UIP Property Management

Simply the worst! I wouldn’t recommend anyone (not even my worst enemy) live at any of the «investment» properties this company has. I lived at 1346 Park Road and had a washer/​dryer that took 2 months to replace after I spent a lot of money at the dry cleaner. All of the appliances suck. They are literally half the size of any normal household appliances. Here is the worst part… a rat died on my balcony and it sat there for weeks while we saw it decompose. We must have called 100 times for its removal and they were NOT responsive at ALL. Seriously people please don’t even think about these properties!

The apartment I lived in on Newton St. was absolutely gorgeous but it soon went down hill. I had to sublease my apartment due to an unexpected additional bill and because my graduate school is not authorized in DC, so I had to move to continue classes.
Since then, everything has gone down hill. I had to pay $ 1500 to move out of my apartment and it took them over a month to cash that check. It would have been fine if I only had to pay or only find a subleaser, but I had to do both. The most frustrating part of this is that I left the apartment in immaculate condition and was told my deposit check, at most, would take 30 days to be sent out.
I have sent numerous emails and called the accounting rep and she answers about every third or fourth email and no calls. I’ve tried reaching upper management and no one will respond to me. It’s a deposit check, something you would think would have been done a million times before. They have told me for weeks their system is down and it seems as if they no intention of fixing it, thus, giving me back my deposit. But, in order to move in, I literally had to give them the deposit check right after my application was submitted and I even had to drive it to the leasing manager’s house, which was far away.
Now that the tables are turned, the story is so different. These are just simple everyday processes that every other apartment community seems to have down.

I moved to a second UIP building after 2 years at my first UIP property and the management has been MUCH better.
The building still has its fair share of issues (water gets turned off frequently to fix leaks, AC is busted from time to time and sometimes my Wifi goes out for no reason at all) but the property manager is really great and makes the building feel like home.
I’ll withhold final judgement for the move out process but if all goes well, UIP may earn 4 stars in my eyes.

Document all of your interactions with them! They do not keep records of anything, so when they lost some of our documents, it led to thousands of dollars in charges, and subsequently, a lawsuit. A nightmare to deal with.

So the previous review was right after UIP took over our building. I’ve since dealt with them several times and on many different levels. We’re still working out negotiations on some things, but I’ve found the senior management to actually be very reasonable and willing to accomodate much more than I had expected. Maintenance, both preventative and responsive has been expedient and they have taken actions to make our building better. I’m hoping that they keep this up and don’t do what some of the other reviewers say they have. So far, so good though. Stay tuned for more.

UIP Is absolutely Horrible!!! We have mouse infestations. I literally just saw one on my kitchen counter. We caught 10 in one week in traps. We also hear them in the vent squeaking. SUPER GROSS!!! I clean up mouse shit daily! Cockroaches are another problem. Pest control comes but nothing happens. Our bathroom was leaking toilet water from the apartment above, so a repairman came and cut a hole in our ceiling and covered with a pizza box. They said they would be back to repair the ceiling… that was months ago. The heat is on so high that our apartment is unbearable. We have to run fans with the windows open constantly. Between the mice, roaches, hole in the ceiling and the heat, we feel like this place is hell. I am so glad that I pay over $ 2000 a month for this shit hole! Never rent from UIP or you will regret it.

