GC Realty & Development, LLC

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Landlord and Real Estate Investor of Sohoda Properties

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a small real estate team with several multifamily buildings in our portfolio

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire GC Realty & Development, LLC to accomplish?

• Manage properties

SOLUTION

How did you find GC Realty & Development, LLC?

• Online Search
• Referral

Why did you select GC Realty & Development, LLC over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Referred to me

How many teammates from GC Realty & Development, LLC were assigned to this project?

10+

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

GC Realty has managed several of our multifamily properties

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

My wife and I have been with GC Realty for a few months. In this review, I will cover 4 domains of repeated incompetence on the part of GC Realty, each of which I will break down with details below: 

1. GC Realty mismanaged our funds – consistently overcharging costs and underreporting financial details
2. GC Realty mismanaged our properties
3. GC Realty’s contractors have consistently done extremely poor work on all our properties
4. across the GC Realty staff, we have consistently experienced extremely poor communication. 

In terms of mismanaging our funds, GC Realty’s practice is to send separate invoices to track expenses rather than providing us a spreadsheet with income going in and out. These invoices are vague and confusing in a way that feels deliberate. So we had to create a spreadsheet ourselves. Doing so revealed that $2800 in reserve funds is unaccounted for. We overpaid into our reserves and these funds just disappeared. 

GC Realty has repeatedly refused to account for the expenditure beyond saying that the funds were absorbed into other expenses with zero details. As far as we can tell, they literally stole $2800 from us. GC Realty also charged us for things that were not our responsibility. For example, we were charged a large sum to replace a lock that a GC Realty employee had broken forcing their way in after a tenant locked himself out. 

First off, our leases specify that it is the tenants’ responsibility to call and pay for a locksmith if locked out. Second, the GC Realty employee should not have forced their way into the apartment and broken the lock. GC Realty should have been responsible for the cost, not us. Then there are a large number of invoices that charge us exorbitant rates. One invoice charged us $160 to change a lightbulb. 

Before GC Realty took over, I paid a handyman $30 for the same job and that is only because it requires a ladder. In terms of mismanaging our properties, there have been major security issues. First, all of their contractors and vendors have the codes to all of our lockboxes with keys to each building and apartment. And one of these contractors left the codes on all four lockboxes at one property, meaning each lockbox was completely unsecured with the keys inside. 

The lockboxes were unsecured like this for hours or possibly days before we noticed. Additionally, GC Realty installed multiple new locks on various units incorrectly. Because of this careless work, those units were completely unsecured because the door knobs did not latch and could be easily swung open even when “locked.” Other locks they installed simply wouldn’t turn at all. Clearly the GC Realty contractors didn’t double check their work, which would have taken 2 seconds per door. 

What’s more, after being assured that these mistakes would not happen again, a couple weeks later the same exact thing occurred throughout another of our properties. Most egregiously, a GC Realty vendor was caught rummaging through our personal belongings in the basement of one of our homes (where we store all of the items from my old apartment) and was caught stealing at least one item – possibly many more. The contractor was only supposed to be turning on the furnace – that is it. 

The incident was witnessed by someone who has done maintenance work for me for years. Then there is the fact that GC Realty put us in extended violation of the law by failing to turn our boilers on – even though we verified with them multiple times that this would be done promptly. The only reason I found out the boilers were not on is because I happened to be visiting one of the properties a couple weeks ago after a freezing cold night. 

Multiple of the tenants, with whom we have always been on good terms, were extremely upset because of having to sleep in the freezing cold. At another property, GC Realty’s leasing agent did several showings in a basement apartment and didn’t let us or maintenance know that the heat was not working. Temperatures here were well below freezing and pipes could have burst. In this same apartment, there was also an extremely strong sewer smell throughout the entire apartment apparently for weeks. 

We were not informed of this, even though there had been a dozen showings. The day after we began addressing this problem, we had an applicant submit an application. Clearly, we were getting no applicants because of the smell. When we talked to GC Realty about this, they blamed us for the leasing agent not noticing nor informing us. 

The third domain of incompetence is that GC Realty’s contractors consistently did extremely poor work in our apartments, such as installing locks incorrectly and not checking that the locks actually functioned as mentioned. Another example occurred when we asked GC Realty to do the turnover work for one of our vacant units. The painters left many areas unpainted, and on the window sills, they lightly painted over old paint that was extremely cracked and that was chipping off in large scales. 

