Essential Management Property Management Company14023 Oxnard Str Van Nuys CA 91401 Cheap & terrible apartments, avoid at any cost! Van Nuys California

Re-post from 3/3/2014

The address of this Essential Management property is 14023 / 14027 Oxnard Street, Van Nuys California 91401. Extremely terrible management! The property manager will walk into your apartment without any notice, mostly when people are out at work during the day. But worse than that, he will give the apartment key to contractors so they can enter your apartment whenever they want. Avoid this property and Essential Management company!

Re-post from 11/24/2013

Unbelievable rude and unprofessional employees of this company, including the property managers couple (Javier & Eliana) at Valley Glen property. Living there for a number of years, I did try not to notice a number of things that went wrong at this property. However, seems the company doesn’t need good paying and quiet tenants. For the last 3.5 years, I have never been late with paying rent, the apartment was always clean and fresh.  But even my patience seems to be over.

First, the apartment complex is very old, with same old sewage and plumbing systems. All the manager’s promises before I moved in were simple lies.  He has to solve the maintenance issues within 72 hours. At this apartment repairs are always a tragedy. You can wait weeks until something is fixed. The tenants change very often. I even know when there is a new tenant upstairs, without being home all day – the sewage is getting clogged all the time somebody new moves upstairs. Only for the last year the bathroom was clogged 3 times.

Do you think the manager comes right away to fix it? Yeh right. He doesn’t even care. Last month I came home and once I open the door I get a horrific smell of feces in the whole apartment, I went into the bathroom and the bath tub was half full with feces! Of course I called the manager and he said the earliest somebody could come was next day. As if I believed him, rarely somebody comes next day, only when last year there was a flood in the apartment upstairs and our whole ceiling was leaking.

For this time, I had to pay somebody to unclog the sewage, that is just unhealthy to spend the night in foul-smelling apartment. Then the next weekend I had to wash all our clothes just to get rid of this smell. Do you think the manager at least apologized? Of course not! I wish I deducted my expense from rent, just didn’t want to go through the hassle of deducting the amount, but how many times do I have to spend my money for the service that is included in the rent?

Even when somebody does come to repair, they always do such a poor job, just unbelievable somebody can get paid for things that will break again within days. The last time I requested repairs were for the leaking faucets and toilet. All of these 3 items were leaking badly. Besides the noise they were producing, there was enormous waste of water. Actually water is a scarce resource in California. Seems I am the only one who cares about it.

I even called the company– Essential Management, and a very rude lady was so surprised that I said the water was wasted, she was like if the water is included in the rent why would I even care? I’m speechless… Well I placed my maintenance request on Wednesday, and only on Tuesday next week somebody came to fix the leaks. I wonder if there was a flood in my apartment, who would reimburse me for damaged personal property? I guess nobody.

Well, next Wednesday morning I get to prepare coffee before taking off to work and the faucet in the kitchen doesn’t even close!  Less than 24 hours passed since it was “repaired”.  I called the property managers that morning and got Eliana on the phone, she started screaming at me and accusing me that I broke the faucet. I barely touched it in the morning how and why would I break it. Of course it is always impossible to talk to her since she is always screaming and hanging up on me.

Besides the constant sewage and leaking issues, there are always issues with cockroaches. They live here all summer time and seem to be gone just for a few months during winter time. Next time I am calling the city when I see these roaches, as I am already exhausted to spray them. The hot water seems to disappear from time to time. Once I even had to take cold showers for 3 days in November.  

In my opinion, both property managers don’t follow the housing rules, both are completely unprofessional and don’t know how to manage a property. Javier, the property manager, can enter the apartment without even letting us know. Once my husband was sleeping and Javier entered and fixed the lock on the back door. I am speechless. If I was sleeping and somebody would enter the apartment I would have reported him right away. My husband is just way too nice for all the pain these property managers caused us. I thought I am the only one arguing with them, but I often hear how tenants yell at these managers, I guess they treat the rest of the tenants the same way as us.

I always think that Essential Management company is like a ghost company, I don’t know where it is located, I don’t even have a contact person besides the property managers who are useless most of the times. Just as I am writing, the manager screams at my husband that he stopped the car in front of our apartment to unload stuff. What right he has to scream? It is a quiet Sunday afternoon and barely any tenant is at home. Besides that, unloading stuff will take no more than 10 minutes. I never said anything when somebody blocked the driveway for hours or parked in our parking spot without even letting us know.