Darwin Homes

Our AC has been broken for over a week. It is over 100 degrees outside. I've called the emergency maintenance line at least 7 times in the past 48 hours and cannot get a response back. This happened to us in the winter when it was less than 30 in our home. DO NOT EVER RENT A PROPERTY FROM THEM OR HAVE THEM MANAGE YOUR HOME. We love our home and location but will be moving since we cannot rely on Darwin homes to properly respond to emergency maintenance requests. I am beyond disappointed and disgusted with this company believing it is okay. One of our pets died in our house due to the lack of air conditioning.

Was helping my girlfriend move out and saw horrible miscommunication. Darwin Homes was given a move out notice by email. They sent an odd email saying they claimed to have called but records from the phone provider proves they did not call the right number. Email also suggest a voice call my girlfriend never had with them. We attempted to go to their office in Austin to hand over former roommate's mail but the entrance into the building was locked.

We called the office to be hung up on the first time and then waited a few minutes. I believe they gave an imposter access to my girlfriend's account or changed my girlfriend's contact info.

Absolute garbage. I submitted an emergency maintenance request over two weeks ago (the kitchen sink caved in and broke every single pipe, flooded the kitchen, leaked into the basement) and I have yet to receive a response from them despite sending over a dozen emails and even more phone calls and a certified letter. I'm actively looking for a new place to live and have zero problem taking them to court over this. UPDATE: It has now been a full month and I was informed this morning that Darwin Homes thinks the repair estimate is too expensive and wants to seek an alternate vendor. My kitchen has been completely unusable and they're still dragging their feet.

If you are considering doing business with this company, I strongly recommend reconsidering. The house we moved into was trashed, we documented everything, but didn't bother complaining too much. Big mistake! They are now retaining our entire deposit, and blaming the damages on us (even though we have documentation and pictures). Do not do business with tis company, and if you have to, make sure they fix everything before you move out, otherwise they will charge you for it.

This the worst property management company around. I gave Darwin to manage my property, it started out good but in the past 4 months I have had three different managers. It takes an arm and a leg to get a hold of the manager. They don't come over on the phone to talk, if you text them, they tell you to email and then they take at least 2 days via email.

They promise single point of contact but thats clearly not true. Their system messed up and they tried kicking out my tenant before their lease was up. I have told three different managers at Darwin in the past three months multiple times that I want to discontinue my contract with them but that is not communicated throughout their company/ system and other departments will try to keep working as if you the contact continues to be in place.

Oh and they changed the terms of the contract in the middle of the year. You do not get a choice to not accept new terms. I feel bad for my tenant that they had to deal with this worthless property management company.

Darwin Homes is full of lies and is the absolute epitome of evil when it comes to property management. Companies like this are the reason the housing crisis is escalating in the U.S. and why so many "middle class" people are now homeless. Our walkthrough was fine. The home looked nice and clean, with a few things that needed addressing before move-in.

But when we moved into our place, there was: - No A/C (as in the unit was NOT THERE) - No hot water (water heater NOT THERE) - No refrigerator - Glass still in the yard, despite us having asked them to clean it up We were told ALL these things would be addressed before move-in along with an inspection (which never happened). But only after a few WEEKS, these issues were *gradually* taken care of.

The stove wasn't working properly either for a while, so we couldn't even cook meals. And yet, the biggest problem - the MAIN one they tried to bury and refused to address - was the one that could kill us. Darwin violated Missouri laws throughout this lease and failed to make the home livable. Yet they were given a pass by local KCMO Judge Kyndra Stockdale, known for excessive evictions.

There were several code violations in the haphazard electrical setup in the crawlspace. Exposed live wires are scattered everywhere, directly next to insulation. Plus, the home's grounding wires did not provide enough power & security to support the fridge, stove, and everything else (kitchen appliances and other power-intensive electronics are all on the same line).