UIP does not care about their tenants!
–They have a history of keeping tenant security deposits without cause or holding security deposits hostage for 6 months or more without paying interest for the delay.
–Rent increases
UIP is greedy. They will demand the highest rent increases to pay for the shady dealings that they are involved in. In one lawsuit to win the right to purchase an apartment building, they got 2 tenants to file a lawsuit against the competing developer to get the competing developer out of the picture. It worked. The competing developer pulled out of the bid. The lawsuit was deceptive, just like UIP.
–Lying to tenants
When they were vying to buy my former apartment complex, UIP consistently lied to tenants and even told tenants that were a part of the tenant association that they would receive $ 5000 payouts if UIP became owners. Of course that was a lie.
When they bought my former apartment complex, they started construction without following the proper DC protocols and had to stop construction after a BRIGHT red sticker was placed on the front of the building by DC officials. They lied and told tenants that nothing was wrong and construction on the building would restart right away. Another lie. If you rent with these jerks, be prepared to be paying rent to liars! And how can you live peacefully with liars in your front yard???
–UIP does not care about their tenants
The owner, Steve Schwatt, told tenants to «move out» when tenants voiced their frustration with building problems such as regular water shutoffs, leaks, slow elevators, rodents, roaches and pests, etc.
–UIP is unyielding
When UIP is wrong, they would rather take you to court than handle thighs peacefully and do the right thing. Case in point: Blowflies (that eat off of dead rats which were in the walls of an apartment complex that they own) swarmed tenant apartments for months and instead of paying for hotels for tenants to go to, they had pest control come into units and spray a toxic spray that only killed off the blowflies that could be seen. More would come through the vents of tenants’ apartments within minutes and the problem was not solved, only temporarily delayed. Once they figured out that the blowflies were flying into apartments from the vents, they covered the vents with screens, but the rats remained in the walls. Tenants had to take UIP to court for due diligence, even when UIP knew that they were wrong.
If you rent with this company, you are making a deal with the devil. You’re better off sleeping outside.

UIP Management and Maintenance Team at 1841 Columbia Rd NW is highly responsive. They have always responded quickly and effectively to my concerns and apartment problems. Their service is outstanding.

I would have chosen zero if an option. They purchased a building that I have lived in for fourteen years in Washington, DC. Until they took over, living at The Argonne Apartments was decent and good at times. Immediately, they sent out rude letters to all tenants stating that rent was not paid and we all needed to resolve our financial obligations. This was an accounting error on their part. Each correspondence that we received after that had incorrect information and we had to call the office and inform them over and over. The property manager, hung up on me one day when I called in frustration of an issue that they had made another mistake on.
Once we gave our notice to move out, when repairs were needed, they did shoddy work and when I complained I was told since we were moving out they were going to redo everything so not a big deal. Our drawer in the kitchen was glued on crooked and the repair to the bathroom door was so shoddy it would no long shut.
In DC, the landlord has 45 days to return the deposit or give an itemized list of why it was withheld. We turned out keys in on April 26, 2014 and beginning of June I started emailing and inquiring about the deposit.
With this code violation it is my understanding that we are now entitled to our full deposit plus interest. July 7, 2014, we received a check with a small deduction but no indication of the reason they did not return the entire deposit. I will most likely let it go but based on principal it is so frustrating that I had to work so hard to get what was mine.
I have heard recently that UIP is not making good on promises to the tenants when they bought the property. I’m not surprised.
I have lived in this building for fourteen years and met some really great people and enjoyed it for the most part but based on UIP’s management and lack of ability to be professional and do a job that is easy, I would not recommend moving into any of their properties. They only care about the bottom line. MONEY!

This management company is okay at best.
Response time is very slow and sometimes when you ask for broken things to simply be fixed (which is a large part of the managements job, or am I missing something?) the points of contact act as though you are a bothering them. Most times I’ve needed something fixed or replaced it has taken an extended period of time to even get a response – actually usually I’ve had to ask more than once. They’re pretty disorganized and told us that we owed them money because we weren’t paying «full rent» of 2000 for the past 7 months. Our lease clearly stated that our rent was NOT 2000 – they responded to this mistake but really they should have double checked, again I was under the impression this was the management’s job. At my building, management is often not in the office during the hours they say they are operating and on more than one occasion even after maintenance has responded to something, we have been left with the broken appliance, still broken. In the winter, my heater didn’t come on (which no one told me would happen when I signed the lease in the summer) and they told me that it would just never come on, because in order to get it working they’d have to gut the entire room. Umm? what? I’m pretty sure that I agreed to pay to live here with the understanding that my bedroom would be heated during the winter? I’m not high maintenance about these things – I know I don’t live in some fancy new building with amenities and 24-​hour service, but seriously, this management company is seriously not even halfway decent.

