Casas de Santa Fe

Our trip to Santa Fe started with a bang when we visited the Management office for the Casas de Santa Fe. Todd, the Owner, came up to greet us, and he and his dog were super friendly!
In fact, Todd provided us with a ‘must see’ list of places to visit like 10,000 Waves (going there this afternoon), as well as some solid restaurants and coffee shops.
Aside from his recommendations, his welcoming spirit, friendly help and suggestions and enthusiastic passion for this area, really jump started our visit to Santa Fe!
Next time we visit, will absolutely consider renting one of his lovely casitas, and we’ll be sure to tell our friends about him and his rentals.

Great company for both rentals and renting homes out as well. Many movie company’s use Casas de Santa Fe for all their crews and stars. Great people and great service.

my first call for long-​term & vacation rentals in santa fe. i’ve lived here for five years as a midlife chill-​out after fifteen intense years in the arts & culture world. i’ve used casas extensively, both to find long-​term rentals for myself & vacation rentals for visiting friends & artists. casas has consistently gone the extra distance to work with my very particular tastes & needs, as well as those of my artists. i give them my highest recommendation.

Lynn Zeck is really great. Casas has some nice properties but they go fast.

We have been working with Casas for nearly two years now to rent our home in Santa Fe for short term rentals. Our experience is that they have been nothing but top notch, professional and responsive. Since our primary home is two thousand miles away, it’s difficult to manage the SF house. We’ve had our share of minor issues, including power, phone and internet outages, leaks and garden needs. In every case, Todd and his team have been incredibly communicative, fast to respond and courteous. I’d recommend Casas for people want to rent their homes and for people who want a great experience while visiting Santa Fe.

I’ve only had good experiences renting houses short and long term from Casas. I hope one day to rent my house using them, and will see if the experience is as top knotch on the other side! I can only believe it will be given what I’ve seen over several years.

Avoid renting from Casas de Santa Fe if at all possible. The staff is fairly incompetent and I don’t believe they deal honestly with their tenants. They managed a property I rented and the first year they took over, simply forgot to contact me to renew my lease. I had to contact them and when I went to sign it, found it had incorrect dates. The real nightmare started when I vacated. They mailed my deposit check to the wrong address. When I finally was able to pick it up, I was appalled to find that I had been charged over $ 100 for cleaning! I’ve lived in dozens of houses and apartments across the country and never once lost a penny of my deposit. Believe me, if I couldn’t get the place clean enough for them, no one can. I think it’s a bit of a scam. Do not rent from Casas.

Simply put, Casas de Santa Fe is tops when it comes to home rentals in Santa Fe. No rants, no raves, just tops.

Todd at Casas de Santa Fe proved long on charm, but short on performance, and downright sketchy when it came to navigating that tricky terrain between landlord and tenant. After the initial rental agreement was accomplished, he disappeared, and suddenly became unavailable by phone.
Casas have been weird about dealing honestly and openly with me, as a landlord, asking at one point, whether I would provide window screens for the tenants, and presenting me with a bill for these. When I said I really had not intended to provide these, as I had never needed them when living in my home in Santa Fe, I discovered that the screens had already been ordered and paid for, and were scheduled to be installed. As this is an architect-​designed home, design and compatibility were of the utmost importance, and as the owner, I should have been consulted BEFOREHAND.
But Casas approved the tenant’s purchase of the screens and tried to get money from me after the fact. They were not authorized to approve installations to my property. When I protested this, I was told that they would have them removed, but this was not done. This was a shakedown — it emerged that agent and tenant had discussed getting the work done and asking for money from me later. When I protested being given a bill for work I did not agree to do, they said, oh, no, the tenant doesn’t really expect you to pay for them! It was a fait accompli. Agent and tenant planned modifications to my home and made them without my knowledge, then tried to get me to pay for them after the fact.
Todd initially told me that the gardening bill was to be billed to tenants («oh, we get all that from the tenant! you don’t have to worry about that!»), but the minute we were signed up, had me retain the services of a gardener, whose bills, for hundreds of dollars at a time, ate into my rent to the point that I questioned why I was bothering to rent the place. After six months, when I protested that it was eating too much into my rent proceeds, Todd said, «oh, you don’t have to pay for the gardener!» It was schizy. First he said I didn’t have to pay, then he had me arrange with a gardener to do routine maintenance as well as cleanup and beautification. Then he said I didn’t have to pay for that! Which was it? I was out thousands by the time I was told «oh, no, you don’t have to pay for that!»
He further negotiated a shared water bill, and even though I let him know immediately, the day of the lease-​signing, that there was a miscalculation in that, and sought to correct it with the tenants, he did not convey my corrections to them. I let it go as a matter of start-​up goodwill, but it was a financial hit — another one engineered by Casas.
Upon the end of my one-​year lease, yet another sketchy gambit: Todd wrote asking for an «extension» of my lease to June 30. I declined an extension. I had a copy of the lease I had agreed to, and it gave a term of «one year, one month, and one day» from April 30^th, 2010, which meant our lease was up on May 31^st. I had been waiting a year for the tenants to leave, so I could sell my house. It was a distressed property, and extremely important to me that I be able to move on selling it at the end of my lease. Todd’s asking for an «extension» to June 30^th meant he knew the lease was to end on May 31. But at the same time that he was asking for an extension to June 30, his argument was shifting to claiming the end-​date of our lease was June 30^th — the exact date until which his tenants wanted to stay! If the lease said June 30, why was he asking for an extension to June 30?
I produced the copy of the lease Casas had sent me, in which the term stated was «one year, one month, and one day». At this point, Todd produced a lease which said «one year, TWO months, and one day!» This was not a lease I had ever been shown. It engineered the tenants’ exit to the date of the «extension» they were seeking. All very «convenient», and very distasteful.
I do not feel I was represented by this agent. I feel he was all about keeping the tenant in there, to ensure an income stream for his rental business. He made errors of property name in one place on our lease (!), a critical miscalculation of the ending date, and got the property address wrong even in our final emails! The female partner is an unhelpful, bloodless southern belle, with an antebellum manner, and a tinny insincerity that is almost worth the excursion to 204 North Guadalupe.
It appears these folks are used to preying on absentee landlords, who generally are too far away to protest petty misconduct. Despite documentary evidence of an end-​date on my lease, they would not acknowledge their error. If, indeed, it was an error, and they provided landlord and tenant with two different leases, it is for the agent to resolve.
Doing business by email does not relieve the agent of the duty to be accurate. Skip Casas — find an ethical rental agent!