Experience with Evernest?
Hi everyone!
Our PM sold their business to Evernest this past week, and my husband and I are looking for any owners/out of state investors who have experience working with them.
Thank you in advance!!
Tina
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Evernest's model is to rip you off on all maintenance. I get they need to make money, but charging double of what the contractor would charge? I am referring to Evernest of Denver. They quoted me $2500 for move out rehab. I took the same list to the contractor who would ultimately do the work. The contractor quoted me $1350. For anything significant, I don't use Evernest maintenance. They are just outright ripping property owners off. I hire my own handyman, he does great work and charge me 50% less than Evernest.
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Interesting thread. They manage like 25,000 doors nationwide so they must be doing something right.
Some of the comments about finding a cheap contractor make me roll my eyes. Just so you guys understand (and not defending Evernest here) but there is a difference between a Mom and Pop landlord hiring a guy with no insurance, possibly no ITIN/no SSN who does things half assed to make repairs (and I see this ALL THE TIME) and a professional PM that needs to do things the right way and hires a contractor with insurance, who has a W9, cleans up after himself etc.
Local is usually better than national in my experience with service companies. Just call around, interview a couple if you want and you should be happy.
- Peter Tverdov
- [email protected]
- 732-289-3823
Hey, Evernest is have several BBB complaints, this is the worse leasing company ever. We paid the rent for November 2023 is all taken care of as of OCTOBER 24, 2023. We made two payments already: the first was $2139 and we added an extra $0.95, making it $2139.95. Can you believe it? But here's the frustrating part: there's nothing in the lease about paying two benefit packages for November. We've been sending countless emails arguing about this charge and other unauthorized fees. It feels like Evernest thinks they can just dump their mistakes on us, treating us like subordinates without any consideration. The company employees are miscalculate, never response to questions, no research abilities or just scammer. They never return calls, they hid behinds emails, and the emails are like AI or some template. I’m think the company is ran by Nazis.
Ex-Evernest St. Louis here. Avoid them at all costs. I could go in detail about how awful an experience its been but im glad im no longer working with them. Dont make the mistake I made and take their word that they'll improve, its not in their corporate DNA.
One of our colleagues in Colorado Springs sold their PM company to Evernest this year. I believe she got paid a nice amount and they agreed to keep her on in the company. They let her go after a couple months and it seems like the owner experience is terrible. We have acquired a couple new owners this year because of owners jumping ship.
This is the first company they purchased in the area so they may not have their footing. But they have a very specific way of doing things and it is very corporate. I have heard from owners that they use vendors from outside the city to do work and the travel time of the vendors is passed onto the owners.
I'm having serious issues with them in the Denver/Boulder area (I have two properties there). I came here to see if anyone else had experienced the same, and lo and behold, they have. It's super frustrating. They've completely botched what should have been a simple sprinkler winterization (and have admitted to it) but refuse to pay for the lost rents I incurred because of it. They also refuse to admit that a 3/2 in downtown Louisville, CO, should absolutely not have a 40% vacancy rate -- ever. I'm considering hiring a lawyer at this point.
Has anyone dealt with anything similar and can offer any advice? I couldn't in good conscious recommend them to anyone.
I am also ex-Evernest St. Louis, experience was AWFUL! Very high turnover of staff, PMs quit every 3-6 months, rehab timelines are ridiculous, no one cares. I lasted 1.5 years and after they really screwed me over financially during rehab I needed out. The property is still vacant, since June 2023 and I am out at least $9k-$10k for rehab and no income/cash flow since June 2023. I had to literally spend SO MUCH time managing the managers, every other owner statement had mistakes, charges which should not have been there and needed to be reversed. How can you trust your PMs after something like that? If you don't check your statements line by line, please start doing so.
I always had to chase and email multiple times to get an answer to my questions. I would NEVER ever recommend this company even to my enemy.
Hey Katherine! Just stumbled upon this thread - Did you end up going with Evernest?
