Bay Area Property Services

I recently had the pleasure of doing business with Bay Area Property Services. I spoke with Sara in the Brentwood office. They have been fantastic in every regard. Professional, organized, and friendly. Sara made sure everything went smoothly and was a great help. Highly recommended!

We have been a Vendor for BAPS for over 15 years and we have witnessed first hand their professionalism and duty to their HOA’s. We love working for them and providing excellent service. BAPS also provides superior service to their HOA’s. If anyone is looking for a great property management company, we always highly recommend BAPS.

I live in a small condo complex and recently spoke with one of the folks with BAPS (I’ll avoid using names so I won’t incriminate anyone, but if they read this, they’ll probably know) regarding a recent issue that was submitted to a neighbor but also included my unit, which we were admittedly in the wrong for the citation but the neighbor was wrongly accused.
I understand the need to protect the confidentiality of their clients/​residents and my call was only to collect a few details about the claim that was submitted, not point fingers but simply gather some additional info.
The woman I was transferred to was, hands down, the rudest person I’ve had the displeasure of speaking to in what feels like an eternity. She was short, deflective and just down right aggressive. After she spent a good 20 minutes dodging any question I had for her, she said something to the tune of «this conversation is going nowhere» and punctuated it with (and I quote) «so I’m going to have to terminate this call». following that statement, she said a few more words and simply hung up on me.
This isn’t our first interaction with BAPS either. My wife was in a car accident and in the process lost her parking pass. When she spoke with someone to get a replacement, it was the same woman and her attitude was, again, short and brash. According to my wife, she sounded so inconvenienced to have to mail out a new windows sticker so that we, as residents, could keep compliant with the rules of our community.
Other things that should be made mention is they don’t properly maintain any of the grounds other than some basic gardening resulting in things like car ports suffering from rot then hiring people to finally replace it that probably aren’t qualified leaving areas that pool up with water instead of draining. I give it a few more years until they have to replace it again because they did a poor job the last time.
These are not people I would ever wish to deal with given the choice.

You never know a company or a person unless you get into trouble like the one that happened to me as a home owner of Tres Lagos North HOA that is managed by BAPS.
The main supply water pipe rupture took place in the TLN HOA’s common area and water flooded as waterfall in the storage area and crawl space completely filling it in. The water district representative shut off water for 4 units in order to stop water from coming into crawl space from the HOA’s common area.
The least help possible was received from BAPS when managing this emergency situation, even though they were notified immediately at 9:00AM when their office started working. The homeowner is on one on one with disaster when your HOA is managed by BAPS.
One star is too much for such business.

I work as a real estate transaction coordinator and because of lazy and careless HOA management companies, I must audit every HOA package ordered to make sure all documents are provided to the Buyer. It is beyond me how these management companies are not regulated. I received a package today from this management company and it was missing half of the documents they charged for, $ 568 for an incomplete package. 90 percent of the HOA packages I receive from management companies are incomplete. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a class action lawsuit filed against HOA management companies someday for this. It’s unacceptable and fraudulent. I can only hope to spread the word to get these companies to regulate this better.

Why any association or property would choose to work with this company is beyond me.
I live in a condominium complex that is managed by this company. I’ve contacted them via their website to get assistance in towing illegally parked cars in my neighborhood, which make it impossible for residents to park.
All I get is repeated phony lines from S. Monroe of «Thanks for your note, we appreciate the eyes and ears,» but zero solutions. In the response, you can clearly tell my message was not read.
Or rather yet, the solution is «give us a call… we will call security… and security will tow the car.»
Oh yah? That’s not very helpful when I have to come home at 7pm or 3am and no one is in the office of the Bay Area Property Services.
I spoke with security, they’re only there two days a week. I called the tow truck company on my own, and twice they’ve removed cars after I give them permission — once leaving me sitting parked at a red lane from 3am to 5:30am, waiting for a tow truck to arrive to remove illegally parked cars.
I don’t know if it’s up to the HOA or this company to paint the spots «PERMIT ONLY», as all of the paint is fading, or to enforce parking, but I have given up on this company because anytime you ask for assistance, they just thank you for being the eyes and ears of the property and then don’t provide any solutions other than, «wow, this must be frustrating!»
Also, there are two parking spots taken up with dumpsters and maintenance equipment that just sit there taking up space. No good.

Our association has been managed by BAPS for several years. As the president of the Atrium Villas I am very pleased to work with Sandy Monroe, and with Mike D the Owner of this excellent organization.

Wow! I strongly have to disagree with a lot of the previous reviews. BAPS manages our HOA and myself personally must say that they do a great job. They are continually on top of their game from the financials to management of their services. The response time to issues that I have contacted BAPS about was rather quick and handle immediately.
I must say I’m very pleased with this management company and there team. They are not perfect as every service company probably has issues especially dealing with an array of residents and people of all types.
I must say I have to give great thanks to BAPS and their team as managing an HOA is probably the most thankless job I’ve ever seen…
I would strongly recommend using BAPS to all and anyone who needs their services.

