Wellman Property Management, Inc

I assumed Wellman’s vanished, we can’t find anything out of curiousity on them in the yellow pages/​whites pages or google, we assumed that he went out of business, many years ago.

I am the owner of an 8 unit apartment in Santa Monica and have used Wellman’s services for the last 5 years. Previously my property was managed by EGL properties and before that Playa Vista. Wellman is far better than the first 2, both of which I had to cancel due to abusive practices such as out right neglect in the first case and over charging for maintenance in the second case.
A very important difference between Wellman and most other management companies is that he only uses 3^rd party vendors to do the maintenance in order to avoid a conflict of interest. When the management company also does the maintenance there is an irresistible temptation to overcharge for and do unneeded maintenance. Wellman understands this and avoids the problem by removing the temptation.
Wellman is able to get and keep good people at his company. I have had the same property manager for the entire 5 years (Jessica Carillo) and she is professional in all respects. She has answered each of the hundreds of emails I have sent her over the past 60 months with an average response time of 12 hours. She has no tolerance for abusive tenants, such as the one that tried to rent out his unit with Airbnb, and due to the intense screening process, I have never had a month of lost rent due to a non-​paying tenant. 8 units, 60 months, that’s 480 times a tenant had to pay rent for living in my property and Wellman collected all 480 times. Actually it’s a bit less due to the places being vacant between tenants, but the turn round time from move out to move in averages less than 1 month due to Jessica’s efficiency. Tenants must sign a 1 year lease and since rents are at market rate and this is the west side of LA, most tenants only stay about 3 years before moving out.
My annual gross rents (and net rents) have climbed steadily over the last 5 years, in line with Santa Monica rents in general, demonstrating that Jessica and Wellman know how to get top market rent. Maintenance costs are well documented and no major work is done without my explicit approval. A 10% fee is charged for all major work done by outside vendors, but this is well worth it because the work is of high quality done at a fair price. They have no tolerance for poorly performing vendors and the vendors know it. I asked them to set aside 500 dollars per month in a separate money market account for major capital improvements and we use these funds to even out the owner draw.
I live out of the country (in France) and visit Santa Monica once per year. During my visits I always schedule a going over of the property with Jessica and she is always there on time and does not charge extra for this service. But Jessica and Wes do make a healthy profit for the services they provide and they are not the cheapest out there. During the 5 years they have worked for me, the management fees (including leasing fees and the 10% fee tacked on for large maintence jobs) comes to about 8% of gross rents. This is good money for them, and quite acceptable to me, considering what I suffered with the other management companies.
An owner in Santa Monica

In regards to some comments below, the reason they take so long to get back to you for the «credit check» is because they are waiting to get as many applications and fees turned in as possible before submitting them all at once to the property owner.
For example, I bid on the property located on 28^th St. in Santa Monica. The day I found it online, I went in and was told someone was signing the contract that day. Two days later, I called because it hadn’t been removed and Miriam told me it was back on the market because it was «discovered» that the tenants had musical instruments, which was against the homeowner’s wishes. They probably had also told multiple applicants no in order to accept this tenant.
Moving forward, for this same exact property, my roomate and I turned in our application along with $ 60 for credit checks (which, by the way are free on
–_​_​_​-​). For a week and a half, we called every day asking for an update and Miriam said we would know by the following Monday.
1) She also mentioned we were one of SIX APPLICATIONS, 3 of which were discarded immediately, bringing it down to three pairs.
2) The sketchier thing was the fact that I had said «there’s no way we wouldn’t get this place,» to which she had responded, «Unless there’s a stronger application,» while we were filling it out in front of her. We are two Asian girls who graduated from elite universities for undergrad and graduate school with high incomes for our age group that could clearly cover the rent.
3) We call Monday, Tuesday, Wed. Finally, Wed, she has an answer for me. I’m desperate for a place in Santa Monica because I’m starting work the following week and she has just wasted 1.5 weeks of my search time. She suggests to look elsewhere, but I already paid her my application fee! I’m not going to put in applications and be bound to other leases and then find out that I got the place after all and now can no longer take it.
4) She tells us the owner decided to go with someone else.
A) I ask, «how would i know if racial prejudice did or did not play a role in the decision?»
B) She says it did not. The chosen tenants had higher incomes and better credit.
HMMM​.so if you had applicants with these factors and knew that, then why did you let us apply? TO TAKE OUR APPLICATION FEES.
I should also mention that the first time I went in, I left my credit card with them to get keys to see the apartments. During that same time, what a coincidence-​I received a fraud alert on my phone for a $ 300 purchase. I called Wellman and told them I was upset with the occurrence. Of course, both Miriam and Jessica denied their involvement with the fraud, but my accusal probably left a bad taste in their mouths. Could that have played a role in my not getting the property?

