Hill & Company Property Management

Don’t hire them to be your rental agent. Terrible. A costly and disheartening experience.

I am a condo owner in a Tiburon complex that is now being managed by Hill and Co. Our property manager is LuAnn.
When we first purchased our condo about 10 years ago the complex was in dire need of upgrades and repairs. The place looked old and rundown. Obviously this got us a better deal on the price, but once we were owners we wanted to see improvements. Unfortunately our Board tried different managers with no success until they finally hired Hill and Co. Since then our complex has undergone numerous visual improvements, and more importantly they have seen to it that long overdue repairs and replacements have been made to the units and common building. The property manager has done an excellent job of contracting with very competent suppliers that take care of landscaping, pool maintenance, and everyday repairs. Whenever there are any issues in the complex, we all know that a simple phone call to Hill and Co. will result in someone looking into the matter. As an owner I am extremely pleased with the job that Hill and Co. has done in not only protecting my investment, but in actually raising the value of our property.

I was a little surprised by all the negative reviews for Hill and Company as I’ve lived in a rental property that they manage for about 10 years. They do a good job re. maintenance and have been responsive when we’ve had an issue that needs to be addressed. We had a problem re. the incompetence of one of the plumbers they sent out but they responded quickly and sent somebody who fixed the problem.

DON’T HIRE THIS COMPANY TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR PROPERTY.
I should have looked on Unilocal first as most of these seem to be 1 star, very upset landlords or tenants. They can’t pay bills on time, ruined my credit, the building is not being taken care of, they don’t respond even after asking a half dozen times for basic things they should have taken care of without being asked. The oversights are astounding with far reaching consequences even tho I’ve made them aware ad NAUSEUM, STILL not rectified, no explanation, no apology, no response. Jay Costello the owner is a smug, rude, unprofessional, unresponsive joke who could care less and faced with serious complaints says he will look into the problems but never does and finally hangs up on you. MORE TO COME. The company takes his lead, they stink from the head down like a nasty dead fish and you will be the one left holding the bag. SERVICES NOT RENDERED AND DAMAGES. After being reminded many times in writing, I still have no responses to my very valid questions about what is going on with my property. I can’t even get them to confirm a date to hand over the files. I have lost countless hours in stress trying to get any information from them. I should have been tipped off by the fact that they didn’t request a walk through prior to signing. They haven’t cleaned the common areas in 6 months even tho I’ve been on them constantly. Won’t rent the parking spaces. Communication is a joke. I wish I could add pics to show the state of how they will care for your property. For your own sake, don’t hire this firm. You will get screwed, and they have no ethics about it.

I would give them zero stars if possible. After living in one of their buildings for a couple of years and dealing with the Stockhold Syndrome they induced on all of us, I had enough. My new landlord is SO much better; it’s like night and day. H&C will refuse to fix anything, tell you that it is your responsibility to fix things, raise rent astronomically if possible, and harass you for asking them to fix things. I will NEVER rent a property managed by them again. I don’t understand how this place can still be in business with how terrible they are. They do not have souls.

I believe being a property manager is a thankless job. A whole lot of problems, complaints, and issues without much satisfaction. That said, April Lockner, the property manager from Hill & Co of the Amelia in San Francisco is stellar and deserves many thanks on many fronts. As an HOA board member of that building, I had previously experienced horrendous property managers until Hill & Co decided April would best fit for our building. From the start, she gave us unbelievable attention, corrected previous problems and got us on the right track with budgets, laws, maintenance and more. Her working relationships with vendors and her board members is equally commendable and respect-​worthy. We have had several issues in the past 2 years that have demanded immediate attention and required a steady hand. In each instance, April has gone over and above! Just this past 4^th of July weekend, one of our condo units had a huge internal flood with plenty of collateral damage. After the fire department came to turn water and electricity off in that unit, April was contacted. Within 5 minutes she contacted the owner of the unit (out of town but close), the plumbers, the security company to secure the apartment that was compromised, and the commercial property manager with spaces below the flooded condo. All responded promptly, and the immediate emergency was handled. She is thorough, discreet and relieves the inherent stress of many people and personalities that live within a condominium community.
I am thankfully impressed!

