Brownstone Realty LTD — Local services in Denver

If you want to have a landlord that is not trying to cheat you of your money at every turn and respects you as a tenant please reconsider before renting from Brownstone. I have filed a complaint against Brownstone Realty to the Better Business Bureau listing the below complaints as well. Before renting through Brownstone please read the following:

1. We lived in an apartment that had an unlocked first door to the entryway/mail room. Within the first month we lived there packages were being stolen from the porch and the mail room. We asked Brownstone if they could install a lock on this first door to protect the packages. They said they would look into it, but they did nothing even after multiple follow ups. We eventually had a man who was sleeping in the entry way and blocking the exit – my roommate was entering our apartment through our bedroom window to avoid this. We asked them again to install a lock on the door so we could come and go without having to step over a sleeping person in the entryway. They said they would, but two months passed, and they didn’t do anything. They were showing apartments during this time and took down the sign we had to warn other tenants to hide this from people they were showing apartments to. 2)After having multiple issues with Brownstone, we didn’t trust them to be fair we the return of our Security deposit, so we scrubbed the entire apartment to the point where it was significantly cleaner than when we moved in and documented everything. They still withheld almost half of the deposit. According to Denver law you can only withhold a security deposit for “non-normal wear and tear” or “excessive cleaning expenses”. Here are examples for which they kept our deposit: Holes in bedroom walls Scratches and dings on the walls The seal of the fridge dirty Kitchen sink needs to be polished Hood, stove, and backsplash need EXTRA cleaning Toilet base needs EXTRA cleaning I have spoken to multiple landlords about this since and they all agreed that only a crook would consider the list they gave us excessive damage.
2. Before we moved in, we asked about the utility bill would be. We were told the utility bill would at the highest be the highest $80 in the winter. On average we were paying $120 -150 for our utility bill throughout the year. We were super conscious of energy usage, but the energy bill was split among the building and other units. This stuff is tricky with old buildings, but they were super dishonest about this before we signed our lease. I emailed Brownstone about this, and they said they would recalculate how our utilities were charged. This was a blatant lie because there was no change forward.
3. It was raining late one night, and I parked in a parking spot that wasn’t being used for the year and a half I lived in the building. Brownstone’s property manager called to have my car towed early the next morning after my car had been there for less than 12 hours. I called Patty in the Brownstone office about this, and she lied to me saying the property manager didn’t call even though the towing company described the person who did. This is in violation of Brownstone’s lease they have you sign that protects tenants from having their car towed without 72 hours’ notice. When I confronted Brownstone about this they stopped responding to my emails. They have no accountability.
4. My roommate works nights, and I can’t even tell you the number of times the office would call my roommate during the day after we asked them not to and call me instead. They also would try to tell us about showings for the apartment with less than 24 hours notice. Just overall super inconsiderate to...

Brownstone Realty is run by money hungry and selfish people who have no regard or care for their residents.! Simply put, I would not wish a living situation like this on my WORST enemy.

If you have serious maintenance issues, simply expect not to hear back from Patti due to "no one else complaining about the issue." I lived with inconsistent, mostly cold shower water for almost two months before they finally came in and fixed the plumbing as they were too lazy and cheap to look into it in the first place On top of that, I had roaches in my apartments for several months (I am a very clean person and know I was not the cause of this issue.) Brownstone Realty denied me of my rights as a tenant in Colorado by refusing extermination for over a month due to again, "no one else complaining about it." FYI- I reached out to neighbors and said they had the same issues- Must have known Brownstone would not do anything about it... On top of this, Patti is EXTREMELY rude and shows she obviously does not care to follow Colorado's habitability laws. On top of that, they denied me of having a walk through of my apartment, said "we don't do that," just to say they actually would do a tour, and then never reach out to me to set up a time on the promised date of the tour-- Thanks so much Judy!!!

It truly is a shame because the apartment I lived in could be beautiful but it is rundown and I truly do not think it has been renovated since Brownstone bought it... Brownstone Realty made living in Denver my worst nightmare as they continuously showed they care SOLEY about money and not about their tenants who pay thousands of dollars to lease rundown apartments from them. WOULD NOT RECOMMEND UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES :)

Also, I have receipts of Patti stating it is not an issue unless other people complain about it as well as time stamps for how long it took for them to actually fix these problems. I will absolutely be reporting them to DORA, Better Business Bureau of Colorado, as well as CHC.

I hope this truly encourages people to stay as far away as possible from...

Updating my review after two years, still keeping it 5 stars. I'm so used to apartment management companies to be The Worst. There's so many terrible big national corporations buying out tenement properties, jacking up prices, and neglecting maintenance and their residents so they can make as much money as possible. Brownstone is definitely NOT one of those companies. They're always quick to respond to emails and maintenance requests, my particular apartment building has great security and the courtyard/laundry is well maintained. My unit is fairly cheap for the area, but it's not a rundown unit with appliances from the 80's like a lot of other apartments would do, and they haven't raised my rent once in the 3+ years I've been here. During Covid they've been super awesome, having quarters available to purchase in light of the coin shortage, and when I emailed when my lease was about to end asking for a shorter lease term this time around just because of some uncertainties around whether I want to get a roommate situation/move to a new job when things start opening up more, they were totally cool about it and didn't up my rent as punishment. Basically, best rental situation I've been in and I...