years old. I was hoping you might update it. Has your experience continued to be as pleasant as you described in 2009?
Thank you.
——
I have yet to receive a response.

They are the worst one in town. Very unresponsive, does not care about the property or tenants. After 100 requests, you may get some response. I sometimes wonder, who are these Tammy, T2 or Deanne — how can they have a such poor customer service when they are in service business. Very poor service: no response on main gate repair, programming resident’s phone to gate door or keeping the campus clean. We should work together either to make former complaint to State or kick them out from Waterside. Sometimes I wonder, who are the Board members? Are they related to T1, T2 or D1. It is time for them to go and probably go out of business which they do not care. Can somebody take the leadership either go after them or go after the Board. let me find out how to remove them so that customers who pays HOA fees do not need to suffer by the same group of people.

If it were possible to give negative 5 star i would.
They are really as horrible as people have claimed. HOA keeps going up with no addition to the property. Property managers are only interested in pleasing the board.

I have been with Jones and Forrest for over 10 years, yes they are responsive but the amount of HOA’s that I pay does not show in my complex. I am battle with them on a charge from a plumbing company that was a leak from internal pipes from my shower, they are saying that it is my responsibility which is incorrect, they are responsible for internal plumbing unless I tried to blow up my pipes which I will never do. As of today, their phone lines are not working and they are only open for maybe 4 hours out of the day.

I had a very bad experience with Jones and Forest today. Dealing with them for the past 11.5 years has been hit and miss. Tammy Forest is usually responsive by email, however her answers can be vague in hopes of buying time for the unresolved issue at hand. When she’s done [helping] you and ‘out of the office’, the phone receptionist will hand you over to her assistant ‘TAMMY 2′ aka BIATCH to bark at you instead of trying to resolve the issue. Be prepared for T2 to insinuate that you lie, then tell you to have a nice day and then HANG UP ON YOU. They also have a guy who supposedly visits (manages) our complex in person, but I’ve never see him. I’m not sure who’s fooling who, but they aren’t fooling me. They are being paid for a job NOT done. Something needs to change! I don’t think these bad comments are helping but I figured I’d try anyway.
Pros: the landscaping looks good (but then again, those are the landscapers); the buldings are up to date in painting (but getting kinda gritty now that I look at it); the pool is clean (although the patio furniture is old); parking spaces stay painted.
Cons: GARBAGE CAN OVERFLOW AND THEY DON’T GIVE A DAMN; HOA dues are way too high; they don’t find ways to help cut our expenses; their accounting practices are outdated; they waste a lot of money on snail mail; they haven’t developed an ONLINE website for references and email blasts; they lack professionalism
If you are contemplating hiring them to manage your property, THINK TWICE. All other reviews that I’ve read here, no matter how old, are RIGHT ON.
I wonder if this review is going to cost me!!! …

This management company is way behind the times on things that can be done to reduce costs at our HOA. I always seem to find out about efficiency programs and other ways to reduce costs from the companies who assist with them but never has J&F brought anything like this to our HOA.
In the past year we enrolled into a natural gas program called customer choice that is saving us about 13% vs PG&E. This is the type of thing that is very helpful to HOA’s who are always trying to find cost effective ways to reduct costs but J&F would never bring something like this to us. They are too out of touch.
J&F doesn’t even go by their own mission statement which says it will help find ways to be more cost effective. No they wont! They tend to take the money and let the HOA manage it with very little help.
RC

Jones and Forest is a joke, particularly Patricia. This big, fat beast of a woman has got to be the laziest prop. mgr. in the business. She does absolutely anything to get out of fixing issues she knows damn well she’s responsible for. Everyone in this office could give a rats hairy ass about the properties they run, especially mine. They rake you over the coals for anything and everything, raise the HOA dues every year since i’ve been here and haven’t done a single upgrade to date. They even had the balls to let our board decide to paint our complex peach and red without so much as a vote from the owners. No notifications, no proposals of color schemes… nothing. Now i’m living in a condo that looks like the fuck’n Korean church next door. So much for our property values which have already plummited beyond recovery. At this rate I may as well burn it to the f’n ground before I can get outta here!!! Thanks so much for making me feel so honored about having to sign over $ 300 bucks a month… while i’m at it, maybe I’ll burn down their offices too.

