Utopia Management

I am moving to San Diego. I found a listing in Serra Mesa for a 2BD/​1BA through Craigslist during Xmas. It was spacious so I agreed with current tenant that I would move in after (his lease finished in mid Jan 2016) as tenant agreed to not show his rental anymore. Tenant said he would be compensated $ 250 to show us his apt and secured tenants per Utopia. I submitted a rental application along with $ 35 credit check fee. I was excited, waiting to move. All of a sudden I got a letter that I was declined and talked to tenant, as he was unaware too. Lost immediate trust with this company and felt bad for tenant because he was probably not compensated for doing a rental manager’s job. Website has a lot of rentals listed so be aware of submitting interests for other properties too. I inquired for other rentals online and said my application and credit checks were on file. They wanted a credit check run for every interested property. And I still got denied! If you’re reading this, please believe all the reviews.

I rented from this company for little less than a year. The people there are all fake and it’s very hard to get a hold of someone when you need to speak to someone specific. I ended up breaking my lease and Utopia honored the agreement and only charged me for one month, they were able to find tenants right away and sent my deposit back in a timely manner. The only problem I had was when I told them I was breaking the lease, they listed the house for a month after I told them I was leaving. The house sat uninhabited for a month because of an arbitrary date and I paid for it that entire time. It does not take an entire month to clean a house that was already cleaned. It would have saved me $ 2500.
I would probably not rent from this company again but they did treat me better than others. I will admit that most shady and surreptitious real estate management companies are byproducts of irresponsible and reprehensible renters.

I had the worst experience renting from Utopia Management. I am a single father with joint custody of 2 young boys. I was looking for a great neighborhood close to San Marcos schools. I found the property listed on Craigslist and it is in a great neighborhood. I was shown the property at night with the electricity turned off it was difficult to closely inspect. The close of escrow on my house was getting close so I decided to rent the property & sign a year lease. I set up a walk through with Utopia but they did not send an agent. I found over 25 defects with some major like non working plumbing, electrical outlets not working. I was surprised a professional management company would rent a unit in that condition. I listed the items on walk through and emailed the list to Utopia. The manager Johanna Williams assured me the defects would be fixed. Initially the technician came to address some of the items but most were overlooked. I kept getting written refusals stating the defects did not effect habitability. Not familiar with the law I consulted with the code and contacted legal aid. I ended up taking Utopia and the landlord Gueval Investments to small claims court and was awarded a judgement. Under the law the defendant has 30 days to pay or appeal. It has been over 60 days without payment or appeal. I have now filed a levy against property since Utopia has re-​rented the property. These are unscrupulous people who practice deceptively. Do your self a favor and pass on any of their rental units!

Utopia has been our property manager for 3.5 years. We pay on time or early every month. Our rent is raised every year but not horribly. When we have had an issue it’s been handled in a timely manner. (we have had very few). Not giving them 5 star because we clearly moved in to the place just as the previous tenants left it. No touch up on walls or anything. But we did it and have been happy. If upon move out things change I will update but we are not planning on moving for quite some time. I would rent from them again.

Horrible Management Company, rented a home through them, got caught in the middle of the landlord and the management company. Landlord is awesome, Utopia is a joke, mismanagement of funds, dirty disgusting house which they claimed to «clean». Refused to repair items which were damaged by previous tenants, claimed we were lying when we reported the damages to the home in the 10 day property report. Blinds were hanging off the wall, broken in several rooms, carpet was dirty, my wife spent 6 hours cleaning the kitchen. The refrigerator was broken (refused to repair, I ended up fixing myself). The list goes on and on. They also turned the power off to the property when the tenants moved out and left raw chicken in the refrigerator of a «clean house» which bakes in the heat for two weeks.
I have no hard feelings though, we love the house we are in, landlord turned out to be wonderful, she is suffering from this company still though, just found out last week Utopia never paid the homeowner dues the whole time they managed the property and now she is being sued by the homeowner association. To prove they are incompetent and have no idea what they are doing, when we moved in they gave us the rules of the homeowner association, well come to find out, they gave us rules to the wrong homeowner association lol.
Pure and complete IMCOMPETENCE! I wouldn’t trust them with my dog house!