The lights would blink every day, the power went out often, and at times we smelled smoke from the haphazard wiring. We'd been telling Darwin about the fire hazards for months. It wasn't until we warned leadership that we'd be making the issue public did they FINALLY respond (inadequately and by trying to force us to sign an NDA to release OUR money - Missouri law states that a home that is not habitable is worth ZERO, so we were owed a FULL refund on EVERYTHING we'd paid). (Oh, and their response came AFTER Darwin leadership had Kimberly Dilks call and lie to us about ever having sent the electrician who performed the inspection revealing the code violations.

They also claimed that there was no one at the third-party contractor's company by the electrician and his boss's names.) There is so much more to tell, but I'll make it quick: We had shoddy "mediation" (during which time they claimed the property was a "historic home" to justify the poor electric was "grandfathered in" - complete, embarrassing lie), court appearances, we even had a journalist report on it.

We were dealing with serious mental health problems because of how deeply this was impacting our lives and well-being. We had to juggle Darwin's contractors FOR them (they kept giving our phone numbers to contractors without our consent). They called my boyfriend a few times, mad about not getting a certain job or not being paid appropriately.

A sewage smell crept in every time we used the heater or A/C. The city cited them for habitability violations which we never addressed. They pretended to offer a hotel stay while they "fixed" the problem, but only on the condition that we continued the lease with them, which was entirely out of the question based on how we'd been treated thus far.

And again, they wouldn't give us our refund unless we signed an ALARMINGLY manipulative NDA. In the end, Darwin got off the hook by being buddy-buddy with the most notorious eviction judge in the area. We paid the price. DO NOT rent from this company. Property owners/managers are attracted to areas like KCMO because of the complete lack of regulation.

Keep yourself safe by avoiding Darwin Homes entirely. Please. If you've rented from them and been subjected to their abuse and neglect, contact me directly at blackflowerscience.co@gmail.com. We are gathering first-hand accounts from both tenants and property owners to report Darwin Homes to federal authorities, since state and city authorities will do nothing to protect those who simply want to live in a safe home. (I lived with Curtis W., who has also shared the photos in his review.)

Worst property management company I've ever dealt with. Extremely unreliable. They take forever to get back to you. Unhelpful in every way possible. Doesn't want to do anything to fix their properties. Disgusting.

Took over a lease for a friend three months ago, which was a huge mistake. I asked for weeks about terms, options to re-sign at the end so we didn't have to move again, and basically anything to help us makes an informed decision. I was met with a nearly hostile response team who told me, very candidly, that they had no intention of checking with the owner of the property for any reason until the end of the lease.

Three weeks ago when I check back (within 60 days of the end of the lease) I still couldn't get an answer. Two days after that we received another curt email stating that the property owner was electing to put the house on the market and we needed to vacate the following month. It seems to me that Darwin was interested in getting the rest of the lease filled, and collecting whatever management costs they could for an additional 4 months, before the property went on the market. A terrible customer response team, a terrible lack of transparency to residents, and a company I encourage my friends to avoid.

I think this company is a SCAM! I am currently looking for a place for my parents who are Senior citizens. I found a property that interest us and under this company. I reviewed the criteria which states: must make 3x's the rent, credit check, etc. Well first off- We put in an application which was $55/adult so we pd over $150 in app fees. They declined the application the next day!

I asked why- they tell me do to my parents credit score! My parents don't use their credit because they really have not needed to! They are great tenants- pay their rent early every month, no evictions, never had a bankruptcy, any thing like that. They havent had to apply for a rental place in over 10 years. I asked 'Why wouldn't you all consider these factors?' Or at least give them the option to pay a higher deposit?

Only then, they start throwing out credit score numbers! This is what they said 'My parents didn't meet the Resident score-the Standard Score should be 630 and for the score to be considered with additional deposit, it must be 610. Now, why wouldn't this be displayed in their criteria so people wouldn't be out of application fees!

My parents don't have bad credit, they have thin credit. I feel like these companies collect application fees on these properties for an X-amount of time before they approve someone. Straight RIP-OFF!

