IMPOSSIBLE
LANDLORDS
complaints. The rush to buy up
as many homes as possible has
stretched resources to the point of
breaking, these people said.
“Complaints were coming at us
like out of a fire hose,” said a former Invitation Homes employee,
who worked in the property management division and routinely
fielded maintenance requests.
Initially, the former employee
said, the company took care to
make sure renovations were up
to snuff. But before long, the
task of overseeing dozens of independent contractors tending
to thousands of homes spread
out over huge geographical areas
became simply too much, even
though the company was hiring
staff as quickly as it could.
Call centers were overwhelmed.
“Getting someone on the phone was
next to impossible,” the employee
said. “I have no doubt the customer
experience was compromised.”
Other ex-investment company employees spoke of increasing pressure to fix up the homes
cheaply and quickly.
A former inspector for American
Homes 4 Rent who worked in the
Dallas office said he routinely examined homes just prior to rental
that were not habitable. Though
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11.17.13
it wasn’t his job to answer complaints, he said he fielded “hundreds of calls” from irate tenants.
“I didn’t know what to tell
them,” he said. “I couldn’t do
anything about it. It was like
pulling teeth to get [the company] to send out a repairman.”
In an email, B.J. Poznecki, a
construction superintendent for
American Homes 4 Rent — which
has spent more than $3 billion
“If we had known the
problems that we were
going to have we would
have never rented from
these people. I really
don’t think they care.”
in the past year to acquire about
20,000 houses — said that buying
and renting single-family homes
on a large scale is a new business
model, and as such “systems, process and procedures” are evolving.
Poznecki said the Malibu,
Calif.-based company just opened
a new call center that handles
all incoming maintenance calls,
which he said will improve the
customer experience. American
Homes 4 Rent is “working around
the clock to help us achieve our
goal of excellence in the shortest