Then they painted over thick tape that sealed gaps around the window AC units such that, when someone goes to remove those AC units, they are going to necessarily peel off a large strip of the newer paint. Additionally, there was a small hole in one wall before work began that somehow ended up being a much bigger opening after the contractors were complete. The paint color GC Realty chose was also an awful shade of green-ish white – and they did not ask us about paint color in advance. 

In this same apartment, they re-caulked a bathtub without removing the old caulk (that had mold in some places!). This resulted in large gaps in the “new” caulk that water could seep through. My wife and I had to argue with GC Realty about all of these incidents, requiring hours of time spent on the phone and writing emails back and forth, before they finally went to check the work themselves, admitted it was poor, and had someone fix it. And the “fix” was still substandard. 

Then GC Realty insisted that we cover the costs of re-doing the work until we pushed back. Had we not gone to check the unit ourselves, we would have never known that the contractors did such a poor job. The last domain of bad management is that GC Realty’s communication is exceedingly poor. Online there are many reviews praising their good communication, which is the whole reason we decided to go with them. But for us, this couldn’t have been farther from the truth. 

For instance, when GC Realty had locks changed on all our buildings, they didn’t communicate to us that this was happening. And because they didn’t give us the codes to the lockboxes, we couldn’t get into our own buildings without asking for them. Worse yet, we couldn’t get into our owner-occupied building – where we live! And when we did ask, our property manager didn’t tell us all of the codes and told us some incorrect codes. 

Additionally, GC Realty gave our tenants less than 2 hours’ notice before changing the locks and, in one building, didn’t put lockboxes out that day so there were no spare keys to enter the building for a tenant who was not home. GC Realty also provided only one key for each unit even though most of our units have multiple people on the lease. One tenant contacted us enraged; her partner was forced to sleep in his office the night before because he had no means to access his own home. 

More upsetting was the extremely rude and dismissive way GC Realty communicated with tenants about such issues (tenants forwarded us these emails). In this case, after dismissing the tenants’ concerns and giving them a run-around, GC Realty finally told them to make a copy of the key and to submit the receipt for reimbursement. The tenant did as GC Realty instructed – yet the key worked only on the home and wouldn’t work on the garage (even though it should) because of the unique locks they use.

This then prevented the tenant from accessing his vehicle and getting to work. To top it off, GC Realty failed to reimburse these tenants at the end of the month as promised; instead, the tenants had to forward us more email back-and-forths with GC Realty so that we could push the company to credit our tenants what they were owed. 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Across all of our communications with GC Realty, they have been continuously polite yet have somehow managed to make us feel more disrespected than we ever have in any business dealing. 

GC Realty’s staff display a pattern of responding to concerns with extreme politeness, taking accountability for one or two issues, ignoring in their response the most pressing issues, claiming that the other issues are actually not issues, and saying that the issues that do, in their opinion, exist are in fact the fault of the owner or the tenants, which has not been true for any of the incidents detailed here. 

If they even bother to reply to this review, I expect the reply will follow a similar format. They’ll project politeness and professionalism, while ignoring the issues most important, taking minimal accountability, minimizing the egregiousness of events that occurred, then shifting responsibility to someone else. GC Realty hides tenant dissatisfaction from the owner. 

In our case, they struggled to hide their poor work because our tenants forwarded us the emails and because of the fact that we owner-occupy one of our multi-unit buildings. We have seen firsthand exactly how poorly GC Realty treats tenants. Because GC Realty puts on the appearance of being professional and straightforward, I can see why many owners might think the company is doing a great job. And maybe this accounts for their many positive reviews online. 

But we have had a front row seat to GC Realty’s performance. We know that the majority of the issues we've experienced stemmed from systemic mismanagement rather than the mismanagement of a single team. For that reason, I would be shocked if the poor work they have done for us wasn’t pervasive throughout all the buildings they manage. So again, my advice is don’t believe the hype. 

We wanted this to work so badly. But it has been a nightmare that has drained $15,000 from our wallets, much of which has gone toward excessive or unnecessary costs. We still have little clarity on what we were actually paying for and cannot figure it out, despite the fact that we are very competent at what we do – I am a retired Army officer and current grad student and my wife is a university professor.

What was your primary form of communication with GC Realty & Development, LLC?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Nothing

Are there any areas for improvement or something GC Realty & Development, LLC could have done differently?
We are not writing this review vindictively. Rather, we wanted to share our experience and inform people of the core issues we experienced in working with GC Realty.