As a realtor and property manager, I am appalled by the service my client has received on her home in Fort Worth. Darwin did not secure my clients money nor did they protect their home from damage responsibilities. Previous tenants destroyed my client's flooring and my client repeatedly emailed and reached out to get it fixed before new tenants moved in.

They avoided our phone calls, did not communicate and have now decided to close out our account without remedying the situation. My client is now needing to find her own vendors and repair the floors on her own dime. During these tough pandemic times when companies are doing their best to accommodate their clients, Darwin has gone out of their way to make it harder.

I am at a loss of words for how this was handled and how Darwin has taken no responsibility to fix their mistake. Stay CLEAR and FAR AWAY from this company. You will find yourself, like everyone else in these reviews, frustrated, out of money, and with your property neglected.

We have had the absolute WORST experience working with Darwin. I have no idea how this company is still in business. They refuse to fix their mistake and therefore leaving us to pay $1000 out of our own pocket for damage done by a former tenant. Instead of trying to help us, they threatened to cancel their services in the middle of a contract. If we hadn't moved out of state by then, we would have loved to cancel but it would have been more of hassle to find another company and get them to pick up a tenant's contract with only three months left.

Every one in Darwin should be ashamed of the service they provide. Beth, their portfolio manager, ensured us all year they would take care of the matter and now with three weeks left in their contract, she told us they are cancelling our contract and we would have to fix the damage ourselves. Because the flooring was never fixed, the damage supposedly went from $300 to now their vendor quoted it at $1000. Darwin REFUSES to pay or to get it fixed.

Their vendors consistently over charged for every little thing so I wouldn't be surprised if this is just another example of both Darwin and their vendors trying to scam their clients out of more money. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY if you want to protect your property and protect your money.

Darwin Homes is a scam. We never received what we paid for. The house had electrical fire hazards that could have killed us the whole time we were there. We lost almost half our income for the year from consistent power outages and the NINE vendors that showed up to quote the same job (we work from home). On top of it all, once we hired lawyers and decided to withhold rent until the home was habitable, they ghosted our lawyers for 3 months and filed for unlawful eviction.

We are now broke, living in our car, AND we have an eviction on our record. Clearly, these tech bros have the money to throw at as many lawyers and judges they need to silence anyone who speaks out against them. They are so bad at keeping up with dates and communicating with each other that they wrote down the wrong day for court AND DIDN'T EVEN SHOW UP IN PERSON.

They threw a random employee that had never been to our house or ever spoken to us on the phone for the trial. Being abused and neglected for half a year was maddening and horrible for our mental health, to begin with, but not being able to face our abusers in court has crossed a personal line that I can NEVER forgive. You better believe we will be showing up in Austin at their Hilton office to face them before the year is up.

DO NOT ENTER INTO A CONTRACT WITH THIS COMPANY. The single worst rental company I have ever dealt with. You can never get directly to the person you're trying to reach and all of their customer service is offshore. They take forever to fix problems but they want their money immediately. It was an act of Congress to get myself added to my girlfriend's lease communication was abhorrent.

When there was a critical heat wave in Missouri after several phone calls they finally gave us a small window unit for the bedroom but the rest of the house was 98°. Slingshot to winter time and the heater didn't work so the house was 58°. Then when it's time to move out they don't actually do a walk-through in person with you you're just expected to hide the key so that they can go in and make their assessment even though there was ridiculous damages still present wood rot painters tape that had been simply painted over. Absolutely awful do not do business with this company.

We sold our house to an Investment firm and they allowed us to rent back for a couple of months until we transfer to another state. We had to sign a lease with Darwin (the name fits the bill 100% - these people are dumb as a box of rocks) and they have consistently screwed with our lives by not applying rent correctly and by mixing up our property with other properties and making arrangements to transfer our utilities our of our names and put in theirs. they never caught the error - I had to have my realtor go after them and when Ashley called me from Darwin (again like Apes) and was laughing about the errors But if you read here: Darwin Homes Property Management | Complaints | Better Business Bureau Profile (bbb.org) you will see that this is common practice because these imbeciles don't know what they are doing. NEVER NEVER AGAIN! WE ARE EAGER TO GET AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY AS FAST AS WE CAN!

