Complaint Review: Real Property Inc - Charlottesville Virginia

Myself and two of my friends were going to rent from a newly built townhouse subdivision that were being leased out by this company. In late April, we signed a lease for this subdivision (Webland Park) effective June 1st, promised by Mike that the first few homes would be ready by then. He even said that people could be moved in even earlier - they were just not signing leases for earlier effective dates due to county regulations.

In addition, we had noticed that there was RJ-45 jacks and CAT5 wire going to every room - Ethernet grade cabling. I asked what the specs were for the internal network and while he didn't know at the time, he said he would get back with me. Later on we were told there was a "hub" in the center of the network. Since me and my friends are all computer people, we wanted to network to each other and the Internet over a DSL line, so this was pleasing news. So the move date was set at June 1st.

In middle to late May, one of my friends heard back from the Realtor saying that the move date was going to be set back to June 5th, but that the realty company would pick up the rent and power bills through that week and up until the 14th. We were fine with that, as we had homes with our parents in the interim (thank God).

Early June we get another update from the realtor, who now said that although we could begin moving our possessions in, the water would not be turned on until Friday or so. They cited a regulation that they had "found out about" that the roads to and from the property had to be paved before the city would allow water to run to them. I found this an interesting tidbit for a company who deals with renting properties as a business to suddenly discover.

June 5th rolled around and myself and one of my roommates began moving things in. Not only was there no water, but the lights in the living room and the ceiling fan would not turn on (although the thermostat and air conditioning worked) and there was dirt all around the inside of the back door. One of the outlets for the cable was exposed without a faceplate. I also examined the internal wiring (which happened to be directly over the washer/dryer unit - a great way to get moisture and ambient motor interference) and found that all the CAT5 cables (only 2 pairs apiece) and the phone line were interconnected at nothing more than a cheap punchdown. To hub all of them for Internet sharing would have required rewiring all the CAT5 cables completely.

Later in the week we learned that the water was not going to be turned on until much later, the 14th to be exact. The altruistic offer of the realtors to pay rent for us up until that point seemed in my opinion to be a little less altruistic than it had seemed before.

This Monday (June 10th) we got another "update" from the realtor saying that the movein date had been pushed back another 4 days to June 19th. At this point I wrote a rather animated letter to the realtor explaining my extreme displeasure to him and questioning his company's ethics when dealing with people's lives. I received a response saying that they had decided to terminate the lease because my "tone was not conductive to any further efforts toward reconciliation", even though it seemed to me the compromise was all very one sided.

I hesitate to imagine what would have happened if me or my friends had no other place to live in June.

Ken

Charlottesville, Virginia