“There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem.” Eldridge Cleaver
Updated January 19, 2017
Rent Payment and Your legal dissertation below attached and Reduction in Housing Services
Tue 1/10/2017 10:46 PM
From: [tenant name redacted]
To:Julie Cross
Cc:Greg De Rubeis
LB Property Management Says Black Tenants Not Entitled to Fair Housing
LB Property Management Says Blacks Not Entitled to Housing Services
LB Property Management Says Blacks are not entitled to “full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever”
LB Property Management Inc. 4730 Woodman Avenue, Suite 200 Sherman Oaks, California 91423
Dear LBPM Julie Cross, Robert Lopata, Gregg Bernstein, Brandon Stein, Brian Theobald, Ccam, Salle Yerumyan, Greg De Rubeis, et al, agent for Hi Point Apts, LLC, Walter Barratt and Cliff Renfrew:
It was October 17, 2016 that I have a letter from you stating you as new management. There is no indication in that letter that bill pay is available; so the information I provided in the RSO Complaint is correct; it is you who misunderstand and you who should admit, not deny it.
Without waiver of the RSO complaint, I believe bill pay can occur electronically or the bank will mail a check. As previously explained to you, if the rent is due on the 1st it could not possibly be mailed to arrive on the 1st. You should understand that unless you are a Dodo bird. As regards electronic payment, which I do not consent to, I would need the exact name of your company because a previous check of bill pay did not indicate your company was listed.
I will pay the rent to the resident manager, as stated in the rental agreement. I have not given written consent to a change in terms of tenancy on this issue or any issue.
1.Your unreasonable email below is not acceptable as a resolution.
2.You have a duty to act in a reasonable and good faith manner. I consider your action unreasonable and not in good faith.
3.You stated previously that I do not need to give you a legal dissertation. I figure if you comprehended English, you would have to admit that I am not literally kissing your ass and you are not kissing mine, that the only relationship we have is a business relationship based on the legal dissertation of the rental agreement; that if you comprehended English, you would respond, “I understand what you are saying” or “I appreciate what you are saying” or “I agree with what you are saying; you should not have to experience repeated harassment from a white tenant in the building”. Since you have not expressed any of these things, I figure you don’t comprehend English.
4.Were you able to find out if tenant apt 1 has a criminal record, the kind that requires it to be reported to other tenants in the building?
5.The legal relationship established between us is what gives me the right to give you a legal dissertation.
6.You claim to be a management company but you are not managing shit. I think I will make all my future concerns to the owner directly because you are discriminatory, retaliatory, incompetent, unresponsive, unreasonable, and act in violation of the laws.
7.When you get this email I want you to print it out two copies. Put one copy aside. Take the other copy and rip it up in small pieces and take those pieces and shove them up your bosses(s) ass until they come out of the bosses(s) mouth. Then call me up and let me know what happened.
8.Please let me know how many minutes it takes to say/write, by a god damn white mother f – – – – r Ku Klux Klan member like yourself, “We will fix or replace your intercom tomorrow. It will take sixty minutes” and “We will assign you a tandem parking stall tomorrow at no extra charge; this will take about ten minutes.”
9.How long will it take you as a god damn white mother f- – – -r Ku Klux Klan member to state or write what it says in previous section #8?
10.Regarding the complaint over the refusal to allow me to pay rent to the resident manager per the rental agreement, I have spent $40.00 on legal fees. Please remit payment to me.
11.The statement to me that I cannot pay the rent to the resident manager represents a reduction in housing services, described as an illegal rent because you have not reimbursed me for the reduction in services. Please reduce my rent by a reasonable amount of [amount redacted] for every month I am not allowed to pay rent to the resident manager.
All rights reserved.
[Tenant name address phone redacted]
cc: Walter Barratt at Hi Point Aps, LLC via email; HCIDLA
Definition of dissertation:
an extended usually written treatment of a subject; specifically : one submitted for a doctorate
From: Julie Cross
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2017 1:11 PM
To: [Tenant name redacted]
Cc: Greg De Rubeis; Brandon Stein
Subject: Rent Payment
[Tenant Name Redacted]
On the attached complaint, I notice that you wrote, “The owner does not allow us to use free banking bill pay.” This is a misunderstanding on your part. Our company accepts checks from your bank’s bill paying service. You can set up automatic bill pay at no charge to yourself.