If you want to waste your time and money use them. Not only are they slow to begin with but their vendors have no skill. They left my home in a worst state they received. I had signed a contract to manage 3 properties with them in early december. 2 of the properties were brand new and it still took them a month to get them "rent ready". I don't know if they don't market or bother to entertain requests the properties didn't rent for a long time.

Eventually I decided to rent one of them myself and was able to rent it in a week. If that wasn't bad enough on my older property they suggested to put deadbolts and their guy damaged all my doors where he installed them. Firstly they installed a bunch of golden and silver locks on the same door which look hideous. Secondly they don't align with the holes in the frame and don't work properly.

They also damaged all 3 doors. Look at the pictures. For any of the dry wall repairs they didn't bother to put texture before painting and their painter could not match the colors and did a half ass job. I will never recommend them to anybody. What a waste of time and money!

This company is a ripoff. We were renting out a home in Dekalb County GA for 2.5 years under Renters Warehouse. At the end of November, we received an email from RW stating the home will be going under new management "Darwin." When we initially moved in this home, the home wasn't taken care of at all. But we managed bc we were moving from out of town & needed to find something quick.

We closed on our dream home in December. After no communication from Darwin about them taking over, we contacted them and advised we were moving out & needed to turn in our keys. Fast forward to January. Darwin emailed us a copy of a $4k invoice stating we owe them for repairs & paint. The sad part is, everything they're trying to charge us for was damaged/ missing before we even moved into the property.

My thing is, RW did a horrible job keeping up the home so why should we have to pay? Thankfully we took videos & pics prior to moving in. Now we've been trying to contact Darwin & they will not respond. They've given 30 days to pay, but this invoice needs to go to RW. We're at the point of taking legal actions. We have proof of the damages prior to our move in, but they just assumed we caused the damages. I would NOT recommend anyone rent from this company. If you do, PLEASE TAKE PICS BEFORE & AFTER your move. if that helps any.

My experience with Darwin Homes as an owner was terrible. I constantly had to double check the charges on my account. The mistakes we're endless. I would be debited when I was suppose to be credited. I was charged 80% more for services estimated. I was charged for things that are not owner's responsibility. On top of all that I caught them collecting money for services, no delivering on the services, and then trying to collect money for the services again! They also dragged their feet in the turn over process. Defiantly do not recommend.

I only have had very bad experiences with this company, since I moved in, a year ago, little details that I asked to get them fixed, they don't respond properly, my A/C stopped working this past summer and they took almost two weeks to get it fixed, is an issue considered an emergency, the house was so hot and I have a kid with health issues, I had to stay in a hotel with my kids and had to buy two window units and a portable A/C, while they never called or text to let me know how things where working, only apologize when I called or email asking about it, now I'm still waiting for a new fridge, since 12 days ago, once again, I'm the one asking and they don't give me a response about who is the vendor that's bringing the fridge, nobody calls or email until I do it then they respond, this is the the worst company I had to deal with.

I own a property in Round Rock and have had Darwin managing it for the past couple years. I recently decided I was going to move into the place. When the tenant left and I got keys to the house the place was in unlivable condition, they had been smoking cigarettes and weed in the house, the carpets were stained, there's a good sized hole in the drywall in one of the rooms, and the place was overall filthy. I've tried to contact Darwin about getting the security deposit back from the tenants to compensate for the cleaners, painting, and repairs i've had to pay for to be able to move in.

My point of contact, Juliya, has all of the sudden stopped responding to emails, and phone calls from me. I had no problem with them until how they handled this. Very unprofessional.

