Best Real Estate & Loan Co

I will make this post short and sweet. There is a lot more, but I do not feel like reliving the painful details.
After I moved into a rental unit in Albany, I discovered some major but fixable problems. I sent Robert an email detailing all the issues and he responded by saying he would be over the next day. When he stopped by he yelled at me (and I mean he YELLED at me) and said «If you continue to bother me, I will raise your rent».
Needless to say, I did not want to be screamed at by my landlord, nor did I want my rent to be raised (Albany does not have rent control), so I moved out 3 weeks later. During these three weeks, I was able to meet the neighbors (all of whom were very nice) and learned that this is typical behavior for Rob and they feel bad for anyone for rents from him.
My advice for you is simple: Do not rent from Robert Kuo.

I am personally having many great experiences with bob. He is always doing due diligence to his clients and is a rare good agent.

Robert Kuo is an unethical landlord who will allow safety hazards to persist at his properties rather than spend money on repairs. He will damage your possessions if you allow him access to your home. He will threaten to raise your rent if you request repairs. He is aggressive, hostile, and irrational in his behavior.
Robert Kuo owns and manages a number of rental properties in Albany. We rented a home from him in fall 2015. When we did a walk-​through of the home, he agreed to paint one of the bedrooms while we were away on vacation.
We returned from vacation to discover that he had used spray paint to paint portions of our bedroom, dining room, and kitchen, but did not cover any of our possessions. Our dressers, dining room table, child’s high chair, numerous pots and pans, the apartment stove, and other items were covered in white paint. We sent an email to say that our items had paint on them and we would do our best to clean them. He replied «we try make you guy happy did not do very good job you can use paint remover to clear up.» Thanks, Rob. We spent hours over the next week cleaning paint off our possessions.
As we were settling in, we noticed some serious problems with the home, including:
1. The oven leaked gas when it was on — we called PG&E and they verified it was leaking and issued a repair order.
2. There was exposed electrical wiring in the kitchen and middle bedroom.
3. There was chipping paint along the base of doors and baseboards; in a pre-1970’s home, chipping paint is a lead hazard.
4. When we ran the dishwasher, all the water poured out of the overflow valve (the little round valve next to the sink faucet handle) and flooded the kitchen counter.
We sent Rob an email asking him to repair these items. He came over the next day. The first thing he said was «PG&E always says everything leaks.» He then argued with us that water coming out of the overflow valve is «normal,» insisting that that is how it works in his house (which wouldn’t surprise me! The guy is — in case you haven’t figured it out by now — not the brightest). He told us the exposed electrical wiring would be easy for us to fix ourselves and he didn’t like people like us who aren’t «handy.» And he told us that chipping paint is just how it is in an old house and that we want everything to «be like the Marriott» and we needed to get used to what old houses are like. And these are just the most comprehensible highlights of his hour-​long rant as he stomped around our home and yelled at us. He also rambled on that he had a worm in his nose, that he was a Marine, that we thought we were smart but he made more money than us, that he had a degree in real estate from U.C. Berkeley, and that his son was fat and lazy.
He then produced a change of lease agreement form to change our one-​year lease to a month-​to-​month agreement and told us «you’re not happy… I’m not happy… better you move now.» He told us that if we didn’t get out, he would raise our rent at the end of the year lease and force us out.
He told use that he only buys properties in Albany because they don’t have rent control or a just-​cause eviction law.
In the end, after a week of negotiations, we did sign an agreement to change our lease to a month-​to-​month agreement. In the process he would agree to items, then take them out of the next version, call us repeatedly in the middle of the night, and so on.
He also, surprisingly, replaced the oven with a different (also old) oven, removed the exposed electrical wiring, gave us a can of paint so we could repair the chipping paint ourselves, and sort of fixed the dishwasher (he fixed the overflow problem, but then we realized that the filter in the door was clogged with mold — probably cleanable, but not worth bothering with since we were trying to move). Ironically, once he did these items, we would have stayed in the home if he had behaved differently. But we still had his threat about raising the rent hanging over our heads, and the fact that he was resentful of having to fix basic safety problems like a gas leak made us wonder what other safety problems were going on that we didn’t know about. For example, the stairs were unsteady, with loose nails and boards that continually had to be pushed back into place, and there were signs of water damage to the ceiling.
Eventually we found a better apartment nearby that was well-​maintained. We ended up moving out six weeks after we moved in.
I know the rental market in the Bay Area is so brutal right now that you can end up feeling desperate, like us, and renting from a guy like Rob. But it’s not worth putting your safety at risk!

Robert Kuo first came off as a sketchy man and ended our meeting as a sketchy man as well. There is no office hour or anything. Its very hard to contact him and he doesn’t even stay at his office whenever people tried to stop by. There is no phone call. He won’t receive it. His email is not informative, too short, and unprofessional. For anyone buying a house, save your time for someone else. If there was no star review, I would totally give 0 stars.