The Touchstone Group

My room mates and I rented an apartment this past month and put down a deposit a month before we moved in. There were a few things that were wrong with the place, and the agent that we dealt with promised they would be taken care of before our move in date. None of it was fixed by then, and we still have a toilet that wont stop running, shades that don’t work (open or close and are kind of just broken hanging there), a shower that’s clogged, washer that leaks all over the bathroom floor and the place was moldy when we moved in. We have reached out to them repeatedly and have been more than understanding, with still no results. Being a property manager myself, I cannot understand how this would be deemed as acceptable. I haven’t been able to have friends/​family over to see our new place because it is embarrassing. Extremely poor customer service and I don’t think I can even call it management. I am not looking forward to working with them in the next year.

Olivia is fantastic! Very responsive and helped us with every step! Found a great place for us and we are so excited! Couldn’t be happier!

I’m very disappointed with touchstone group and their poor customer service. I rent a parking spot from them so I rarely interact with the company. In March I found out that I would no longer need the spot. Unfortunately my lease goes until end of July. I emailed Blake right away asking if they could market the spot in case someone was interested so I could break my lease. I never received an email back. It took a phone call and two other emails until he responded saying they would begin marketing the spot. By mid April I still had not heard anything so I emailed Blake asking for an update. Once again it took an additional email to Blake to get him to answer. He seemed irritated by my annoying emails. Finally he told me it’s not worth it for them to market the spot and that it is my responsibility. I’m upset because this is the first I’m being told this. I have no problem marketing the spot since I am breaking the lease but I would have liked to know this. Why didn’t he tell me this in March when I first contacted him? I have now been paying for parking I don’t use for an extra two months when I could have been trying to rent it out. If this is how they treat customers, I do not want to be associated with them. If I were you I would stay away.

I can’t help but nod my head repeatedly as I read Katie J’s comment, and then nod my head even more emphatically as I read Blake’s pompous and over the top petty response. Get over yourself and stop spending all your time telling people what your job doesn’t entail, Blake, and then stop driving the irony further by spending all your time telling people exactly how to do the job that you won’t do yourself. I mean, seriously. Who does that?
Yes, Touchstone Group is responsive. They will call you right away to let you know that they are on top of it. But then you’ll realize they will spend the rest of the time passing the buck.
It took 3 days to get my front door deadbolt replaced after the turnkey stopped turning. For 3 days I had to wait for someone to come replace my front door deadbolt so I could enter/​exit and lock/​unlock properly. For 3 days, I went through the back entry way with 5 keys just to get in/​out as my alternative. I could get to Home Depot myself in 5 minutes, yet I had to wait 3 days for Touchstone to find someone who could get to my house and get this done? That’s just retarded.
I should have known from the very beginning something was stinky when it took Touchstone a month to finally even straighten out the right keys to my apt when I first moved in (I won’t get into the experience of even trying to view this unit for the first time), blaming the landlord for losing originals when the landlord blamed them for exactly the same thing. Come on, why am I even dragged into the middle of this conflict?
And then my basement floods… I’ll blame most what transpired on my lunatic landlord, but Blake’s condescending response to my belief that my rent should be reduced after I lost access to the lower level of my apt, is beyond human. My landlord had admitted that she had experienced sump pump problems in the past when a flood in former years had overcome the lower level as well as the shared basement for the building; since then, she said, she’d been fighting with the association to split costs and sump pump responsibilities. Neighbors confirmed this was a lost cause of hers, and that she was just going to have to suck it up and take responsibility.
So lucky me, the basement floods. Good thing she had already replaced the carpeting with tiled floors. But fast forward and it’s now 21 days later and all my belongings are still stacked floor to ceiling in the middle of every room downstairs while the walls are ripped out, and industrial dehumidifiers and fans take over everything. 21 days and I don’t have access to my 2^nd bedroom, my 2^nd bathroom, my office, my closets, my laundry room. I must literally crawl and climb over boxes and fans just to get clothes for work. My clothes are covered in drywall dust. The floors are filthy after the workers replace the walls. Nothing’s been swept, the carpets are beyond discussion, I don’t even want to know what’s festering in them. Blake «intercepts» my call and basically tells me «good luck trying to prove that,» when I explain my belief that my landlord’s negligence was a root cause for the flooding and everything that followed. Blake actually takes the time to call me right back after I announced I was hanging up on him.
He calls me back… to say that he «looks forward to my full rent payment on the 1^st» before I hang up again, even more disgusted with his existence.
Seriously? Are you a MAN, or a PETTY adolescent BOY that never overcame getting picked on at school? Seriously, I’m so disturbed.
Is there no more decency in the world anymore, Unilocalers? Because Blake Townsley seemed to thoroughly enjoy my banal experience and laugh it off with a «you’re lucky [your repairs] happened as quickly as it did» comment.
Here’s an idea, Touchstone Group. Why don’t you be the change we need to see in the world, instead of being just ANOTHER soul sucking penny pinching waste of breath company offering absolutely nothing of actual substance, real value, or sound service to this community?
It must be nice to run a business where you collect people’s money and then spend all your energies only detailing why you’ve absolved yourself of any real responsibilities as per your bloated egos, your bylines and your fancy words?