We just rented an apartment in DC through UIP and it’s been great. Our point of contact was Andrea Mandato who was cheerful, responsive and really detail-​oriented. My boyfriend has been living in a UIP property since 2012 and really loves it — the rooms are spacious, renovated and the managers (like Andrea!) are really wonderful.
PS we also looked at the 841 property and Kim was great.

My experience with UIP was 5 star spectacular. My husband and I are moving from California and they made everything easy.
Lora Mitchell was our initial point of contact and she was a fantastic help! The apartment she showed us was a little small, but she had an associate waiting at another property to show us a larger unit — initiative that I rarely see now in many industries, and a huge step up from the twenty-​odd other properties we had toured. She was also terrific at following up to make sure that we were taken care of.
Kim Horton showed us the property at 1841 in Adams Morgan that we fell in love with! Kim was friendly, and though she was new to working at the property, got back to us with answers to our questions same day.
We’re looking forward to renting with UIP. Their client-​centered focus has been very impressive, and I expect that to continue throughout our time with them.

I’m sure this review will be filtered, or flagged, or however else UIP sucks poor fools into renting from them. I wish I had seen the tons of flagged reviews before I made this terrible decision. They are worse than Hyde Park’s MAC Property, by a long shot, and if you know MAC, you’ll know just how utterly shitty that is.
Long story short: got a job, short notice, had to move to DC and do everything online, Two subleases fell through, so I had to get a place sight unseen. I wanted to go with a property management company simply because dealing with a stranger over Craigslist seemed like a bad idea. I now wish that I had found a decent person via Craigslist and saved myself the hassle.
Everything everyone says about the properties is true: roaches (they don’t spray in multi-​unit buildings!); trash that builds up outside and attracts giant gross rats; a useless online maintenance service (outsourced and never EVER followed up on); absentee property managers (totally inaccessible by phone, email, or in person); staggering incompetence (i moved in, begged for months, and moved out without EVER OBTAINING A COPY OF MY FUCKING LEASING DOCUMENTS); shitty, shoddy worksmanship; an online rent pay system that never works; and on, and on, and on
. If you can somehow get my security deposit back, please let me know. This was genuinely the worst rental experience in my two decades as a tenant, and I lived in a punk house with a dozen people and one bathroom. Don’t be seduced by the deco buildings and the pretty website. Stay away. Couch surf or sublet. Live in fucking RESTON before you deal with this place.

We finally moved out and our stress levels have been dramatically reduced. No coming home to find Collins (the UIP «handy man») randomly standing inside our apartment in the middle of our living room on his cell phone without our permission. However, it has been 62-​days since we have moved out, and we are still waiting for UIP to return our security deposit. DC law requires that security deposits be returned within 45-​days without the former tenant needing to demand its return from the property owners (DC Code Annotated 42 – 3502.17 (also DC Municipal Regulations Title 14 308 to 310)). In my opinion, UIP are a bunch of crooks and I have no idea why the DC Government tolerates and allows them to operate and own property in the District…

Awful management company– they’re charging me $ 2,000 because of their mistake — they lost our first two leases, and the third lease listed the wrong move in date, so we are paying for days we never lived in the apartment. They also lost the form that was signed saying they would waive the remainder of the month’s rent when we moved in, so we are paying that too. Look forward to seeing them in court!
Make sure to get all of your leasing documents at the time of signing or at least take pictures of them with your cell phone to document what they agree to-​we asked for copies of the first two leases (that they then promptly lost) and they’re making us pay for their mistake! Unethical!