We recently switch in 2014 to Bay Area Property Services.
I’m not very happy with them because:
1. We have to keep calling for our monthly HOA due.
2. Customer service — accounting department is very rude and not very helpful.
3. It’s been 4 months since they are handling our HOA at Iron Horse we still have to keep calling for our monthly due.
J & M
Update as of 03÷17÷15
We are very happy with our CAM Manager Susanne. In the past couple months we have had some trespassers at our complex. She was on top of the game. I was very thankful for all her help. Denise was also very helpful with our water pressure issue.
Thanks for all your help! My rate went up to 4 stars! Awesome! ^_*

BAPS manages our HOA. I chuckle every time I go on their website because the first thing you see is the slogan «Where customer service is an attitude, not a department!» Something along the lines of «Our customer service department is mediocre at best… but we’re cheap!» would be more accurate. Our HOA signed with them because they are cheap, not because of their property management skills or customer service.
When I bought my place a few years ago, the deal almost fell through because BAPS would not provide the HOA documents to my realtor, which were needed in order to close. It was nothing confidential, just the CC&Rs. BAPS held up the purchase for over a month because of their unresponsiveness. We couldn’t get the HOA docs from the previous owner because I was buying a foreclosure. After BAPS finally decided to cooperate and I bought my place, I found out that the documents we needed were available on the HOA’s BAPS-​managed website the whole time. It probably took a BAPS employee less than 10 minutes to email them to my realtor. Since being an HOA member, my experience has not improved. I’ve had a few minor issues that required contacting BAPS and each time had a negative experience. BAPS makes it very clear that I am massively inconveniencing every time I contact them and, although they respond to initial maintenance requests, they often ignore any followup emails. There is no excuse for ignoring emails from customers. Further, they keep screwing up mailers. They’ve twice failed to mail me the new pass-​code to our building (instead they mail me a blank piece of paper and won’t respond to my emails asking for the new pass-​code) and several times they’ve mailed me information meant for other HOAs. This is concerning because I wonder what sensitive information about our HOA (like the pass-​code to our building) was mistakenly mailed to some other complex. They only seem to catch their errors about 50% of the time. They were so rude the first time I sent them a courtesy email about receiving information for another HOA that I haven’t contacted them about their subsequent errors.
I know several people in our complex are pushing our board to get a new property management company. BAPS is cheap for a reason. I’d rather pay more to work with a company that truly believes that «customer service is an attitude, not just a department».

Our Berkeley senior cooperative’s president hired Bay Area Property Services in October 2012, and it began work in November.
The initial impression made by BAPS and its manager CS was generally good, but things went sour.
First, CS announced that if basic building systems (like bathroom ventilation and door locks) fail he can take as long as he wants to present them to the board of directors and the board can take as long as it wants to do anything about them. That’s illegal. The co-​op has a legal obligation to keep the facilities in repair. When you submit a maintenance request on such items, you simply get no reply.
Second, CS has disregarded the co-op’s rules about use of the common areas and fabricated his own rules, allowing him to ban any meeting if he dislikes the things he expects the people in the meeting are going to say. In other words, he has set himself up as the thought police. As if that’s not enough, he got the co-op’s attorney to actually threaten to call the police and have visitors arrested if they tried to attend a gathering with a certain community organizer whose ideas Stanley says are «terrible».
Third, at a board meeting, Stanley used his microphone to shout down two of the shareholders as they were just beginning to address the board. This is despite the CID Open Meeting Act, which guarantees every member and resident of a CID the right to address the board at each meeting.
Fourth, BAPS has been encouraging the board of directors to violate numerous other legal requirements. For example, BAPS has been keeping corporate records secret from shareholders who ask to see them.
Finally, CS posted a glowing review here on Unilocal of his own company. Thankfully, Unilocal yanked it for violating its terms of service. (It also deleted my previous review, too, for giving the manager’s full name, so I have abbreviated it this time around.)

Epic waste of money and horrible service. It’s a wonder nobody wants to come to the HOA meetings with a management company such as this. Take your business elsewhere.

Unlike Thomas P and Jonathan P, my experience with BAPS has been positive. They have managed our HOA for two years, via assigned manager Ceara Kennerly. As the current Board president, I can rely on Ceara to provide staff work up of items we need to act on, on a timely basis. Plus she flags me before issues become problems.
Our board has made the transition from a self managed HOA to one that sets policies that are executed by knowledgeable staff. Ceara does it well. In addition, when there are complaints or problems, she responds quickly and resolves them promptly. During off hours, BAPS has a ²⁴⁄₇ emergency line that takes care of problems properly and promptly.
We get accurate books, timely payments, a regular newsletter, multiple ways to pay the dues. In addition, we now have a planning calendar and actually can begin dealing with issues long before the deadlines. The laws governing HOA’s are too complex, and the problems of dealing with aging infrastructure and landscape are too much for a group of well meaning amateurs.
I have swapped stories with my last several predecessor presidents of our HOA. They are pleased with BAPS, and they agree that my job is a lot easier than theirs because we have somebody like Ceara handling the day to day work.

Probably the worst company ever! don’t use them

Having been both the board president and homeowner, I can honestly say the ball gets dropped with BAPS. They are seasoned experts when it comes to passing the buck or shifting responsibility /​accountability of simple property management tasks. In the end, the HOA ends up paying more for avoidable mishaps.
They do have good resources and a good board education program.
The accounting department is pretty good and produces accurate reports. Financials-​only option might be good for a smaller sized HOA.
They were the least expensive, but I recommend paying the extra money for a better management group, you’ll have more success for savings and the board won’t be levied with additional responsibilities. The additional responsibilities created a negative association with membership involvement. We are now looking at ways to increase HOA meeting attendance through incentives so next year we have members that WANT to be on the board instead of avoiding it.
Wish we had a more positive experience — 2 stars for now.