Boardwalk Investments — Local services in Madison

TW: Bed Bugs

Haha! Well, if the reviews don't scare people off, the "responses from business owner" should. And yes, as a Dane county resident, I feel it is my duty to deter as many people away from renting your bed bug infested properties as I possibly can. In response to your subtle insinuation that I brought the bed bugs to the complex, I think the fact that I won my case and had three boardwalk neighbors testify on my behalf about the bed beg infestations, speaks for itself. I see you've been sued several more times recently; I cannot say that I'm surprised...

I should update my original review, since I have since sued Boardwalk (for renting a room in a bed bug infested complex out to me) and won. You can look it up in the Wisconsin court system. Thanks for the $1,200 back :) It was fun when the Boardwalk representative delivered the court-ordered repayment and began yelling obscenities at me in a public area. They truly have the best customer service. Full review here is below. I agree with the other person who brought up the fact that that all the five star reviews are fake. You can look up the people on Facebook and see that they are all friends with people who work for Boardwalk. No honest review would be five stars.

Horrid company run by the worst people you can possibly imagine. For an example of their business practices, google "Labarbera-Haines v. Boardwalk Investments, LLC". They might have had the money to win the case, but that doesn't make them an honest company.

I moved into a multi-unit complex where (at least) two other units within the complex were infested with bed bugs (bed bugs move from apartment to apartment through walls). Disgusting. Boardwalk was made fully aware of the problem in these two units, and yet they did not notify any other unit within the small complex that there was a pest infestation, nor did they take steps necessary to eradicate them from the building. My unit became infested (I am guessing the previous tenant also had them), and I spent $1,200 to eradicate the bugs (with zero assistance in any way from Boardwalk). Bed bugs are next to impossible to treat. They also lied to me (yes, I have proof) about their knowledge of the infestations in the other units. When I discovered that the pest infestation was throughout the entire building (I found out by accident, not because Boardwalk was forthright with the information), I was forced to move out because I could not continue to spend money on bed bug treatments that would persist because Boardwalk refuses to take accountability and treat the entire complex. When I left, my neighbor still had bed bugs. I am sure it is only a matter of time before every single unit within the complex is infested. They also moved a renter in right behind me without a remedy - I felt obligated to knock on his door to let him know he now has bed bugs :(

If you like bed bugs, I would recommend renting from Boardwalk. If you don't, find a different rental company.

Oh, and after all this, I received only half of my security deposit due to bogus charges. I doubt anyone who rents from Boardwalk receives their full deposit (see reviews below and yelp reviews). The most dishonest rental company I have ever had to deal with in my life. Their emails are rude and unprofessional. You will receive monthly invoices that are impossible to decipher. They went through three admins in the year that I rented through them, but you won't know that there is a staff change until your email...

This is a terrible landlord to have. I do NOT recommend them to anyone. Currently, I am living on a street that is going through heavy construction. While this couldn't have been avoided, it certainly must have been known by Boardwalk, yet we were completely unaware of the scale of this construction. It's already been a month, and it has become increasingly frustrating to tolerate. What's even worse is that we still have another two or three months left to deal with this. It would be nice if Boardwalk found ways to accommodate their tenants throughout this time; instead they have said as little as possible in order to avoid any confrontation. Our utilities have been unreliable during the construction, and the entire outside of the house is a disastrous mess with the lack of garbage collection. Boardwalk knows this, yet they had the nerve to send us a letter threatening us with maintenance charges if the yard wasn't properly kept. First of all, Boardwalk is already overcharging us in rent so it shows that they have no problem squeezing as much revenue from their tenants as possible. Secondly, they're hypocrites for calling us out on a mess that was created by circumstances out of our control, especially after they created multiple messes in our back yard over the most recent Badger football season. Which brings me to my other significant complaint: Boardwalk never informed us that the legitimate owner of our house would use the back porch and yard for his own personal football gatherings during Badger home games. That's really unfair to us, as tenants, when we have no notice for strangers using our space that we pay rent towards. And to make it worse, the people who were partying on our porch and in our backyard left trash all over the place. Guess who told US to pick up after them: Boardwalk. We told them we wouldn't; it wasn't a mess that was not created by us nor the tenants above us. It was by the owner and his large crew. Another time that bothered me and my roommates was when they renovated our bathroom, and they never quite finished because our plumbing was still never completely reliable. Again, they failed to inform us with a decent amount of time to anticipate strangers coming into our residence. And it shouldn't be a surprise that whoever worked on our bathroom 1. misplaced our trash can so we had to buy a new one and 2. failed to discard all of the cardboard boxes left behind after the renovations. They're still sitting on the side of our house. It's not our responsibility to clean up after their messes, if we're the ones paying rent. After incidents like these, it's clear that Boardwalk is what you would hear in simple terms as "a bunch of slimy landlords". Or, to say it more politely, they simply will do whatever they can (legally) to collect as much of our money as possible, even if the issues can be resolved through more...

This is literally the worst experience I have ever had in renting. This company is run by the worst sort of people you can imagine. Not only was my apartment absolutely filthy on move in day (stains on the walls, windows and blinds caked with dirt, mold on the ceilings, cobwebs in all the corners is only the start of it), they refused to do anything about it. Their receptionist is the most unintelligent woman I have ever met and she is not even qualified to answer a phone, let alone talk to any tenants/customers. The office manager is the definition of a sleezeball, as was demonstrated when I calmly and politely asked him to have someone come clean my apartment since it hadn't been done prior to me moving in, his response was that since we moved in, they were no longer responsible, which is actually not even true. Knowing that he was wrong, I asked for the owner's contact information, thinking that he would want to rectify the situation immediately. Boy, was I wrong. First of all, the owner took over two weeks (and 3 phone calls from me) to even get back to me and not only was he as unintelligent as his receptionist, he was as rude and disrespectful as his office manager. When we called again with a general maintenance issue, which should have been taken care of before we moved in (at no charge to us, since we didn't cause the problem), he made like it was no big deal and would be taken care of without cost or inconvenience to us, but sent us a bill for his $35/hour maintenance man. At first, I thought that it was the fact that we were young and a bit inexperienced about these sorts of things was the reason they trying to take advantage of us, but after having my parents (who co-signed my lease) call multiple times without receiving any calls in return, we realized they were actually just bad business men. I would NEVER EVER in my life rent with this company again, I am telling every single person I know about how absolutely disgusting these people are, we are in the process of filing a complaint with the BBB, and are prepared to take any legal action we see fit if any more incidents occur. Overall, DO NOT, under any circumstances, rent with this company, unless you like greasy haired used car salesmen looking cheapskates. Do yourself a favor and spend some extra money to save yourself the headache of dealing with...