Not concerned about tenants. Continual garbage issues. Slow to respond. Moonscape landscaping. Security towed my car and they did nothing to help.

2 years after my initial review I have to say the experience remains the same if not worse. The company does not take the initiative to manage the complex, relies on the residents to inform them of janitorial or maintenance issues, the staff does not respond promptly, email is rarely returned, they botched painting our complex which has a historical designation, and lastly the residents have to call and complain to have simple issues taken care of as the management rarely visits the site.
Not recommended to manage a dog house.

I currently live in a townhouse complex managed by Jones & Forrest. Not only are they constantly telling us they need to raise our HOA dues to cover unnecessary repairs, but they now just butchered our landscaping. They have no idea how to manage our complex. When I email or call to express my concern, I do not receive a response. I believe Jones & Forrest is the type of company that cares little about their clients and more about their own well being. News Flash: Businesses succeed by word of mouth via client satisfaction. Read most of these reviews, and you will know to run from this company… fast.
I am going to work with our board to find a new management company. I strongly encourage others who are looking at hiring Jones & Forrest to look for a different property management company.

We own a townhome managed by Jones and Forrest, in the 5+ years we’ve had the home I have only had 1 issue resolved… and I had to be tenacious to get it resolved. I have NEVER received a callback after leaving them a message… NEVER. And apparently they are out to lunch from 12 – 2. Not sure what they are doing all day besides taking payments and ignoring voicemails. I guess it takes a long lunch and a lot of energy to NOT go the extra mile.

I have gone through 2 other property managers with my HOA before going with Jones & Forrest. They are the best. I can’t say enough about them. Before we went with them, I was working up to 20 hrs per week just making up for the mess that the other property managers made, or just taking care of issues we couldn’t get the others to address. We have difficult construction issues, security, lots of landscaping, and they have handled all of this with an excellent degree of service. As long as they are managing our property, I will continue to live there.
12/​09/​2014. I continue to live in my HOA and I continue to love the service that Jones and Forrest gives us. We live in a difficult part of downtown San Jose and Leonard, who manages our property, has helped us with construction, security, and legal responsibility. You also need to understand that it is the job of the HOA to do what the governing documents lay out as their responsibility. Often an owner will want a property manager to go beyond the scope of the HOA. It is not their job and it’s not good management. There are areas that are the property owners’ responsibility and it is part of the property management company’s job to enforce that boundary.
Our property took a great hit when the bubble burst, but because Jones and Forrest guided us through the solution of 15 years of neglect from previous managers on a shoestring construction budget, our properties are now worth way more than before. We feel very fortunate to have such a great management company.

I also live in a property managed by the immortal J&F. Of the many times I have called seeking assistance with an electrical or plumbing problem that would seemingly be inherent to the structure rather than my individual domicile, the response I receive from J&F is invariably that the problem is mine and that I am 100% responsible. Despite proving them wrong with the assistance of my home insurance provider, their initial response to similar matters never deviates and rarely is any support offered. Kudos to the team for making me feel warm and fuzzy every time I contemptuously cut a check to the HOA

They are very late in reponse in phone and fax. Not really professional at all. They manage our properties poorly: leave the landscape to dead without watering them. Not friendly talking thru phone. Their working hours are wierd… hard to reach them. In general, I am not pleased with their service at all.

Jones and Forrest have been with us since I purchased in 2004. They are okay, familiar with the area and local contractors. Concerns are a lack of comfort with current technologies (e.g. email, online document storage) and a lack of communication. Our building has requested more frequent visits and a report out from them, but this has yet to occur.