Julie Cross, Portfolio Supervisor
Cal BRE# 01904769
Direct: (818) 793-2033
Main: (818) 981-1802 x240
Concierge: (855) 800-LBPM (5276)
Fax: (818) 986-1214
After Hours Emergency: (818) 832-6201
[Editor note: Greg De Rubeis is the VP- Investment Properties, LBPM]
LBPM is designated owner for tenants at 1522 Hi Point Apartments and also agent for Hi Point Apts, LLC. The State of California and City of Sherman Oaks grant LBPM a business license and real estate broker license.
[This is excerpted from the Yelp page on “LBPM” which stands for LB Property Management. The link to the page is not provided as Yelp frequently deletes comments or pages they do not agree with. Just Google Yelp LBPM to see the full reviews. “Italics ” or “regular” denotes separate postings.]
“Absolutely THE WORST. Non-responsive, rude, indifferent, condescending.. Quite useless actually. They leave the most passive aggressive notes in the elevators, randomly & frequently schedule maintenance for issues no one seems to care about (WHY DO YOU KEEP CLEANING THE GARAGE!?) & are generally the most unhelpful lot of people I’ve ever come across in my entire, entire life. “
“The thing that’s even WORSE than their service/professionalism is the fact that I can’t even do anything about it. It’s not like a restaurant where I just stop eating there you know? This crappy company has been my property manager since I bought my place 5 years ago. I’m THISCLOSE to getting on the HOA board just so I can petition to boot these bad boys. THISCLOSE..”
I absolutely agree with the negative reviews about this company. Our property manager, Jennifer was constantly late in responding to our issues and inquiries. Recently, we had a rate adjustment and had contacted Jennifer for assistance to assure that the transaction went smoothly. Jennifer lack of response in a timely manner consequently brought more issues to what could have been an easy transaction. LBPM now wants to charge us for the fees that were incurred? LBPM, your lack of service and responsibility to provide for your client is the reason why your reviews are so low.
We have been with LBPM for over 3 years. We thought they were a better fit than our previous property management. But after trying to transition to a new property management which took over 3 months is when i realized they are the worst business to deal with. I am so upset on how unprofessional, consistently non responsive, and the lack of urgency after they realized we will be terminating their services.
We called LBPM on 11/30 to let them know we are terminating their service effective Jan 2016. After 3 weeks have gone by, we still didn’t hear back from anyone. We called them back a few more times so we can talk to someone directly over the phone and we were unable to reach anyone. We eventually had to send them an email on 12/20 in which we didn’t hear back from them until 1/11. By this time, they said they will work on forwarding everything over to our new property management. However our new property management didn’t receive anything and also have been trying to reach them with no success. No one in LBPM didn’t care what happened to us by this point. They held all our documents and our funds. We didn’t hear back from them for a few weeks.
[The worst management CO,we ever had for the last 20 years,at 5349 Newcastle,Encino CA always problems,not clean,the AC is not working 80% of time,and they are not really interested to fix,always promises and nothing is done.Charging high fees for nothing.Would never recommend to hire them.]
The situation go even worst when the city is threatening to shut down our water since LBPM haven’t paid our water and electric bill for over 2 months. The city sent all of us a notice to shut down our water bill if we don’t make a water payment before Feb 9th. I just can’t believe they completely dropped us by not paying our bills and at the same time they still held all of our funds and financial/business documents!!!! We asked them to pay our bills, but they just ignored us without giving us a status. It was just so frustrating when we would like to pay our bills but yet how are we even suppose to pay out bills when they held our money like hostage. We even contacted them several times by email and phone. No one even cares about this serious issue. The HOA decided to pay for our own bills with the help of our new property management. But this doesn’t resolve the fact that LBPM still had our money!!! They sent some funds a few weeks later but it was not all of our money and they still ignore our new property management request to send messenger to pick up the hard documents.
By this time, it was already 2/23 in which nothing was resolved and I came to the conclusion that it was no use dealing with the staff of LBPM. They just didn’t care and why would they. I had to take matters in our hand by contacting Craig Tice, COO of LBPM and letting him know how unprofessional his staff was handling our termination. Craig was at first very defensive and was shocked this was happening. However, it took him only 1 day to get back to me and apologize for this complete mess. Craig sent the remaining balance of the check and the rest of the documents within a few days to our new property management. I still don’t get why we didn’t get anywhere in 3 months but Craig was able to fix the issue in a week. But at least we are done with LBPM and hope no one has to endure what we went though.
[If I could give this garbage company zero stars…]
The worst management CO,we ever had for the last 20 years,at 5349 Newcastle,Encino CA always problems,not clean,the AC is not working 80% of time,and they are not really interested to fix,always promises and nothing is done.Charging hight fees for nothing.Would never recommend to hire them.