This review is for the Hill & Co.-managed property at 1280 15^th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94 122. Avoid at all costs. It is atrociously (mis)managed. I became the only person I know to move from rent-​controlled to market-​rate housing in 2015, voluntarily doubling my rent, just to get away from the nightmare that is this property. During my several years as a resident, here’s what I experienced and saw:
1. Two bedbug infestations in the building, one of which directly affected my unit. One of the infestations was allegedly based on an ignorant tenant salvaging a mattress from off the street.
2. Improper or fraudulent charges that take weeks to refund. Recently, Hill & Co. improperly overcharged me for rent (debited my checking account for more than authorized), and it took me three weeks and repeated emails/​calls to obtain a refund. In their first attempt to refund the money, they incompetently issued a check to a previous (now-​deceased) tenant rather than me. Immediately after I first moved into the building, management deprived all tenants of parking for two months to do renovations, but continued to charge us full rent — until I sent a demand letter indicating that they were in breach of contract.
3. Malfunctioning elevator. On one occasion, I was trapped in the building elevator for 45 minutes and had to be released by the San Francisco Fire Department. (Building management aggressively confronted and blamed me for being trapped.)
4. Heat not up to code. During the winter, my unit was not in compliance with the housing code’s requirement that units be heated to 68 degrees. The temperature was often in the 57 – 65 degree range, and my hands would feel icy as I tried to work from home.
5. Improperly maintained common areas. Due to stray cat (s), there are cat feces throughout the parking lot that are not regularly cleaned and which it’s often difficult to avoid stepping in.
6. Insecure mailboxes: my mailbox was in a row of mailboxes that did not lock properly, meaning that others could access or steal your mail.
7. Thefts of packages delivered to building. On multiple occasions, residents left distressed notes saying that Amazon or similar packages left for them at the front of the building had been stolen. (Whether the packages were stolen by unethical neighbors or non-​residents improperly accessing the building is unclear.)
These are just the worst, big-​picture items. Of course, there were the day-​to-​day aggravations: resident litter in common areas that wasn’t promptly cleaned by management; thin walls (years of hearing one neighbor’s weird noises and battle and a neighboring couple’s loud, late-​night fights), tiny trash chutes that were too small to accommodate normal-​sized trash bags, laundry wars, and the downer of living in a depressing, horribly ugly, ‘60s building.
In sum: your money mailed to dead people, bedbugs, cat feces, elevator nightmares, freezing cold unit on cold winter days, and mail and packages available to others for the taking. Just say no.

I wish I could give negative stars — this particular office of Hill and Co. gave us the absolute worst experience of my life. The building manager could not have been less interested in the tenants or the law.
After we took possession of our apt. their onsite manager ripped out all the cable (entering our apt. w/​o our permission!). When I inquired about this to the building manager at Jackson St, I was told to just have it re-​installed and that it would not cost me anything. Well, it did cost me. And despite the promise of repayment I never received a dime. In fact, after we moved in they sent us a bill for .46 cents (apparently they had made some mistake and under-​charged us) Woo-​Hoo!
We finally left because we could not trust them and felt that the building was not safe to live in with them managing (or not managing) it.
We lost a lot of money because of Hill and Co’s mismanagement, indifference and outright lies. Stay far, far away from this office.

I feel like I’m definitely rowing against the stream here, but we just moved out of a property managed by Hill & Co (135 Gardenside) after about 5.5 years, and we couldn’t have been happier with them as landlords. We never had any issues with getting things fixed or having problems addressed, and the one time we had a problem with a neighbor being obnoxiously loud, they were on it in a heartbeat. They raised our rent at the end of most of our 1 year periods, but nothing exorbitant. Finally, when we moved out they were extremely friendly and did not try to screw us in the least on our deposit; I was actually pleasantly surprised at how much we got back. That has definitely not been the case with other places I’ve lived. Overall, I can’t come up with anything bad to say about them.

