Hudson McDonald Properties

My husband and I lived at the New Californian for many years and were the first tenants in our apartment back in 2010. The building and individual units are well taken care of (and new, and beautiful!) and whenever something needed attention it was quickly resolved.
We also had a great experience with the management (especially Aurelia Marchetti) and maintenance team (Cesar et al). They were very cordial and quick to answer any of our questions or fix any small problems. We really loved living in the New Californian– location is perfect for going to campus, Trader Joe’s, downtown, etc. What is even more awesome is that a new Mediterranean place opened up right in front!
The only downside really is the price and steep increases in rent every year. At the same time, most of Berkeley is also suffering from steep rent prices. If you want a convenient and clean/​beautiful place to live (and your very own washer and dryer!) and don’t mind paying a bit extra, this place is for you!
Thank you New Californian for 5 awesome years! We will miss you.

We had a comically bad experience with this management company and one of their properties, The Delaware in West Berkeley. The area around the building is suffering from an unfortunate violent crime spree. That part really isn’t Hudson McDonald’s fault, but their response to it and other issues in the building was pretty, uh, remarkable.
Here are some details:
We had packages stolen out of the lobby or outside our apartment door a bunch of times. We asked Hudson McDonaldt to help, and for less than a week they put up a sign directing delivery people to take packages up to apartments. They didn’t do anything to improve the security — no cameras (real or fake), no one checking the lobby, so the thefts just kept happening, particularly at Christmas time.
Right before we decided to move, someone busted open the metal door to the patio area, leaving the building unsecured. We reported it to building management on a Friday afternoon, and they didn’t do anything about it until Monday, so the building was unsecured all weekend. Not cool, especially with all the crime in the area
Shortly after we moved in, they randomly renumbered all the apartments in the building, so everyone’s apartment number changed. They never said why, and we all had to change our addresses with the power company, the post office, etc. This resulted in a long period of time where mail would end up in the wrong boxes. We all put misdirected mail on the table in the lobby so the correct recipient could pick it up. For months, people complained that mail was going missing. Then, incredibly, we found out that for several months, the maintenance staff had been throwing out all the mail in the lobby table multiple times a week. Fortunately a tenant caught them doing it and it stopped.
The front door of the building is wonky and doesn’t work right, so more than half the time you can’t buzz anyone in. A few times a year it breaks completely and you can’t get in or out that door for a day or two until they fix it. This happened maybe four times while we lived there, but they never just replaced the damned door. The building management company also seems to be incompetent at programming the door, so on days when they were adding new tenants to the buzzer system, the door would just stop opening.
From time to time, especially when a lot of students move in or out, the dumpsters in the parking garage overflow for a few weeks and it gets pretty stinky.
During the last 6 months we were there, the city shut down a homeless camp near Gilman. Some men from there started panhandling, sleeping, drinking, etc. around the building. There were loud fights under our bedroom window at night. When we talked to building management, they said to call the cops. They didn’t do anything about it themselves besides call the cops once or twice, even though it would’ve cost them very little to have a security company drive by occasionally. When we talked to Berkeley police, they told us that the problem is that the management company can’t/won’t rent out the retail space on the main floor (it was vacant for the entire time we lived there), and vacant storefronts attracts crime.
We finally gave our notice after the side door was left busted open for three days, and the management company was super incompetent at re-​renting the place. At one point, they showed up with a prospective tenant unannounced first thing on a Saturday morning while I was fast asleep and the apartment was a mess. The poor girl was mortified. They also claimed they were unable to re-​rent the place, but when I looked at the ad they’d posted, it turned out they were asking for higher rent (after raising our rent every year) even though there had been all these shootings on the block.
I’ve thought about rounding up some other current and former tenants and taking the management to the rent board or court. Renting from these guys is not a good bet.