I’m the vice-president of my HOA (The Commodore Condos in Hermosa Beach). We changed to LBPM as our property manager for our 100 unit condo building in January 2015, so it’s been over a year. Overall I have not been impressed. We changed our property supervisor once because our previous supervisor was just not able to keep up with the issues in our building. The new supervisor has been better, but still not great. I am getting complaints weekly from other owners about a lack of response to inquiries. The board overall has not been happy with the response to many issues. They added a helper for our property supervisor a couple months ago. He has been good at keeping on top of issues, but there are still some very important issues that seem to fall through the cracks.
When we interviewed LBPM, they spent a lot of time talking about their online portal for managing issues and work, but the board has never used this portal. I finally got access a couple months after LBPM started last year, but it’s not been actively used by our property supervisor.
I have had a few conversations and email exchanges with Janice Eisenberg, and she says all the right things, but we still have issues that don’t get the attention they deserve. Sometimes these are important issues that end up costing us more money in the long run such as plumbing leaks that take days to respond to.
I’m beginning to think it’s just impossible to find a good property manager. Because it’s such a big effort to change management companies, I will continue to work with LBPM management to improve our service and hopefully can update this review in the future if things improve.
If I could give this garbage company zero stars, I would. I have had to start sending my rent checks certified just to make sure I can track my payment and they still keep assessing unnecessary late fees. The first time it happened there was no response to me or the property manager. It took forever to get it sorted and the charges reversed. Everything was fine when we used to pay rent before these inept crooks came along. Anyone thinking of using their services BEWARE. I don’t understand when we can’t just set up an auto payment and not deal with this ridiculous check business. It’s 2016 guys get it together. Their services are outdated and criminal.
I am taking the time and write a review about LBPM properties,
in hope that they may take note of it. I owned condo in Woodland Hills. The original management company transferred us over to LBMP. The main and BIGGEST reasons I sold my condo is because of this management company. Our designated account manager also transferred to LBMP and kept handling our property. She was difficult to reach and was not responsive to emails. Please NOTE that they have caller ID so they selected to ignore and screen their calls. In my case I it took time but I figured out that the screening of calls and emails was going on. I work with a lot of people via phone and email even if I am busy I extend the respect to acknowledge the caller and let them know I will get back to them and give a time line. BUT with LBMP WOW, its pulling teeth to get answers or someone to answer the phone. The receptions is another story. You call and ask her to help get someone on the phone and all she does is transfer you to a VOICE mail. If you are a condo/town home owner DON’T use LBMP. They are not professional and you will wait days, weeks to months to get help. They are not there to go the extra mile and they work VERY SLOW. My issue was dealing with a leaking roof which escalated to major damage and loss inside my condo unit. When came time to sell and you needed them to get the proper paper work in order, they are no rush to do their JOB. After several calls, I had to show up in person so make sure that they did their JOB. It too bad that LBMP such big company doesn’t hold their employees to certain professionalism and standards.
This is a long and painful tale to tell.
I rented a place with my girlfriend 6 months ago. Before we moved in we asked for repairs to be made. We moved in, and nothing was done. I post a bad Yelp review, and the property manager wo I could never seemed to get on the phone, called pleading to take down the review as it may cost him his job… I was told management would be calling me and for me to change my story. I did so as a gentleman.
Fast forward to 3 months ago. Repairs were not made on the home, I was washing my dishes using a garden hose from the backyard. I gave them 3 months notice and they have been making me show the property myself.
The property manager put up a weak craigslist ad, whereas I went on Trulia, Westside Rentals and Rad Pad and put up advertisements using a copywriter to rent the unit.
I hand them renters ready to sign… but they failed to call them back, or make the repairs, and so the unit STILL sits unoccupied.
From the bottom to the top the management of the personal, and the management of properties is terrible.
I will post photos of the abominable conditions I was dealing with. FEMA should have been notified of the squalor like conditions.
Very unprofessional and reckless!
We had automatic payments for the HOA fees for the past 8 years without missing a single payment!!! They still placed a lien for a special assessment without taking any steps to determine why that particular payment was missed. Our address had changed but they had a valid email and phone number on record. They even contacted us for some plumbing issues but never mentioned that they had not received payment for the special assessment. They ignored undelivered letters returned to them by the post office and obtained the deed which had the correct address and continued to send it to the old address. When we complained to their higher management for the unprofessional behavior of their employees, they simply ignored the email!
