Comments on: Hollister Enterprises Apartment Rentals – The worst?

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:24:26 +0000

Wow! Hard to believe the Hollister slumlord’s are still at it.

I rented from them 1994-95 on the property across the Fine Arts Museum. My biggest disaster was the living room ceiling caving in. During mid-lease I noticed it beginning to sag and notified Hollister. They ignored it and eventually it crashed down (I already moved everything out of that room). I was in the bedroom when it happened. I called Hollister immediately. All he did was to have his maintenance guy clean up the mess. The ceiling was only fixed after I had a city bldg inspector come out and notice of impending fines were issued to Hollister by the city. Of course, I did not renew but did get my entire deposit back.

Do they still charge extra for providing an AC window unit. I can fondly remember the apt running on one 15 amp fuse, which frequently blew out.

By: Luke

Luke — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:40:15 +0000

The Hollisters are TERRIBLE. They swindled me out my rental deposit ($900) because my refrigerator was not clean enough and my tiles not mopped when I moved out. In actuality, both were spotless upon my departure… they just had construction workers staying in my apartment days after I left before my lease was even up. JUST DISGUSTING business practices. NEVER rent from them. Let’s run them out of town.

By: Frances

Frances — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:40:45 +0000

The Hollisters were rude, disrespectful scammers. I took them to court for failure to appropriately address my termite issue. They want to take your money and don’t care if the property is up to standards at all. I took them to court, broke me lease and got my security deposit back. NEVER RENT FROM THE HOLLISTERS!!

By: R

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:22:24 +0000

My impression is that a good rental agency retains good tenets.

When the landlord is proactive about fixing problems, the tenets are proactive about reporting problems or preventing problems. But when the turn over rate is high, both parties have less incentive to take care of their property.

At a previous apartment, the landlord refused to replace a broken smoke detector, or rather, ignored the issue altogether; indicative of their maintenance response. The turnover rate in this building was high. By comparison, another former landlord tested smoke detectors, replaced the batteries, and replaced the fire extinguishers, annually, without being prompted; again indicative. The trend for their upkeep was zero vacancies, clean properties, and reliable long term tenets.

And yes, I think bad rentals are drag on Richmond.

By: watty

watty — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:25:05 +0000

Jeff E., as a former Dallas resident I can say that Richmond has more small apartment buildings. In Dallas, 90% of the apartments were in complexes with 100+ units. It’s much easier for a landlord to ignore a problem that affects 10 people than one that affects 150.

By: Jeff E.

Jeff E. — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:38:49 +0000

Looking at the big picture, do you all think Richmond has more neglectful/absentee property owners than the average City? Is this one of the things slowing down the downtown renaissance or are these owners simply coping with high property taxes?

By: RVA123

RVA123 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:15:34 +0000

I can’t imagine anyone is worse than River City Real Estate. That company has an F rating at the Better Business Bureau, with 44 complaints. No other Richmond landlord comes close. I rented from River City R.E., and I would never recommend them to anyone. They are monsters. Hollister may be bad, I guess, but they don’t have as many properties as RCRE and therefore can’t do as much damage overall.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:49:22 +0000

I lived at 10 South Boulevard for a very short period of time and found the landlords to be difficult, to put it mildly.

Our apartment wasn’t ready on the move-in date, it took a month for it to get ready, and then they forced us to pay for that month anyway. In addition, the building was not maintained very well, from the simple things like dirty hallways to the more serious, like the faulty fire-escape. In fact, our back door was nailed shut while the fire-escape was “repaired” … which, if I understand correctly, still hasn’t happened.

The landlords also “provided” our heat, but in the winter, we took pictures of the temperature registering 57 degrees inside the apartment. Complaints over weeks got us nowhere and the conditions didn’t approve.

To top it off, Larry Hollister was often rude and disrespectful in his manner of dealing with us. Finally, after just two months, we broke our lease and left.

By: Chief Redcloud

Chief Redcloud — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:48:57 +0000

As a past Richmond renter I can say without hesitation that Dickson is by far the worst landlord in the entire metro area.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:13:38 +0000

Wow — I thought my former landlords RCRE were awful. Hollister Enterprises might be worse.

http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/VA-Richmond-The-Parachute-Factory.html

http://riverdistrictnews.com/2009/03/31/is-river-city-real-estate-as-bad-as-they-say/

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:55:13 +0000

Larry and Barbara are the biggest slumblords on the city. They stiffed me out of a security deposit which seems to be their specialty. Also I had to call 7 different times over the winter to get them to turn the thermostat up (56 degrees in my apt). Let’s do RVA a favor and put these clowns out of business.

By: James Williams

James Williams — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:49:37 +0000

I rented from the Hollisters, talk about the used car salesman of rental properties…they are the worst in Richmond!