I would select no stars, but you can’t. This is the WORST management company in DC, which is saying a lot when there are huge company’s out there. UIP’s management staff are the WORST. They lie straight to your face. Right now I’m listening to construction shake my walls, even though when I signed my lease, when I asked if construction was over, they said YES. Lies. My apartment has roaches and mice, and they came and sprayed while my dog was in the apartment. Who does that? Even though they own properties in good locations, it is not worth it. Everyone in my building is counting down the days till their lease is over, as am I. It has allowed all the residents to bond because we all hate UIP. Save yourself the time and energy, don’t even bother with their apartments. I wish there were reviews before I came and looked at the apartment. I could probably write forever about my disgust, so I’ll end it now.
Also, it’s hilarious that they write, «Our trained and courteous staff» in their about on Unilocal,their staff is anything but trained or courteous. Check the papers, they suck, and are in court because of it.

I would encourage all prospective renters (and contractors for that matter) to check out the filtered reviews at the very bottom of the page. My girlfriend and I had a terrible experience trying to rent an apartment from UIP – and it looks like many, many others have had similar experiences, but for some reasons those reviews have been filtered out.
Renters beware of this company.

If it were possible to give UIP no stars, I would. Never have a dealt with such an unprofessional, negligent, and poorly run property management company.
In late 2010, I signed a lease on an apartment in the Shelburne. The unit was rent controlled and in a fabulous location. I thought I’d found an amazing deal, so amazing that I was willing to put my own money towards a planned kitchen renovation so that the upgrades were to my taste.
A few week before moving in, I saw a posting online indicating that there was a bed bug infestation in the building. I was concerned and inquired with UIP; they assured me that the problem had been eradicated.
In January 2011, I moved in. Almost immediately, I began noticing roaches. A month later, I spotted my first bed bug, which I reported immediately. UIP agreed to treat my apartment but used a method of treatment that rendered my apartment unlivable. I had to pack up all of my belongings so that every surface (cabinets, drawers, bookcases, etc.) could be exposed to chemicals. The apartment had to stay this way for six weeks. The pesticides made my eyes and throat burn and, worse, they did not get rid of the bugs. When I tried to sleep at home, I was bitten terribly and ended up with huge welts all over my body. I ended up spending thousands of dollars on hotel rooms because I could not stay in my apartment and was terrified of spreading the problem if I stayed with a friend.
What’s more, a few weeks into treatment I learned that UIP had started treating one of my next door neighbors before there was a problem in my unit. A responsible property management company would have informed me of the risk and preemptively treated my apartment. UIP did not.
In April, when it was abundantly clear that UIP’s treatment plan wasn’t working, they agreed to heat treat my apartment. That initially appeared to take care of the problem, but by June, the bugs were back. It was at this time that I learned from the building maintenance man that my other next door neighbor was a hoarder and that UIP had known for some time that his unit was terribly infested with bed bugs. UIP heat treated my apartment again and promised that they were addressing the problem in his unit. They failed to do so.
By November, the bed bugs were back for a third time. UIP finally got around to treating the hoarder’s apartment, but it was too little, too late. The extermination company, which specializes in bed bug treatment, said his unit was the worst infestation they had ever seen anywhere and, despite the treatment, the problem persisted.
When I finally moved out in December, I had to spend several thousand dollars to fumigate all of my personal belongings and heat treat my new apartment to ensure that I wasn’t taking the problem with me.
Throughout this entire ordeal, UIP was entirely unprofessional. Initially, they blamed the problem on me even though they knew it was a preexisting problem in the building. Often, they would refuse to return my phone calls or emails for weeks on end. They made promises about addressing the problem that were not kept.
My «deal» of an apartment in Dupont ended up costing me more than I would have spent had I rented in a luxury building. But the financial cost paled in comparison to the stress and anxiety of living with bed bugs for a year.
Do not move in to the Shelburne, or in to any other building managed by UIP, for that matter. If you do, you will live to regret it.