Martin Building Company

Our small company had a 1yr lease with Martin Building Company, and it was one of the most poorly-​managed and outright unethical companies I’ve ever interacted with. They lied to us about construction plans on the building in order to get us to sign the lease. Once we moved in, they started jack hammering and tearing up the other units next to ours. We couldn’t even function as a business during work hours. It was the worst. Then when construction had finished and the place was workable, they kicked us out, which was their prerogative since the lease had expired, but just such a sleazy move. The whole time we were there, Sara Bartels and the other Martin employees continued to lie to us about construction plans, and as others have noted, general building management was pretty poor. Avoid like the plague.

I have lived in 6 Mint for over a year, which is managed by Martin Building. The architecture, esthetics and restoration are some of the best in the city. Unfortunately the neighborhood is one of the worst. I work in the Tenderloin and the MInt rivals it for safety and noise. Most nights Mezzanine has events, which are incredibly loud. There are fights in the plaza between patrons of the club and someone was murdered last year. The windows are the original single-​pain that were installed with the building. Because of this, most sounds outside can be heard in the units (drug addicts, altercations, skateboarders), as well as the neighbors — all which make it impossible to sleep if you have a bedroom on the plaza side.
The management by Martin Building is the worst part. Terrible service, incredibly rude and totally unwilling to help. If you have an issue, they are simply non-​responsive. (HOA is around $ 1k per unit). They will not help with noise, issues with the unit, and parking.
If you’re considering moving in here, I highly advise that you come by at 10pm on a Friday night. It’s simply not a safe place to live and it’s dramatically overpriced.

Martin Building Company manages the Mint Plaza building in which I am living. The positives is that the building is clean and kept updated. I often see the janitor working on repairing things. Another plus is the security service. They are helpful and always ready to get out of their way to help you.
A negative though is trash management. For a 10-​story building, we have only 4 regular-​size trash bins in the garage. Needless to say that these get filled up very fast, and on the week-​end they are regularly overflowing. You are threatened to be fined, but the only alternative is to exit the garage, and go to the trash room located in the adjacent building. This room also doesn’t have proper garbage cans, so people just end up throwing trash on the ground. This is neither pleasant nor sanitary.

Our company had a one year lease through Martin Building Co. at 580 Howard — we have moved out in October 2012 and up to this date (Jan 2013) we have not received our 2-​month security deposit back. We were very patient with them until about now.
They do not respond to e-​mails and half of the time their phone doesn’t work or they don’t pick up, never mind calling you back. In my 10+ years as an entrepreneur and renting from various offices spaces in and outside the US this is by far the worst property manager I’ve ever dealt with.
Worth mentioning is that the positive review is from one of their employees.
UPDATE: They have finally have contacted us and seem to be doing an effort to resolve the issue.

As an HOA manager, working with developers can be sometimes difficult due to the fact that they would like to build and then move on to their next project. However this is not the case with Martin Building. In 2007 I was the HOA managers for one of their communities that had been sold out already, and it was fantastic. MBC was still there if something was an issue, construction wise. Not all developers do that. Right now I work with them as a current owner on an HOA and they are completely present in the association, and have always worked for the good of the community. It’s really difficult to find developers like Martin Building, or great people like them either. It’s been a pleasure working with them.