ZiprentReviews of ziprent.com

My elderly parents are living in a ziprent managed unit, and they have had tremendous difficulty getting them to repair things, sometimes letting repairs go unaddressed for longer than 30 days. They have had problems that have rendered the bathroom showers unusable at variou points for over a month, and didn't have a working dryer through November and December.

They respond to support requests promptly, but they need to improve on the way they communicate with tenants via email/text notification. Too many emails/texts, with different Ziprent agents handling one case that even the agents get things mixed up because they’re not communicating with each other. It got to point where I’m now directly communicating with the property owner if/when support is needed.

[Tenant Review] To those who are prospective tenants looking at Ziprent's properties, most of the reviews for Ziprent here are written by owners, not tenants. While I understand why some owners would have highly favorable experiences of Ziprent, our experience as tenants was largely the opposite in the 1 year we rented with them. --- Pros: 1. Ziprent-to-tenant communication for repairs: The repairs requests were handled well (though there were quite a few things wrong with the apartment when we first moved in). For all of our repairs issues, Ziprent was communicative through all steps of the repair process. Ziprent's 24/7 hotline was also extremely helpful for our emergency situations. 2. Portal: Ziprent has a fairly basic renting portal but did the job for our renting needs. Neutral: 1. Required walkthrough of apartment: You will be asked to offer walkthroughs to prospective tenants in the last month of your lease. Cons: 1. Horrible move-in and move-out experiences - Ziprent will not follow previously established lease terms: As we moved into our apartment, we were contacted by the HOA that we would be required to pay a move-in fee of $150 and $150 upon move-out as well. While were OK with paying the fees since the listing originally stated this fee, our lease had never mentioned anything about move-in or move-out fees. Additionally, we were contacted directly by the HOA, not Ziprent, to pay this fee directly to them. The HOA wrote to us as if we were the owners of the apartment we were renting in, and both they and Ziprent forced us to sign a document that was clearly meant for the homeowner. You can imagine we were pretty sussed out the first few weeks of living there. Since we had already moved in, we paid directly to the HOA. We also offered to have an addendum added to the lease. Thus, we (and Ziprent) signed a lease addendum stating we will pay $150 move-in and move-out fees directly to the HOA. Fast forward 1 year later, we give more than 30 days notice to Ziprent that we were moving out. We scheduled a mover, moved out of the apartment before the lease ended, and sent the HOA a check of $150. All good, right? Nope. Ziprent required us to pay an additional $150 (total $300) in move-out fees (they actually took it out of our security deposit), completely disregarded the addendum we (and they) had signed when we first moved in, and refused to compromise. They also never informed us that the owner had also directly paid the HOA in advance even though we had already sent a check. Ziprent also said that we "did not follow the rules and notify the HOA of the move-out date" and referenced a document we had never seen nor been given by either HOA or Ziprent. Ridiculous. While they eventually refunded us the "fee", their excuse was that the "cooperation from the HOA was nonexistent". Ridiculous. Ziprent, we are NOT homeowners and are NOT responsible for these unexpected "fees" that pop up. You cannot coerce tenants to pay for things that the owner is responsible for. This is extremely slimy and highly illegal. 2. Terrible owner-to-Ziprent-to-tenant communication: Communication from the owner was slow and resulted in lots of headache; as mentioned in point 1., the owner paid for the HOA fees themselves and never told us even though we had already sent a check. They also recommended we cancel our check instead of resolving the double payment on the owner's side. 3. Ziprent sides with HOA rather than tenant: See above for point 1. They also claimed we had never sent a check when our check was already cashed by the HOA. Ridiculous. 4. Your security deposit will be taken no matter what: Much like luxury apartments complexes, you will be required to pay for both carpet and regular cleaning services yourself. We had a 1br/1ba apartment and our total cleaning fees was around $600. --- While we were happy with how Ziprent handled the repairs process, the rest of our experience was overall terrible and stressful. Reading the other reviews on Ziprent's page, I can understand why property owners are largely happy with Ziprent; they will ultimately bully tenants to pay for things that the owner is responsible for paying, ignore lease terms, and place HOA responsibilities on the tenant. Would we rent from Ziprent again? Not after our experience with them. Would I suggest hiring Ziprent to rent out an apartment? From how much Ziprent gets away with at the expense of their tenants, I'm not surprised many owners would love them.