This company is the owner nightmare. If you are the property owner, never considering this PM. It will take them 2 month for the turnover, so far my property is still not cleaned and made ready. You will lose your money for the long vacancy. And they are full of lies, they never update the listing status, they never return your call even promised beforehand. You have to chase down for each single request.

Would only recommend to someone who wants to be stressed out and out of money. As a property owner working with them at first was great. Then when it came getting the rental ready for a new lease, that's when the nightmare started and still hasn't finished. They are slow to respond. The man who was handling my property was off several days, the was no initiative to get things handled quickly and overall the communication deteriorated.

The property of course has been vacant due to lack of care to get property ready. Just stay away from them. Now I have to contact the former tenants since I terminated services from Darwin, they are no longer handling the things that should been done three weeks ago! If you want to be waste your time, money and mental sanity; Darwin Homes is the way to go!

I recently purchased a home in Austin and Tim was integral in making it happen. He was very knowledgeable about all the different neighborhoods and what our offer had to be to be able to get the deal done. with how crazy the market is. We just closed on our home this week and we will be having Darwin manage it as well.

I own quite a few properties in the Austin area (as far north as Round Rock and as far south as Buda) and I was getting tired of spending all of my spare time managing them so I decided to hire Darwin. At first, I was hesitant to trust Darwin with my properties, but over time they have definitely proven themselves to be trustworthy. They have consistently sent me my rent on time and have been fairly easy to communicate with. With the way that the Austin real estate market has been growing, I'm definitely looking to pick up a few more and I will be having Darwin manage them as well.

We finally received a shampooer on day three of move in after sleeping in someone else's filth in the middle of a pandemic.

Darwin Homes Austin, TX. Do not rent their properties. They do not prepare the home for your move in; plumbing backed-up from lack of use, grounds overgrown but you are responsible for keeping it to hoa standard and worst of all: They do not use licensed repair people. They send out a handyman for a plumber's job. And he will come back over and over because he doesn't know what he is doing.

And even if the property overflows on a weekend, they wont send anyone out. Carpets ruined. The actual property owners have no idea this is happening. As long as they get a check, they think nothing is wrong. These property managers are simply letting the homes rot and decay. You guys are simply suckers getting taken for a ride. Your asset will be worthless.

Investors/Tenant should never come to this place, at least avoid the guy "Paul". 1. "Paul" represented the tenants in a dishonest way. Our tenant submitted the application with 1 year lease term, but he secretly changed it to 1.5 years in the lease. He signed the contract as "Landlord", without letting us know. And then presented us with the signed contract saying it's a legally binding contract already. I'm planning to file a complaint of Paul to both his company and HUD as a result of this, as this is a serious misrepresentation issue. 2. "Paul" is unprofessional and incompetent.

He was quick to respond at first, but when we asked him to update the property profile to allow more viewers as the traffic was slow, he refused to make any change. I was forced to open my own Zillow account and created a listing with correct information, and it ended up to have insourced 90% of the applicants we got. Overall, I'm less angry than surprised to see this guy still have a job at this industry as the fundamental thing being PM is being honest and professional. This review is only published in the hope that the company can rectify this kind of wrong doings going forward.

I recently moved out of Austin to Carrollton, and wanted to keep my home given how fast prices have been appreciating. I've never been in a rental real estate before so asked a few friends and look at listings online to get a better sense of good property managers in the area. My local realtor mentioned Darwin Homes and made an intro to Carly.

She did an amazing job walking me through the process of getting my home onboarded and calming my nerves a bit about the entire process. It is quite scary at times to think about random strangers living in your house! After signing the management agreement, they inspected my property and provided me an extensive report of everything that I'd need to do to get my home ready to get listed.

I moved out all my belongings into a truck, headed to Carrollton, and handed them the keys. Within 3 weeks, they had already signed a lease for a new tenant and I've already started receiving my monthly checks from them. Overall a very smooth experience. While I've had some trouble reaching them via phone, they've always responded to my emails within a couple of hours, even on weekends. Would definitely recommend them to anyone looking to rent out their home in Austin.