I have a horrific expereince with Evernest. I was switching them out with another property management compnay. It took them over a month to do a walk through inspection of my property. When they finally did, they noticed that there were leaks. They knew that the situation was urgent. I keot trying to contact them, but they would not be reached. Iri, the so called onboarding director, was even cancelling the scheduled appointments i made with her. After almost 2 weeks, they are still doing inspections, knowing that every hour the structural integrity of the building could be at risk. No one answers the phone. No one has apologized for the extreme negligence. Issue still ongoing
Evernest is horrible. period from a renter and owner. I have experienced both.
charging 250 to renew lease is horrible and cost me a renewal.
customer service is a JOKE
@Damian Bachmind if I PM you about your experience with Evernest?
Hey @Peter S. @Eva S. @Meghan Hunter
Thank you so much for bringing these issues to our attention.
First and foremost, we’re truly sorry to hear about your experience with our property management services. Clearly, the level of service you received fell short of the high standards we strive to uphold, and for that, we sincerely apologize.
Please know that we take this feedback very seriously and are already in the process of reviewing the issues you’ve highlighted.
I want to clarify that we’d like to address the specific concerns raised and identify and implement broader improvements in our customer service and response protocols.
We serve over 7,000 property owners (as well as 25,000+ residents) across the country, and you can imagine there are different levels of expectations and experiences across our client base.
For this reason, we have a 100% Happiness Guarantee that a client can fire us for any reason without incurring a penalty or cancellation fee.
We’re fully committed to resolving these types of issues. We’re also working to ensure our communication channels are more accessible and responsive to our clients’ needs.
Your experience provides us with a valuable opportunity to better our services, and we are grateful for the chance to make things right.
We’ll contact you directly to discuss the specific steps we’re taking and ensure that your concerns are fully addressed. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through this. Your trust in us is paramount; we’re dedicated to restoring it.
- Spencer Sutton
- 205-336-2559
Please add me to the list to contact. I was about to post my honest review of Evernest here, Google, Facebook, Reddit, Yelp, and the BBB. Thanks.
@Peter S. this sounds so familiar. Their negligence has cost me thousands in damages and thousands in lost rent. I'm in a VERY strong market in CO and they claim it was market dynamics that lead to some of the issues -- complete absurdity. I can show stats on B+ 3/2's in my area and there are no reasons these homes should sit for 4+ months. That's in addition to the horrible experience I've had in them addressing minor and major maintenance and repair issues.
@Spencer Sutton this has been an ordeal for over a year. The Happiness Guarantee offers homeowners/investors nothing but a way to let Evernest off the hook for their negligence. I find it telling that it took a post to a public forum to get any real interest in hearing my issues (and issues from multiple other homeowners) -- and from the marketing side nonetheless. It's clear where the company's efforts are focused -- not at all in managing property but in nothing more than growth. The only responses I've gotten have been to offer excuses or pass blame. And after months of communication, the issues persist.
The founders started out as a couple guys from Alabama but they are now out to buy out all the small mom and pop property management companies across the county or worse, put them out of business. Evernest is the Walmart of property management, they inherited me after they bought out my previous property manager.
Hi everyone, "guy from Alabama" here.
I understand your frustrations. The whole reason I started Evernest was because I was an investor and thought there was a better way to manage homes. Seems I had similar frustrations when I got started.
While we have many happy clients, if one is upset with us it drives me crazy. And when they are upset with us, it typically is our fault.
As @Spencer Sutton mentioned above (he and I have been building this business together for almost a decade now) we are going to look into all of these and address any issue, whether process or people, that needs to be addressed.
One last thing to remember, property management is a HARD business. The whole reason for being is to deal with problems. If there weren't problems (a vacant house, a broken toilet, a late resident) we wouldn't have jobs. Our team works their tail off every day to solve these problems for our clients as quickly and cost effectively as possible.
Thanks so much for everyone's feedback! I'll be following along to make sure these items are addressed.
I'm not endorsing Evernest in particular, because I don't do that. However, I do consulting work for a great many property management firms across the state. It is hard and it is complicated. It is not a 9-5 job, or even a 7am to 6pm job. Lunches are often taken late in the day or not at all, because most prospect calls come during lunch.
It is a balancing act between what is legally required under a lease and what is needed to keep a good tenant who has a temporary problem. Not only do you have to devote time to property management, you have to devote time to education in ever-changing laws and financial metrics. You have to know enough to stay competitive in amenities and software tools. You often have to make split-second decisions without complete information.