I hired them to manage my condo and they didn’t do a damn thing! They promised me that my condo would be rented very fast. 11 weeks later they haven’t gotten even one application. They are not returning my calls and emails.

Worst management experience ever: Great sales pitch with absolutely no delivery. This company is completely unprofessional with terrible customer service. After they take your money; will not respond to your needs, completely ignore you until you give up, fill your property with people that cannot pay their rents; rip you off beyond belief for any maintenance issues; and just when you think they can’t get any worse, they find a way. I wish so, done had warned me. STAY AWAY

After my go-​to handyman flaked out on me, I was in a real pinch to get my condo turned around for new tenants so I reached out to the Touchstone Group. On very short notice, they had my unit professionally cleaned, repainted, and took care of a long punchlist of odds and ends to get my rental property in move-​in condition. The entire process– from first call to Touchstone to my new renters taking possession– took place in a 48 hour span. They promised a lot and delivered a lot more…

Really good guys. Responsive and easy to deal with.

Touchstone Group is definitely the best management company I’ve ever dealt with, they’re super responsive every time I’ve had a question or problem and they’ve always been very professional with me. My wife and I moved from LA to Chicago in Sept 2011, driving with all our stuff to get here. My wife had come out here at the beginning of August to find a place so when we got here Blake made sure we had the keys, in fact he got them to a friend of ours (at our request) who helped us get moved in.
I’ve had 3 instances where I’ve needed the repair guy out and every one was positive:
1) Had to have the mailbox lock replaced — repair guy was there same day to replace it, finished quickly
2) On the same visit he also came to fix our seemingly inoperable dishwasher, turned out it was on an external switch that needed to be turned on before operation
3) Laundry machine wasn’t working, but I was leaving for a trip in 2 days so I thought they’d just get it fixed while I was out of town, but the repair guy was on hand the next day and got it fixed before I left (load off my mind)
Every time I’ve needed to get in touch I’ve just emailed or called Blake and the response has been immediate, for the repairs above the repair guy was in touch with me ~5 minutes after I called Blake.
It’s always tough moving to a new apartment and moving across the country to do so is exponentially more stressful. You always worry about what kind of landlord you’re going to have (believe me I could tell you about my super crazy landlady who would randomly show up at our apartment and try to get in to make sure we weren’t doing any damage to the place! I’m a freakin’ responsible ex-​Air Force officer lady!). Blake and Courtland have made my living experience delightful and I won’t hesitate to see if they have anything open when it comes time for us to move.

DO NOT RESORT TO THESE PEOPLE FOR ANYTHING. Blake Townsley is the absolute worst landlord. He may be one of the rudest people I have ever met in my life. He talked down to me constantly like I was stupid. No Blake, I’m not running some shady «Touchstone Group,» I’m an accountant. Please stop talking to me that way. We had a toilet problem that Blake refused to have taken care of for over a month. When we finally became persistant that he was required by law to fix it, he switched our management over to another company so he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. He was so intimidated by two young girls that he got rid of us. I’m frankly relieved that I don’t have to deal with him anymore, but it’s unreal what an awful person he is.