Savvy Properties

You will see reviews on here that have 5 stars. Part of me thinks that is because Jim, Thomas, and Mike are at the place and sometimes respond, which is hard to find in Berkeley. I’ll admit that — as the apartment situation is pretty difficult here.
As a Berkeley student, my standards are pretty reasonable for renting, I would just like to have a landlord who is responsive and easy to deal with, someone who is reasonable.
I would have to say that my experience with Savvy has been extremely negative. Firstly, they will rarely get back to your emails, unless it is in the beginning when they are trying to win your business. If you emailing them regarding payment, they will respond immediately. Otherwise they will never get back to you.
Secondly, I have put in multiple work orders for things that are broken inside my apartment, and none of them have been addressed. It’s been about 3 months.
Lastly, they have sometimes become rude or even hostile when my roommates and I are asking for a simple fix or for them to be more responsive to our concerns as tenants.
There is a lot of adverse selection in the apartment market here in Berkeley, and Savvy defines it. I recommend you be Savvy and find yourself somewhere else to stay.

Jim, Thomas, Mike and Jackie are the best management crew! I lived here for 3 years and had a great time.
Whenever I request to fix something, the crew would come fixing it on that day or the day after.
The office is right downstairs, and they help you pick up packages, it’s very convenient.
Also when I moved out to emeryville, Jim did me a great favor, giving me a ride to move my mattress with his truck.
Overall, great place to live!

My daughter and her roommate stayed in this apartment complex managed by Savvy Properties. Jim, the manager, is my point of contact for any apartment related questions. Jim is very professional and friendly. I first encountered him when my daughter picked up her keys from the leasing office last year. Since then, I have emailed and talked to Jim in various occasions. Jim is always very responsive and helpful.
These 2 Call girls are very happy and blessed to have Jim as their apartment manager. Even though they are going to move out soon for a bigger unit, they definitely will miss Jim a lot.
For all those Cal students who are looking for an apartment unit to rent, you will soon agree to what I write here!

JIM IS THE GREATEST APT. MANAGER EVER!
And Thomas is the best bookkeeper/​accountant ever!
Also, the maintenance crew is the best. I can request them to fix anything and they would come by immediately and fix whatever I need to be fixed. They even kill spiders if you ask them too.
It is also super convenient that the office is right at your apartment. The apt. manager and maintenance crew is always at the office Monday-​Friday 10am-​6pm and they even post their cell number on the door just in case you need to contact them in an emergency
Only tip I would add is to bring Jim cookies. That way, you can get on his good side if you ever need a huge favor.

Jim is the worst property manager ever. DO NOT RENT A PLACE FROM SAVVY. They do not even do their job as property managers, and instead make one tenant responsible for collecting rent from all the tenants. There is no credit or pay for this work, that is really supposed to be handled by them. Jim is very unreliable and often changes his mind, so I really don’t trust anything he says. He also finds a lot of stupid excuses to charge fees or increase prices. And sometime I want to ask him a question and get a straight answer, and he just goes on and on about something completely unrelated. it’s so annoying. I wish I never signed the lease.

I’m always hesitant to rent from a property management company because I don’t want to become an anonymous renter.
Savvy Properties changed my point of view.
Jim and Thomas are great to do business with. They made me and my partner feel at home with the rental process. They are efficient and really good guys!!!
And Mike and Jacie are fast to come to the rescue when something needs to be repaired.
The only thing I don’t understand is why the owner of Savvy shoved these great guys into the basement to work. They should have a better, more uplifting work environment!!!

I love Savvy Properties! I lived here for three years from 2006 – 2009, and it was a very pleasant experience. Quiet building, the management is very prompt to respond to tenant concerns, they are super nice with handling mail packages, and if they are able to help they will. Jim in the front office was always so cheerful and helpful. I recently had to contact Jim to ask for a document from 2009, and he got back to me within 24 hours and accommodated my request. I’m very grateful I spent those three years in such a great environment.

The only reason Savvy Properties gets 2 stars instead of 1 is that their handyman, Mike, is awesome and has the best facial hair ever. He will fix everything, he is polite and he knows what he’s doing.
Everything else about Savvy is horrible. Do not rent a property the manage or own if you have an ability not to. They are likely to:
— Completely ignore multiple requests for help dealing with a rodent infestation.
— Not give proper notice when bringing tenants by. Not give proper notice when coming into the unit. Not give proper legal training to homeowners they manage for, which results in homeowners simply coming by and in to the property.
They get two stars because they didn’t try to fuck us on the deposit, but it was a surprise given how they were the whole rest of the time they managed the property I lived in.

I’ve had a good experience with them so far. They are professional and they go over the leasing contract with you in full. They are responsive to repair and maintenance needs. Jim is great, very professional and respectful. I’m glad that I am renting with them.

Lived on college, and Thomas was a great maintenance man, and Jim was an awesome manager. They also helped us out by giving us great references after we moved out.
Thanks Jim!!!

During my final year of college at UC Berkeley I got the opportunity to rent a room in a great house (corner of College Ave. and Derby) with an awesome landlord! I cannot speak highly enough about Jim and Savvy properties!
I had a great experience all around! If given the opportunity to rent again from Jim and Savvy properties I most definitely would! They were extremely friendly and easy to work with!