I’m extremely pleased with my experience leasing an apartment from Jessica at Wellman. She went above and beyond my expectations in getting me in to a great spot 10 blocks from the beach; and doing so in just a few days with zero hassles. I’m very grateful! Thank you Jessica and staff!

Take forever to process my girlfriend application. Will call them and update review.

I don’t know if all these bad reviews have put Wellman on their toes, but I have lived at one of Wellman’s Properties (an apartment) for a few months now, and have nothing but nice things to say about them.
The viewing/​application process was fairly simple and pain free and they even negotiated with me a bit on the terms of my lease. (In my favor, not their own.) I thought it was suspicious at first (after seeing all these awful Unilocal reviews) but I’m a few months in and I haven’t found any outstanding issues or ghosts haunting my apartment– on the contrary I actually really love it, and everyone I know says I got an amazing deal on it.
Fast forward to this week, I was having some garbage disposal issues and within 2 days a plumber is coming out, all arranged by Jessica. She has been super attentive, professional, and pleasant the entire time. I will update this review if anything turns south with them but I just wanted to add my experience for a little perspective.

despite these pretty horrible reviews, i have had an overall good experience with wellman property. they have always been pretty quick to fix pretty much all the things that we’re broken /​had trouble with it. pretty on it. obviously everybody that has a good experience (which should be expected with a property mgmt company), doesn’t care enough to post something positive on Unilocal.but i’m trying to even it out a little bit. They have always been reasonable to work with.

«Slumlords» feels like a fitting way to describe Wellman. Literally the worst management company I have ever had to do business with. Would NEVER rent from them again, refused to fix my heater the entire time I lived there so I reported them to the Housing Department. Jessica is a bitter haggard woman that has no interest in her tenants or their needs and Monica is MIA. RENT AT OWN RISK!

Terrible business. Right when I get there they said they weren’t expecting me though I called before. Then they tell me that there would be an extra 50 charge on the unit I’m interested in though we had been negotiating he unit for the past 3 weeks there was nothing that they didn’t know about me and my interest in the unit. Then the girl Miriam kept interrupting my conversation with the manager. What a brat. Haven’t met someone so rude before in my life. I’m only taking the unit because of necessity. If I find another plae by the time they finish my application which may well take a week or two then I will switch over. Otherwise I’m stuck with these unreasonable people.

My father’s wife asked me for a favor. I had to pick her brother’s apartment key up in Santa Monica. I got the address, so I could Google how to get to that place. I went to Wellman Property which is the name of the company response for renting her brother’s apartment in Santa Monica. Even though I had the directions to get to the place I got lost, so I parked my car in a restaurant and I asked for directions. The lady behind the bar didn’t know, and there was one guy full of tattoos that hear me and very gently give the right directions. Surprise! The tattoo guy was wrong, I couldn’t find the place. I found a public parking after being going around trying to find one spot for my car. Once I parked I stopped in a furniture store, and there was a guy behind a computer, so I asked him, he honestly replied he didn’t know, but he looked it up on the computer, gave me the right directions, and finally I found the place.
At Wellman Property offices I told them that I was there to pick an apartment key up. The owner who was coming from San Francisco had called giving my name and authorizing them to give me the key. The girl had to make some phone calls, then she said I had to go downstairs to get the key. I went to see another person for the fucking key and she said she didn’t have the key, I had to ask upstairs. I went up again, the same girl finally gave me the key after being bounce up and down. After paying ten bucks for parking I went to see my friend, but first I had to go through Santa Monica Blvd which was very painful due to the heavy traffic. Finally, I spent some time with my friend at the «five stars hotel» to take my stress away.
Today, my father’s wife called me that the people from Wellman Property had called her brother telling him they gave me the wrong key. It’s UNBELIEVEABLE!!. They never asked for my ID after a couple of phone calls and gave me the wrong key. What is the efficiency of that place ?. Also, I could be in trouble if something happened in that apartment. If you have an empty house or apartment, and need a company to be in charge to rent it don’t go to Wellman Property. In addition, be careful with some favors because you could end up having problems.