If I could give zero stars I would. My HOA began using LBPM last year, after self-managing. At minimum LBPM should have paid our bills on time, but apparently that was asking too much. Twice we’ve had our trash services stop because of non-payment. They are a joke and I would suggest any HOA find an alternative company to work with. We did.
Renters beware: Horrible communication skills combined with evasive tactics when I tried for weeks to retrieve my deposit, Which was already 2 weeks past the legal deadline.
Not sure if they were deliberately and illegally trying to keep my deposit, or they are incompetent. Either way I would be cautious renting a property managed by this company.
Terrible. Still owe me reimbursements for six months. Manager Aleya ignores phone calls and emails. Seems to work on her own agenda. Sides with board members and makes decisions on her own. Has not followed through on issues dating back six months. They really are awful.
My husband and I have filed a small claims
suit against your company and had a sheriff serve you on September 29th, 2015. Our dispute is not about the condition of the apt. It’s about your companies negligence to respond to our concerns and safety issues regarding our neighbors that were violating the nuisance clause of our lease.
Applied for an apartment and paid the credit check fee. Haven’t heard back from Lamice and it’s been a week. Already found a new place since then. Contacted customer service and they said they’d check with Lamice for me but it’s been 3 days since then. I asked for a refund for the credit check for me AND my friend who applied for the place and since there was no attempt at contacting us or anybody trying to help, I’m demanding a refund. This is unacceptable. I feel like they stole our money and am going to pursue it further if they don’t get back to me soon.
As I write this, I have been without a functional refrigerator for 30 days. We have contacted LBPM numerous times. They rarely respond and when they do, they provide little help. They have sent out “repair” people twice; both times they did absolutely nothing and did not even attempt to fix the fridge. We lost ~$60 worth of food during the initial breakdown. The whole unit turns into a freezer but occasionally cuts off all coolant so we can’t even be sure that frozen food has stayed frozen and has not thawed and been refrozen. Our elevator breaks down weekly and people are constantly being trapped inside of it. Personally over the last year, I have been trapped in it 3 times. The fire department came out yesterday to rescue someone and they found the elevator to be poorly maintained, dirty and stuck between two floors. Yet, they claim the elevator is in tip top shape and has passed inspection. And although this is the least of my worries right now, the washing machines break constantly and they are “fixed” in a manner similar to the elevator and break down shortly there after. There are never any notes about wether things are fixed or broken, just a lot of silence on their end. To make matters worse, we supposedly have a “manager” that lives on premises.
We have been with LBPM for about 2 years. They came highly recommended when we secured them for our HOA/Condo building.
Unfortunately, we had to fire our first manager who started out fine, but as the months went on there was no following through, not paying bills, not returning calls. Our list of issues seem to go month to month with no resolution or action with it always being someone else’s fault. Some of the most basic actions of a property manager were failing. NO accountability for substandard service.
Our second manager once again started off wonderfully. Same situation with in month, no follow through, no response to our owners or tenants and loads I mean LOADS of service failures, inept vendors and financial accounting errors. The financial accounting errors have always been on the burden of the owner or board to prove, despite it being an error of this company.
Just run of the mill, poor service. Prices are high end competitive. Not worth it. Seeking another company at this time.
I can assure you that you manage our buidling. Our original manager was Lida, and she was awful. Janice Eisenberg simply doens’t care about the mountain of service errors reported to her. I can assure you LBPM in Sherman Oaks is our management company.
My condominium is in the process of firing LBPM for various reasons, and it can’t happen soon enough. As an owner, I am in the process of suing the HOA in small claims court for failure to maintain common areas (the roof), the responsibility for which is delegated by contract to LBPM. LBPM’s negligence resulted in massive damage to my unit. The HOA repaired part of it out of reserve funds, but did not complete the job, hence the suit. I tried for months by telephone and email to get relief from the administrator assigned to our building, but my phone calls and emails were ignored. LBPM’s negligence has continued. A few months ago I gained access to the roof and found more cracks which would have resulted in more water damage, to my unit or to someone else’s. The new administrator has been more responsive. She thanked me for reporting it, but it took 2-3 weeks to seal the holes. It shouldn’t be the job of the owners to inspect the roof.
Their agent of service, Craig Tice, has played nasty games to avoid service of my claim, resulting in two very inconvenient postponements. Maybe he views this behavior as good service to the HOA, but it was LBPM’s negligence in the first place that led to the lawsuit.
In our experience, LBPM has been very unsatisfactory, for both the owners and the HOA.