Hill and Company is TERRIBLE in every aspect of rental management. They are unresponsive, unreasonable, and extremely difficult to work with. When I moved into my apartment it was not cleaned, painted, or ready. There was still rotten food in the fridge and everything was dusty and filthy. I spent an entire weekend cleaning it myself, and when I brought it to their attention they did nothing to fix it. Not even an apology. The building I live in is old and run down, and they do absolutely nothing to maintain it.
I moved out of my building just to get away from Hill and Co. If you can help it, do not ever rent from them. They are unethical and do not deserve to be in business.

Hill & Co. is awful, it’s very clear that they do not care about resolving any issues or working with home owners. It’s obvious that all they care about is the HOA contract. Dealing with their property managers is very frustrating, they often do not return calls/​emails, and are generally very unprofessional and incompetent.
The one time I was actually scheduled to have someone observe a situation, they did not show up at the time they were supposed to. Having taken time from work to be available this was extremely frustrating. After inquiring about the situation they very condescendingly explained that scheduling appointments for multiple people is difficult and I should be able to understand. Well, it’s not difficult and I don’t understand! Perhaps the staff at Hill & Co. should communicate better with each other and attempt to be professional!

These people are the worst. I contacted them twice (voicemails because the HOA contact never answers her phone) about obtaining information pertaining to their HOA management services and never received a callback. Great business model Hill & Co. Couldn’t be happier about dodging that bullet.

I have to agree with others, who have found the service and management of Hill & Co. far below par. Pretty ineffectual, late with repairs and not tenant friendly. Steer clear of properties managed by them.

The worst, once you move in they wont fix anything. Terrible land lords. Stay away and lease from someone else if possible. This company could not be more unresponsive. They had the nerve to tell me it was my responsibility to fix the apartment/​flat and that the owner would not put any money into a property once it is leased. «Ghetto» to say the lease which is how I rate this company!

Total scumbags and liars. They are useless property managers and if you are living in an HOA, it is just a recurring nightmare to deal with these idiots. Absolutely stay away from the properties that they manage and if you are a owner or a Board stay away from hiring these guys as your property/​community manager. They will totally destroy your properties and are non-​professionals.

I have to say as an HOA board member, one of the hardest things to do is to change property management companies. First of all finding a new management company is hard, talking to homeowners about the change is hard, and going through the change is hard… all for a board made up of volunteers.
I was very impressed with Hill & Co going through our transition. They were understanding that we couldn’t move quickly to sign up with them, and they assigned a property manager to us (April) who was very knowledgable and professional. One of the biggest strengths of working with Hill & Co was that if our property manager didn’t have the answer to a question someone else did. And we had lots of questions and issues that needed to be resolved.
If you are on an HOA board of directors you know how important it is to have a solid property manager to support you, especially since you’re volunteering your time for your property and at the end of the day you are responsible to the other homeowners in your property. I felt the Hill & Co fees were reasonable compared to what I saw from other property management companies (not the cheapest, but reasonable) and they saved me personally a ton of time and stress. Our property manager was always there to help us dig through complex issues and fix simple things quickly.

Wonderful rental company; staff on Union Street are responsive and professional, yet friendly. I loved my apartment in the marina and hated leaving it. But, if I move back to the city, I will be sure to go directly to Hill and Company.

This company is the manager of my building in a condominium in San Francisco. The various reps we have had assigned to our property have been: 1. Non-​responsive (don’t answer phone calls or email), 2. Unprofessional (I can’t fill out that form, if I did that, that’s what I’d do all day), 3, and inconsistent. If we could have the same rep., maybe it would be better. I am not sure how much these reps make (Hill and Co, sure takes in a big chunk of change) but they are terrible. In one case, the woman rep for our building spend more time telling me why she couldn’t do something, than if she had just done it herself. I have lived in 4 condos in SF, and this company, and their reps, are the absolute worst!

Stay away, stay away, stay away! Cheapest landlords I have ever had the misfortune to deal with, totally unwilling to spend the money to properly fix anything. Everything just becomes a recurring nightmare.