So, everyone I’ve talked to at Utopia is really kind. My problem is not with how my husband and I have been treated on an interpersonal level, just to make that clear.
There have been a series of problems which I won’t go into because it would really take too long, and it isn’t worth it. Because of these problems, we asked Utopia for a rent credit. They agreed to give us one, yay Utopia! Unfortunately, we have reminded them several times (since October), and have yet to receive a credit. We were last told in late November or early December that they were sorry and our credit would show on the next (January) statement… SURPRISE, it did not. I do not want to bash on the company, I’m just really confused as to how, as a company, it can be so inefficient and incompetent. Our apartment is nice; so, it has nothing to do with the property itself. However, if my husband and I ever own property, I would never allow Utopia to manage it, and I would dissuade others as well.

Every bad thing that people are saying on here is true. This place is awful. They advertised a clean freshly painted house with clean carpet. We asked multiple times that this was going to happen before we moved in because when they showed it to us it was gross. They told us multiple times that it would be. When we moved in, it wasn’t. We then were told that it was just not going to happen and to just deal with it.
No one there seems to care in the least bit about costumer service or having any sort of a respectable company. I’ve never seen anything like it.

BEWARE OF THIS COMPANY!!! Every bad review here is absolutely correct about this company. I would give them –10 if I could. First the ladies at the front desk and answering the phone are not helpful and they can be very rude. When we went to the office to sign the lease as soon as we cross the door they look at us like what are you doing here? we were brougt up to this meeting room and they gave us the contract over 15 pages to go over and we asked them for time to read it and it looked like they didnt like the idea but we are not going to just sign it and leave. It took us about 2 hours to go over the contract and ask about everything that looked shady because this contract is so much bs… If you are 1 day late in rent they will charge you 7% of your rent in fees, the contract will auto renew if you dont cancel the lease 3 – 1 months before the lease is due, if you cancel the lease they will charge you $ 300 but if they need to cancel it or the owner decides to sell the house they will still charge you $ 200, they dont have answers about the places they rent or the communities where the houses are located. They want you to call the HOA and find out yourself but guess what? since you are not the owner of the house the HOA doesnt want to talk to you so yeah you will need to ask around your neighbors or find out by yourself about the rules.
We asked them about the parking since there is no street parking in the community and the garage only fits 2 cars and we have 3 and they could never gives an answer. Now we have to park a mile away every night because the parking spaces in front of our door we cant use them per the HOA. They are fire lines so no one can park in the parking spaces in front of their house. We got one of our cars towed already since we forgot to move it one night.
The house looked okay at first but it was a mess. I cant give much details because apparently they tend to retaliate on their customers according to some reviews here and I believe it since they are a complete mess and super disorganized. Every time you call them they wont pick up almost an answer machine and when they call you back they all sound like its so much work when they are getting paid for to do that. If they dont like they job they should quit its ridiculuos the horrible customer service they have. We are so sorry we signed the lease on that house. Will not renew with them.

#6211 450 J Street. I HOPE THIS FINDS THE OWNER OF THE UNIT
I wish I would have read the reviews prior to moving into a unit managed by UTOPIA. I have literally never Unilocaled before because no experience has been this poor. I lived in a unit for a year. I always paid rent on time and held up my end of the lease agreement. However, in the dead of summer the AC unit broke in the unit. I put in a maintenance request the next day. I heard zero in response for 2 weeks at which point I called and left a message. Again no response. So I called 3 days later and submitted an email to management about getting the AC fixed. Finally, after 3 weeks of a broken AC unit I heard from UTOPIA. All they said was we’ll put the request through right away. 2 more weeks and still nothing. I called, emailed and submitted another maintenance request. UTOPIA finally sent someone out 10 days later. The AC guy walks into my house and immediately says, «I have no idea why they sent me. They know I do not work on high rise units. I’m not educated in that area. They need to send out a specialist.» So he took some notes off my AC unit forwarded them to UTOPIA that day. A week goes by and still no word on the «specialist» coming out to fix my AC. So I call, email, and submit another request. 6 days later someone finally shows up to fix the AC. After 2 months in the dead of summer they finally upheld their end of the lease agreement. At least I had thought. But when the AC guy finished up he presented me with the bill. Needless to say this management company has zero cares other than rent money is paid on time about the units they manage and the people living in them.
I have already cautioned two of my friends who were considering a unit they manage in OB.

