C
1/5
LONG REVIEW ALERT:
If you are looking for a rental property, please beware going through No Place Like Home Real Estate. We rented a furnished unit under a 3-month lease. We knew from looking at the photos beforehand the place wasn't anything fancy, but we figured we could get through the three months before finding our permanent home. Initially, everything seemed to go smooth and the ladies we worked with were pleasant and seemed professional. Then things got weird…
One morning, I woke up to the door connected to the laundry room being wide open and this door goes to a shared area/hallway with two other tenants and who knows who else. I notified the office immediately, and I was told that the laundry was shared and it was likely other tenants in the building. I was mortified because they essentially were saying that other tenants and whoever else had a key had open access to our entire unit after being told explicitly and via the listing, that the laundry was in-unit and not shared. I verified the listing for the unit as well as our lease, and as expected it indicated that the laundry was not shared, so I escalated and said that was incorrect. Eventually, they agreed, so they sent a handyman over to install a new deadbolt for the door. However, the same key that originally opened that door is the same key that opened the front door. Logic would tell you that the front door deadbolt should also be replaced, but they never came back to install a new deadbolt for the front door, even after the handyman recommended that be done because he was as puzzled as we were as to why they only had him replace the one. This was the first red flag.
Not long after that, we experienced a rodent issue. We notified the office immediately and we were advised to get some mouse traps and submit a receipt for reimbursement. They never offered to have someone check the unit for openings to see how the mice could be getting in; I had to ask them to send someone to check. The handyman came and found a hole in the wall in a room that was deemed "unusable" and was never apart of our lease. This was something that should have been taken care of before we moved in; ergo, red flag #2.
There were some smaller issues that came up (faucet needed replacing, etc.) and they handled those promptly. When it came to our lease expiration and receiving our deposit back, I fully expected they were going to gauge me for a cleaning (they did), but they also tacked on the cost of 2 fitted bed sheets and claimed they were "missing" and sent me a copy of the receipt that they paid for them, as if that proves anything. We never received any communication that there were two missing fitted sheets or for clarification of where they could be as an attempt to resolve, so they charged us as a way to quietly accuse us of stealing. One of the rooms had a bed that was never used, so the bedding remained on that bed for the entirety of our lease. The other room that had a bed, we stripped the bed and used our own sheets for the entirety of our lease and folded the unit's sheets and placed them in the closet. How they got to the conclusion that two fitted sheets were missing makes zero sense. I notified the office that this charge came as a surprise to us. The latest on that is they “had a message out to their cleaner” and that they would “get back to me” and I haven’t heard from them since.
As someone who had been using short-term rentals as my primary source of housing over the course of three years, this was the worst rental experience I have ever had.
Edit 1: They had people that work for them post positive reviews directly after mine as an effort to bump their rating back up. They’re intentionally trying to mislead folks which, to me, shows a lack of integrity. Also, I still haven’t heard back about the fitted sheets charge.
Edit 2: It took me writing this review to finally get a response about the fitted sheets. They proceeded to accuse us of stealing. If you’re a good tenant, steer clear.
