Pointe South Real Estate and Vacation Rentals

This review is for Pointe South Realty, also known as Southern Rentals, Southern Realty, etc. It seems like they change their name a lot and I can see why - they are horrible to do business with and I've never met anyone who rented from them that had a positive experience. Unfortunately, we were warned after our lease was signed and we had already had our first series of negative experiences with them. The agent with whom we worked with was Jim [redacted] in Fairhope, AL.

From not having the house cleaned upon move in, then telling us at 5pm the day before we were set to move in that we'd have to wait a week because they didn't have it ready and to leaving the office for the day as we were trying to get in touch with them and not sending us a copy of the lease to look at and sign until 10pm that evening, just getting ready to move in was a hassle. We were calling Jim's personal cell phone on a Friday night to let him know it was not possible to postpone our move and that we needed to figure something out. We should have taken that as a sign to walkaway then.

The morning we moved in Jim had his assistant leave her sick child and meet us at the house to sign the lease and get the keys. We took the lease we'd received the evening before and pointed out that our two small dogs were not listed on the lease, though we had mentioned our pets and discussed the fees associated with them via phone and email. When they went back to let the owner know about our pets, they apparently blamed us for the situation because we were told the owner was angry, thought we were trying to sneak our pets in (even though we were the ones who pointed out they were left off the lease) and had sent us a notice to get rid of the dogs within 10 days or be evicted. We tried to work with the owner by sending messages through the agency (we were told we were not allowed to communicate directly with the owner) and though we showed pictures of our dogs, evidence of no complaints from them in the past, etc., the agent told us that the owner was an [redacted] and our only option would be the greatly increase the rent we were to pay each month, pay a hefty nonrefundable pet fee up front and agree to a monthly inspection of the premises. Let me add that the original posting for the house had said pets were permitted upon approval so it wasn't like this house didn't allow pets to begin with. Ultimately, we had to rehome our family pets that we'd had for 10 years all while being accused of being dishonest by the rental agency.

During the time we were there we had continued issues with the AC (82 degrees at night in the summer with the unit continuously running and eventually freezing) and were told that if they sent someone out to look at it and there was nothing wrong with it we'd have to pay the service bill. When it finally got ridiculous and we found the outside pipes frozen a couple of times, we told them to go ahead and send someone out. The service man told us that the air intake that had been installed for the unit was much too small and that it wasn't able to handle the amount of work needed to cool that house. So basically there was nothing that he could do to keep the unit from freezing and to keep it cooling the house properly.

The light bulbs throughout the house were mismatched and many of them didn't work. We had someone come out and replace them right after we moved in, but it wasn't long after that the others went out. When we asked for help in changing these (the house had 12 ft ceilings and we had no ladder) we were told we'd be charged for the price of the bulb plus the time and labor it took for them to change the bulbs.

About a month or two before the end of our lease, hundreds of bees swarmed around the back overhands of the house - both first floor and second story overhands, and eventually one by one went into the overhang and into the wall. We couldn't even go into the backyard. Upon researching it online I learned that bees do this to build new nests, sometimes within the walls of a house. When I reached out to our agent to let him know and see if they could send someone out to do something, he told us to get a can of spray and if that didn't work we'd have to hire someone to come take care of it ourselves. Needlesstosay, we moved out with those bees still in the walls.

The toilets were filthy - the seats included. They were stained with yellow all over them. When I cleaned them with Clorox spray and Clorox wipes, white paint came off of them as if someone had tried to cover the nastiness with paint. My whole hand would look like I'd been white washing something with my hand. When I mentioned this to the repair company the man told me that they wouldn't have repainted the seats because it would have been cheaper to replace them completely. He said I must be using chemicals that were too harsh for the toilets. Clorox is not too harsh when cleaning toilets - I continued using them and noticed each time that I cleaned that white paint was coming off and the actual, original color of the sets was the old yellowish off white color that many old toilets are.

When our lease was up we finally moved out and left the place in better condition than we found it. We had personally cleaned the carpets (they were filthy when we moved in) and removed some of the previous stains as well as paid for the required carpet cleaning after we moved out. We touched up the walls with paint, cleaned every baseboard and window sill, thoroughly cleaned every room, bathroom, kitchen, etc. and cleaned the oven with professional grade cleaner. As I mentioned, they had not cleaned the house when we moved in and it took me 2 weeks to get the oven cleaned and in a condition in which we would even use it to cook food when we moved in. The refrigerator and freezer were in awful condition. There was no vent cover under the fridge, which we noted but was never fixed. The move out condition of that oven and fridge, carpets throughout and the entire house overall was pristine compared to how we found it. We even touched up places on the wall that had been unpainted, stained or damaged when we moved in with paint they'd left and labeled as the wall color. After my husband spent 2 nights in a row touching up with that paint, he opened the can labeled "trim paint" and realized that it was actually the wall paint color and what he'd been using wasn't the right color, which was why it wasn't blending very well. We still don't even know what that paint was in that house for as the walls were all the same color - the color in the can labeled "trim paint" and there was no can of trim paint to use.

Keeping all of this in mind, we still received a 20 page inspection report of things that needed to be repaired, cleaned or fixed just 3 days after we moved out. This report included carpets stains that we'd documented upon moving in, places on the wall where the paint wasn't exactly blended, an oven and refrigerator that needed to be cleaned, as well as window screens that were missing but had not been there in the first place. It was reported that a cabinet that was already a little loose was now much worse - we never even noticed it loose at all yet we had somehow made it worse while we were there? I responded to their inspection of the house that all of these conditions were preexisting and that I had pictures to prove it. I also knew the previous tenants and they had noted that most of those things were things they'd been charged for as well, but had already existed before they even moved in. The rental agent told us that they would be sending the inspection report to the owner and he'd be coming up with a proposal/report to determine if we owed any money or if we'd be getting our deposit back. They'd let us know if they needed any further photos or documentation.

In our contract it stated that we'd receive any deposit back within 60 days of the end of the lease. We moved out on Sept 26 and got the inspection report that following week. Its now the end of November and we still haven't received any notice, security deposit, etc. from the agent. We've reached out several times and each time the response is something similar to, "Oh yeah, I don't know why that hasn't been taken care of yet. Jim isn't available but we'll him to get to get on that." If and when we ever get something back, we still don't know how much of our deposit to expect.

My word of advice to anyone looking to rent is to steer clear of this group and anyone associated with it. As I mentioned, they seem to change their name frequently (friends who have rented from them in the past even know it by a different name than we do) but I've yet to find anyone who has had a good experience with them. We had one set of friends who had a really high water bill after moving in. They then found a broken sprinkler head that had been leaking for weeks because a tree root had grown around it. Only a month after being in the house, they were now being charged for an excessive water bill and the cost of a new sprinkler head due to "negligence" and said that Jim had been difficult to even talk to about the situation.

Whether the complaints are about repairs going unfixed, being charged for items that are beyond their control, or just a general disrespectful attitude from the rental agent in trying to work with them, this company has got to be the worst to deal with and I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy.

Absolutely horrible experience with them managing my rental home. It was obvious that they never checked on a regular basis as even from the outside it was very apparent that the home was in disrepair (broken lights, brown lawn, green pool). I got more information from my neighbor on the condition of my house than from Pointe South. My manager switched more times than I can count over the years (without notification) and they more often than not did not return my e-mails or phone calls. Once it came time to sell my house, it took over $10,000 to repair the damages both inside and outside.