WHY DIDN’T I READ THESE REVIEWS BEFORE I RENTED OUR NEW PLACE! (TEAR)
I am extremely bummed that I am now in a 1 year lease with this company. All of the other people who gave them bad reviews have experience a similar situation as mine.
1. Their employees know nothing about the properties they are renting/​showing.
2. They showed us the apartment while it was still filthy and promised to have it ready by the move in date. That was a LIE!
3. I keep calling the person in charge of our concerns and she ignores my calls and sends me to voicemail every time! She has even tried retaliating just becasue I am asking for better service. Extremely unprofessional!
4. We have been living here for 1 week and I am still waiting for our carpet to get replaced and other items to get fixed.
Overall really bad experience! Be careful and just avoid the headaches! They act like rent is cheap! they are quick to charge you an arm and a leg but when it comes to them doing their job it is a nightmare.

Utopia has been great during our tenancy for the most part. We recently were assigned a new manager, after receiving notice that the home was being sold (Ryan and Sara have been great). When we tried to reach out to our new manager (don’t even know her name) she refused to take our calls, all we wanted was answers. Katie took our calls and thankfully when she was out another manager Samantha was able to answer all of our questions, both of them were great and we finally did not feel like an inconvenience. Overall I would recommend Utopia Management but be careful who you have managing your tenants.

I had a frustrating experience upon move in but this company did everything they could to accommodate me and make it a positive experience. I would definitely recommend them.

My husband and I have called and left messages with this company and they never return calls. We wanted to see some homes that they have listing on and manage. They hire very inadequate people to manage the calls and show property! Property owners beware!

This is an update to my previous review which appears to have been hidden. The negative reviews here appear to have a selection bias from something which Utopia did in the past to encourage positive Unilocal reviews. Unilocal punishes that behavior with lightning bolts from the sky, so that is the explanation for the lack of positive reviews. Unilocal simply deleted them all.
So I was super nervous going into it, when my wife found our current place on Craigslist. The place was basically perfect (and it definitely still is), but looking at the wall of bad reviews for Utopia I have to admit, I was *very* close to saying no. But my wife insisted, and boy am I glad I relented.
We dealt with Katie during our application and move-​in process, and she was absolutely delightful and professional and a pleasure to deal with. The folks working in the office are pretty clearly super busy, but whenever we had questions, we always got a return call within an hour or two of leaving a message if they couldn’t answer right away.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that all property management companies only make money when you move in or move out of your place. They get a finder’s fee when you move in and whatever they can line-​item out of your deposit when you move out. So you have to understand that there is enormous incentive for these companies to have high resident churn. So this is why you’ll see yearly rent increases written into the contract: So you’ll move out and they can try to keep your deposit and get the finder’s fee for another tenant. But the annual rent increase for this new place isn’t as bad as it is elsewhere, and it will actually work out pretty perfectly for us, since we’re only staying in the country for a couple of years anyway. The last place we lived hiked rent twenty percent annually. They were *forcing* churn, man. Anyways, the contract we signed wasn’t nearly as bad as the other guy makes it sound. There’s some pretty standard stuff in there, and a couple extra paragraphs for people to get out of a lease that want to buy a place using Utopia’s realtor. Whatever, miscellany.
The transfer of keys (and copies of our lease) at a meeting with Katie at their office in town was quick. When we moved in, the place was clean. So far, so good! I’ll update this review when I have more dealings to review.

Negative one star! They show you mass showings of a place and it’s hardly an open house! Filth, pet odors and absolutely zero knowledge of the associations or grounds of the condos they represent!
They tell you anything to get you to their group meeting and then you realize you’ve been duped !
Rent elsewhere because they are rude, hard to get ahold of and have no knowledge of the property they show!
Also showing filthy homes is not very professional!
Also the 5 star review below me claims Utopia is amazing, the review she left is 3 months old and 9 days ago she blasts another management company. So why is she looking for another place if she is so happy with Utopia or maybe she is officiated and reviewing so boost utopia and hurt other companies ??? Just sayin this place is Not legit !