I rented from this property in college, and I absolutely loved it. My group definitely used the place like any good hearted college kids (we were 10 college kids in a two stroy awesome house, just a few blocks from campus, so you can imagine we weren’t exactly too concerned about keeping up on the properties aesthetics). However, Jim and Savvy properties took great care of the place for us and made sure it stayed looking good. We got landscaping once a month, he fixed our shower, and he didn’t even care if there were some minor messes that needed cleaning up.
Savvy did a great job, we were good kids who paid rent on time, and they understood that any college kid is going to be at least a little messy. They worked well with us and kept the outside of the house clean, and ended up giving me the entire deposit back once i cleaned up during move out. Savvy rocks!
Thank you JIM!

This review is a bit late, but I lived in one of Savvy Properties properties for two years, on Alacatraz Ave. I loved that apartment. It was a studio, the perfect size for me and the rent was resonable for being so close to everything; trasnportation, grocery store, Berkeley campus. I was not a student, I worked full time, so that might be why the rent wasn’t too shocking to me.
I’m from NY and the apartment had that old school NY charm. Tiled bathrooms, old school kitchen. I have no complaints about Savvy Properties upkeep of the building or their service. They fixed things that needed fixing (my fridge pretty much died and they replaced it), answered my emails and calls in a timely manner, and I got my entire deposit back.
I didn’t have too much contact with any of the Savvy reps, but when I did it was always pleasant and normal.
I would reccommend renting from them.

This review is regarding my experience at the apartments at 1494 Solano Ave.
In short I would give Savvy Prop Mgmt 5 stars, they were surprisingly easy to deal with throughout the entire ordeal. Very professional. Unfortunately Savvy does the leasing for the owners at 1494 solano called ‘YZK properties’ who are absolute cheapskate slumlords, 0 stars for them. 2.5 stars overall.
I called in about an ad on craigslist for the apartments at 1494 Solano in Albany, CA. The people at Savvy property management were very helpful. I scheduled the appointment and we took a look at the apartments. The appointment was done with the tenant still living there, I blame myself for not inspecting the place thoroughly however there was a large family inside having dinner so I took a quick look at the place and it appeared just fine.
I signed the lease and moved in on June 16^th, 2012. I moved out less than a week later on June 20^th, 2012. Absolute nightmare apartment.
The place smelled terrible when I moved in. I tried candles and fans but the smell was deep inside the old carpet. I didn’t notice this on my initial inspection because the the people there were cooking dinner that masked the smell.
There was mold on the windows, on the floor, in the ceiling fans, on the doors. Pretty much everywhere. I’m talking thick, caked, black mold.
There is a single grounded outlet in the kitchen of the apartment, the rest are ungrounded two prong outlets. If you have any modern electronics like computers, stereos, televisions etc you will have to get an extension cord running into the kitchen and alternate between having a microwave plugged in or powering your electronics.
On my 4^th night there was a dead rat in the toilet when I got home from work. No joke. I flushed him down and went to bed. I woke up the next day to use the bathroom and there was a live rat trying to crawl out of the toilet. NO JOKE. I took videos and uploaded them to youtube, you can see them by searching for ‘1494 solano APT 11 rat’
I moved out the next day. F*** that s***.

Still love this place and planning to remain for the third year here :). It’s a shame the office downstairs is no longer accepting packages because too many tenants abuse the convenience by leaving their stuff down there forever. Sigh, oh well.

I’ve seen some posts here that do not differentiate between the property and the property management company — which is an important distinction to make.
Savvy Properties is as good as it gets with property management services. Of the five places we lived in on the East Bay, they were the best landlords we had. They have the expertise to take care of just about any issue that comes up and do it in a way that does not interfere with your time and life as a tenant or as a property owner. They really just take care of it — no drama, aggression, getting defensive, freaking out, being indecisive and not knowing what to do, etc.
If you’re a tenant, and see a property listed by Savvy, know that you’re in great hands!
Owners out there — rather than outsourcing all your various leasing needs to a bunch of different people who don’t know what they’re doing and then having to coordinate between them and your tenants for endless hours, do us all a favor, and please just go with Savvy and save yourself and your tenants a lot of time, energy and the unpleasantness of interacting with each other. I can guarantee you, that even if you have an excellent lawyer and an excellent carpenter and an excellent accountant, and think you can just get each of them to do a little bit more work that will add up to effective property management, you are wrong and you will still save yourself a lot of trouble by hiring a one-​stop-​shop property management company like Savvy. Spoken from several experiences.
We liked Savvy so much, we wish all our landlords would use them for property management. Unfortunately, they don’t, and instead we end up dealing with people who really don’t know what they’re doing — lawyers who write ridiculous ambiguous custom leases, property managers who have no interpersonal skills, and a construction crew made up of one woman who provides unrealistic projections of when the construction is going to be finished and of course, does not deliver. Since we moved out of the house we rented from Savvy, we have been deeply regretting losing them as our rental company ever since!
When Savvy was our landlord, we lived in a 10-​people co-​op, renting a single-​family home that belonged to a family very new to leasing. Savvy interfaced so well between us and the owners that we never had to deal with them and they never had to deal with us or the house issues. We had people leave and join during the lease, and had both permanent replacement tenants and short-​term sublettors come on board. Savvy understood the realities of communal living, and just took care of lease amendments, at the same time using their legal and investigative resources to protect the owners’ interests. And that, I think is such an incredibly valuable service for both tenants and owners. I highly recommend them to tenants and owners alike!