Renters Warehouse BW Metro

My last review was removed because I mentioned names so I removed names to explain my experience vs. making it a personal attack.
This review is based on the initial consultation.
It took forever to schedule a meeting with the leasing agent who had to reschedule due to their very busy schedule.
This company has the most expensive up front fees but I still met with them because their company offered the lowest monthly management fees so I could always switch after a tenant was found through another company. The leasing agent was pleasant once we met but wanted to price my condo for a lot less than I was willing — its like they didn’t want a challenge. (My condo ended up renting for a lot more than the leasing agents suggestion) The Leasing Agent also never viewed the other homes in the area to see if they were comparable to my renovated property.
The Leasing Agent only does the leasing and not the monthly management! Sidenote: They keep the entire 5% late fee if a tenant is late… every other company pushes the fee to the owner or keeps half. I understand keeping half to start an eviction process otherwise I think its a little greedy to keep it all especially since the owner is the one who is out when its paid late.

I have used Renters Warehouse to manage my rental property in College Park going on three years now, and it was a great decision. I used to manage it myself, traveling between DC and College Park often, and it was such a headache to find good tenants and to schedule repairs. Now, Renters Warehouse finds great tenants who pay on time. If something breaks, they shoot me an email (my preference over phone), I reply with «ok, take care of it,» and they do. Ah, no need for me to call around for estimates, find out if someone will be home, etc.
I still have to stop by for a walk through when a tenant move out, or if I want to make a major repair or improvement, but mostly I don’t have to be involved anymore. If you have a rental that’s driving you crazy, I recommend letting them handle it. It’s worth a little extra money to avoid a lot of hassle.

David Gurian and his assistant Jackie are a GREAT Team. From day one, David Gurian has impressed me with his professionalism and promptness. I was my own property manager for a bout 4 years, and I did not enjoy it. David and Jackie make it look easy. He addresses the issues with my property and sends me an email as soon it is addressed. If you need a property manager that has your best interest as priority one, then Renter’s Warehouse is the one you should call and hire. As for his one negative review, I have no idea what she is talking about in terms of a non-​response from David. If he is busy, his assistant can help you with any issue from billing to maintenance questions. Trust me, if you are apprehensive about hiring a property manager, call David Gurian. You will be glad that you did, and you can’t beat his price considering the amount of work he puts in for each of his clients.

After a year, still a huge fan of these guys.

This was the first time for us to select a management company to find tenants and manage our properties. We used extra precaution and diligence to find the right company and after a lengthy review process of over six weeks Renter’s Warehouse Washington/​Baltimore (with David Gurian at the helm) emerged as the clear winner among seven reviewed companies. The effort paid off and we are very happy with Renter’s Warehouse. Read on if you like to hear the details.
To manage the process and keep the amount of information managable I created a spreadsheet outlining the score each company received based on a variety of criteria (see below). Additionally a major part of the spreadsheet was the diagram charting the income-​to-​expense ratio over time of every company in painstaking detail. This gives you an impression of how systematically we approached the task.
This following shortlist of companies for evaluation was chosen based on locality as we were looking to about equal the number of local companies with the number of nation-​wide operating ones:
— Renter’s Warehouse
— Real Property Management
— Realty Group Property Management
— Prudential PenFed Realty
— Paradigm Property Management
— 2^nd II None Management
— Urbane Results
The evaluation was devided into roughly four parts: emails and phone calls back and forth exchanging information, one to three meetings face-​to-​face incuding a house vist, review of the two contracts (tenant placement and property management) and detailed recording and charting of the company’s information for comparision.
The scoring was based on the following criteria:
— locality (we wanted a nation-​wide comany with local «touch»): RW brings the legal power and resources of a nation-​wide company with the local knowledge of a Maryland franchise
— contracts (any pitfalls or phrases that put us in a disadvantage?, we looked for how evictions are handled, disputes, maintenance calls, selling at the end of a term and much more): RW’s contracts were readable, straightforward and didn’t include any potentially harmful phrases
— Better Business Bureau record and score (we used total number of entries and how disputes have been handled/​resolved [all large companies have entries]): RW’s total number of entries is fairly low (compared to other companies of this size) and they have been mostly handled well (RW BW Metro doesn’t have any entries!)
— is rental property management the primary business?: many were actually primarily realtors, but property management IS RW’s business
— representation/​knowledge (was he/​she helpful?, time of being in business, quality of the material): RW Baltimore/​Washington scored a full 10 out of 10 here: excellent material and website, deep knowledge and the representative was always helpful in a likable demeanour
— ratings/​reviews found on websites like this: RW had mostly outstanding ratings/​reviews, the bad reviews I found either happened because the person didn’t read the contracts or didn’t understand other aspects of the rental property management business
— responsiveness (this was very important as it is an indicator of the later business relationship): Renter’s Warehouse is outstanding in this category and to this day!
— accuracy and completeness of information: RW always communicates exceptionally well with issues, progress on resolving them and other status updates; in addition the monthly statements are clear and complete and delivered over the web on time
— the pricing: information for this criterium had to be normalized first to allow for comparision: two major concepts emerged: a big upfront payment with low monthly payments or a low upfront payment with higher monthly payments, most companies fall in between those two extremes. All payments can be either a percentage of the expected monthly rental income or absolute Dollars. In addition, most companies have other types of fees either initially or monthly or both: after normalizing, adding the savings contributions for maintenance/​repairs and charting the development over time it was easy to see which companies had an upward slope and by how much. I was surprised by how diverse those graphs were, so it’s definitely worth shopping around! RW had the second-​to-​best ratio before discounts.
— signs of being dishonest: this is tough to pin down, but we tried anyway by cross-​referencing reviews, ratings, the company’s website and looking for ambiguities etc.; we couldn’t find anything for RW
To conclude, we were happy we spent the effort to evaluate the companies: Renter’s Warehouse found wonderful, high-​quality and reliable tenants taking our requirements into consideration. We’ve been using Renter’s Warehouse Baltimore/​Washington now for about 8 – 9 months and there were a few tenant issues that needed resolution: RW communicated clearly at all stages and got the issues resolved. All in all I highly recommend Renter’s Warehouse.