EVERYBODY has problems keeping and retaining employees, so that is another challenge, which usually requires greater investment and self-education in technology.
All landlord and tenant issues have to be evaluated and balanced among those that are important but non-urgent, important and urgent, and urgent but not all that important.
As a landlord, you are part of community that shares your property manager's time and resources with other landlords, without being privy to the decision making regarding allocation of scarce resources. Sharing doesn't always turn out the way you want it, but it sure beats doing everything all by yourself. Especially when your own time and attention is diluted by sharing with family, friends, community, finding additional investments, perhaps a "day job," etc.
I find that communicating unhappiness or frustration with the person in a position to address the situation is usually the best course. That should be followed by an agreed plan of action with deadlines and follow-up. That should all be in writing. In my experience, most problems are solved after that.
@Matthew Whitaker I appreciate your response but would argue that the issues I’ve had shouldn’t have been “hard.” It started with Evernest failing to shut off a sprinkler system — simple as that. And then they failed to address the issues for nearly a year DESPITE my repeated and continual contact. Please DM me with your contact information and I’d be happy to discuss things further.
@Denise Evans I agree - the purpose of property management is so that you don’t have to do it all yourself. However, I’ve had to do MUCH more work with Evernest as my “management.” And I have done all of the things you’ve suggested and more, and the issues persist.
I started this post and as a follow-up, we did continue on with Evernest. They started out very strong in their promises - which seemed an improvement over the PM company we had been using, and who they had bought. Like so many, and in response to @Denise Evans, the issues strung out forever. We would express an issue, they'd say "on it" we'd find out several weeks later it hadn't been addressed, we'd follow up and share our concern, they'd express sincere apologies and then make lots of promises, another several weeks would go by. . . It also would take several emails over those several weeks before we ever got responses. We were in this horrible cycle. We are very nice, generous people - we gave way too much leeway. The last straw was two situations: one we were assured a new meter panel had been installed at one property but no bill ever came. We were assured over 5 months. I finally called the vendor to ask why they hadn't bill us yet - it was because the work hadn't even started, the part was on backorder (covid) and the vendor had moved on and hadn't gone into the backorder queue. THEN at the same time, we had a stoop that was start to disintegrate. We had had 2 bids at that point which were both very expensive. We had asked for a 3rd. We waited and waited. Kept asking and no responses. But during a visit to the city, we saw it had gotten WORSE and we went in person to our PM and said "please just take the 2nd bid" and a month later we checked in. We were told it was all set and invoice was just delayed. It's at the point where someone can get seriously injured, right? So I decided, let's call that vendor TOO! and I called the vendor and they said "well you sat our our estimates so long we took a look and it needs to be revised. i have left a message some time ago with your PM." That was the moment we gave notice we were leaving Evernest for good.
Overpromise, under deliver, and making promises about work you know nothing about. It's supposed to be passive investing. Here I am calling vendors myself. Big disappointment. We managed to work with them about 6 months. They are master salesmen. We learned a lot though about PM -ing and I'd say people need different things from their PM and it can take 2-3 before you find one that works well for you.
@Matthew Whitaker Please nudge Gray Hall to respond back to me whether through phone, text, or email. Kind of ridiculous it takes 10 requests to get 1 reply from him, my communication with him has been dragging on since last October. I know he's a busy guy dealing with the company and balancing his personal side but I would like to have a definitive answer to how Evernest would like to resolve my issue so I can move forward. At least he's nicer than the local team lead who basically told me to pound sand, that team lead should be fired in my opinion. Thanks.
@Matthew Whitaker I'm currently trying to track someone down to address an URGENT matter -- my tenants have been without heat for 4 days, and I'm just now being informed of this. No one seems to think this is an issue. It is below freezing in Denver. I have an HVAC guy who can be there in 30 minutes to give them heaters and fix the problem no later than tomorrow morning. I've made multiple calls and sent multiple emails with no response. I can't even get the renter's contact info because it's not available on the lease. THIS is a real-time example of what I've had to deal with EVERY SINGLE TIME something big or small happens. Not only is this a liability issue (it's illegal to leave tenants without heat!!!), but the pipes could freeze, which would lead to even more issues.