Truman Properties

A friend of mine applied for an apartment in one of the buildings, Truman St. Clair Holdings (the actual name of this property company). They own the three apartments 921, 923, 925 on St. Clair west that are side by side and look similar to each other. He dealt with someone named Jen (I don’t care to keep her anonymous like Katie did). She showed him a unit that was furnished in September and was suppose to take over in November, they signed a lease, he got a certified check that was written to «Truman Properties Ltd.» He never received a hard copy of the lease but he did document everything with pictures. That first week of November when he was about to move she emailed him saying that there was a pipe burst in his unit due to plaster being dumped down the drain and his apartment (which was on the third floor) and those right under his were all affected. He was told he would be placed somewhere else and was offered another unit but when he replied he never heard back.
He decided to call the number that is both on the sign and when you look up the company and a man who could barely speak English replied. He practically yelled at him and wouldn’t answer any of my friend’s questions claiming he doesn’t deal with this sort of stuff and refused to give him a company email or phone number to speak to the people who do. It sounded like he was being fed lines in the background by another woman too. The man told him if he wanted his answers he has to write a HAND WRITTEN LETTER and drop it off in one of the mailboxes provided in the buildings. Ridiculous!
We decided to both go to the building he was supposed to move into and see if we could speak to a tenant. We ran into this older gentleman who had a bunch of info and was very kind to us. He has been living there for 8 years and personally has not had any bad experiences but does know that recently the property manager Jen who had been working there for over 8 years had duped a bunch of people and ran away with thousands of dollars in the dead of night. The property has reported it and Police apparently are looking for her and raided her apartment but she was gone when they got there and had been living like a pig, the place was completely trashed. She had been scamming people for months, keeping the money to herself behind the backs of the property company’s knowledge. The story she fed my friend about the pipe leak was all a lie. What irks me about this situation is that the company had employed this woman for so long and didn’t bother checking up on her to make sure she was doing her job properly. This lead to many people being duped out of first and last rent and possibly being homeless the following month. She apparently convinced people to give her hard cash and wire money for lower rent. The fact we learned this from a tenant and not the man on the phone who is apparently the assistant landlord is just unprofessional! Why couldn’t the man on the phone let my friend know this? This is insanely serious and his money could be gone for all we know! I would not rent from location with everything I know. I get this was one woman but she was employed to do all the paperwork and look into the tenants and now many people are out without money and a place to live. RENTERS BEWARE!

The building manager has refused to let me know who the owner or phone number for the business. Please look the other way. This place also has bed bugs
Run as fast as you can!

I applied to an apartment in this building and it was a complete nightmare. They ask for first and last before they even process your application. I know it was dumb to pay that up front but I really wanted the place. I paid close to $ 2400, which is a lot of money for an independent student, in order to secure the apartment (which in retrospect sounded like it was too good to be true… FREE HYDRO) and waited over a month to hear if I got approved. There was a lot of back and fourth until finally it was two weeks before I was supposed to move and I hadn’t heard either way if I got approved. I was nervous this entire time with my money essentially gone out of my account (paid via e-​transfer). During this waiting period I also happened to run into some folks who had applied to the very same apartment in the exact building. They had pulled their application a few days after applying and still hadn’t received their money back, and this was about a month after I had applied. To this day I’m not sure if Truman is fraudulent or if they’re just completely incompetent. The facts are that the property manager, let’s call her «Jan», couldn’t supply me with a location or number to their head office when I requested it, and when I requested my money back, it had to be reimbursed in two instalments. I did eventually get my money back, but it was after six weeks of wasted time and worrying about if I had be a victim of fraud. When I did get my money back there was about a week and a half of time left before I had to move out of my current place and I was left nearly homeless. As for the folks who also applied to this place, they did eventually get their money back too, but they had to hound the property manager for it.
I’ve been compelled to write this review because I have noticed that the very same apartment I had applied to has been posted on craigslist repeatedly, and I want to help people avoid the same frustration me and those other people have experienced with this company. Moral of the story? Don’t ever pay first and last before getting approved for a place and beware Truman Properties/​Truman St. Clair Holdings.