McGrath Real Estate Services, Inc.

Sep 5th, 2020

Just starting my review incase McGrath/long & foster continues with their lack of accountability. Will back tomorrow to update you.
Oct 27th, 2019

RENTERS BEWARE - do not rent from this company. The company charged me for "pet odor deep carpet cleaning" when I never had a pet and hardly lived in apartment during my one-year lease. They see your security deposit as a blank check and will charge for unreasonable items when you move out. DO NOT RENT from these people.
Jul 15th, 2019

Terrible customer service, takes weeks and months to complete work orders... your passed around the company as it hires and fires people. Nobody handles you from beginning to end so communication is not only repetitious but a complete nightmare. A complete disaster and has put me off of Long and Foster indefinitely. I use to always use their agents and products when dealing with real estate, renting, buying or selling. NEVER AGAIN!!!!! Not only are they trying to rip my family off right now, but after sending them proof of receipts, emails etc... they still claim I owe them $1675 and will not return my deposit. All rent has been payed, we fulfilled our end of contract. Instead of a smooth transition from one Long and Foster Property to another they pull a scheme to rip us off. There are way better companies to get involved with. BELIEVE ME. Long and Foster has become a grinder... Do not be the next victim of fraud.
May 19th, 2019

McGrath managed my condo for almost 13 years. This past summer I had them recommend and arrange a contractor to remodel the kitchen in the condo. The guy in maintenance, Zack, assured me their contractor Herndon Services was top notch. First day into the remodel they break a water pipe (having failed to shut the water off) and flooded two units below mine. Now this alone does not earn a 1 star. Accidents happen, I understand that. But what gets the 1 star is that it took McGrath 8 DAYS to have one of their property managers go out to the condo to survey the damage. Their excuse "It's summer and we are swamped". Here is a management company that happily collected over $20,000 in management fees and leasing commissions from me over almost 13 years and when I needed them the most they were too busy. The summer is always the busiest time in real estate. Clearly they don't have the leadership to staff appropriately. Or maybe they just didn't care because the unit was empty at the time and they were not collecting management fees until a tenant got back into the place. Either way, completely unacceptable. They ended up letting their contractor Herndon Services coordinate the repair process with the tenant below my condo. This company never contacted their own insurance and instead paid out of pocket for a different company to make all of the repairs. They played a he said she said game between themselves, me, the other unit owner, McGrath, and the contractor they hired to make the repairs. It was very shady way to handle things and makes me wonder yet again why this contractor was so highly recommended by Zack. Why wouldn't the contractor contact their insurance and instead spend $15000 of their own money? What were they afraid of? The McGrath property manager that did finally make it out to the condo after 8 days was shocked at the level of damage. The contractor had been feeding them a story about how things were when reality was much worse. We had been trying to tell McGrath they were not receiving proper info from Herndon Services but I guess they didn't believe us. The property manager was also surprised that McGrath was still recommending this contractor to clients. Long story short, this company use to be pretty good. I used to be able to call up the property manager for the unit, explain what I needed, and be confident things would get done. Then about 8 years they reorganized and introduced "Client Advocates" that basically became email black holes. I never really knew who to contact when I had a question. I stayed with them because when you are on the other side of the world you don't have many options. When everything happened this past summer, I saw their true colors. Do not use this company. The whole fiasco this summer soured me on being a landlord to the point that I sold the condo. And when we deploy again overseas, I can assure you McGrath Real Estate will come nowhere near our townhouse when we rent that out again.
May 7th, 2019