They do a terrible job! I handed them my house with the condition that no pets would be allowed. Next thing I know they rented it out to a family with a dog. Johanna told me «it’s just a small indoor dog, not much damage can be done». My son went to the property to pick up the mail and witnessed that the dog is actually huge! Lately I’ve been getting «work orders» where they want me pay of damaged sprinkles and fence. My next door neighbor says it’s the dog that has been digging in the backyard, damaging things. I told them I would not authorize charges. When you tell them something they don’t want to hear, they simply ignore you. This company consists of liars. I am about to replace them, but thought I should first post this comment for others to be aware!

Indifferebt agents. I tried to contact this company on 3 separate properties for rent over a month time period. One was also for sale and I was interested in buying.
I left several messages and many emails with no response at all but after a week to tell me the property had been rented.
If I had a property managed by them I’d be very upset the prospective qualified renters are being completely ignored.
From the other reviews I’ve read they don’t keep up their properties and don’t get back to prospective renters.
Gave 1 star because you have to do minimum of one. They don’t deserve even 1.

4153 Idaho unit 9 for sale.
Currently, my two other roommates and myself have been living in this unit for over a year and the owner flexed their option to sell the unit.
Ryan Donigan, the real estate representative has been trying to strong arm us for a week now. We received an email last Friday about the unit being sold and the next step was to set up a time this week to meet. Our schedules didn’t match this week between tenants and Ryan, then without communication to us, sent us a letter to show the property. We did not give consent to show the unit. Also, he is trying to force cleaning and showings this weekend.
We are happy to comply and allow this place to be sold but Ryan withdrew from meeting with us this week and is on his own schedule towards getting this sold. We have not seen any legal letter to sell the place and or have been on communication with him.
He keeps saying the owner is putting pressure on him to sell and that he «hopes that the new investors will be a good match for us to stay». Ryan has also flexed sending the owners clause in our contract to pressure us to show the unit his weekend.
Personally, we don’t care if we move out but would rather not do business in future with utopia management due to their lack of professionalism, lack of communication, strange clauses in the contract and over all, affecting our 3 lively hoods and hurting our ability to function properly in our daily lives. 2 of us left work today because we didn’t give consent to have them in the place today and tomorrow. This is embarrassing to have to leave work.
As for unit 9. The place is in a good location. Small living space for 3 people. Shower heads are low. No central air in the place so it gets super hot in the summer. Plus the dumpster out back, during the summer gets pretty annoying. Flys make their way upstairs and its a mess. Watch out for alleyway traffic from homeless and trash pickers. Tends to be domestic fights in the alleyway from a neighbors but the police who occupy the park across the way are readily accessible.
Hope this helps.

SAN DIEGO UTOPIA PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
RENTER BEWARE!!! HORRIBLE COMPANY!!!
this is by far the worst property management company i have ever had to deal with!!! i have been with this company for over a year and have had nothing but problems. they advertise a working fireplace but it has never worked and the guys have been out but don’t feel like fixing it i guess? the lights keep blowing out, the shower faucet and garbage disposal has leaked since day one and has never been repaired. i have submitted multiple requests with no response. when they do come out they do not fix anything besides giving me extra light bulbs. the guys are nice but that doesn’t fix the problems.

We had an appointment today for a showing at 550 15^th Street and the agent never showed up. Calls while waiting out front went unanswered. A call to the office was of no help, they just kept offering to send us to the agents voice mail and were completely unconcerned that we were waiting and no one was showing. We both left work for this appointment and asked if someone else could come meet us, again the only offer of help was to send us to voice mail. Now 5 hours after the scheduled appointment, no show and many messages later we still have not received a call from the agent.
Needless to say we will not even consider a place from this management company moving forward. They certainly don’t want to rent the places they are managing and are not doing the owners they manage for any justice.