The Andrews Organization

I’m President of our 30-​unit coop, and have dealings with Andrews on an almost daily basis. Our Property Manager, Robin Miller, has been amazing– When she came on board with us, we were slogging through a huge Hurricane Sandy rebuild, mortgage refinancing, insurance headaches galore, shareholders in revolt, and that was the easy stuff! Without her and the Andrews team, I wouldn’t have a life, and would probably killed most of my neighbors. I’ve found everyone at Andrews to be extremely responsive, proactive and accessible– including Gene Andrews. Because of our team, we’ve gone from a reactive, fly by the seat of our pants organization to a professionally run, organized cooperative, and none of my neighbors are dead! If you have any concerns as to the validity of this review, please feel free to contact me directly through the Unilocal link.

This company is a total nightmare to deal with. Not only did they cover up illegal short term rentals (AirBnB, HomeandAway) taking place in 3 apartments in the building we live in, but they were totally unresponsive to all our complaints about noise and water leaks caused by these illegal rentals. The owners of these apartments would often place 6 – 8 people inside a ONE BEDROOM apartment and children would sometimes play basketball or jump inside these apartment at 2am. Every few days, a new family entered the apartments above us and each new «tenant» brought a new set of problems and/​or noise levels. One of the illegal rentals above us caused over 6 water leaks inside two apartments underneath them over a period of less than 12 months. These constant water leaks eventually caused toxic black mold in the ceiling & flooring of one apartment located underneath the illegal rentals. Even after all our emails reporting this situation, Vivian Robinson (the property manager at the time) continued to ignore the situation and did NOTHING.
We later found out that Andrews Organization was probably allowing these illegal rentals to happen because the shareholder operating two of these short term rentals was in fact the President & CEO of the Co-​Op we live in. In our opinion, the Andrews Organization has been playing political games, protecting the CEO, at the detriment of the tenants who are placing their health, assets and safety at risk by having so many people rent illegal apartments inside the building (sometimes 20 – 25 different people in a single month!). In our experience, we found that The Andrews Organization has absolutely ZERO respect for the health and well-​being of tenants residing inside the buildings they manage; the only thing they seem to care about is the satisfaction of some of their shareholders. Also, they not only put tenants at risk, but they also place the property of other shareholders (who are playing by the rules and not renting their apartments on AirBnB) at risk. Many of the shareholder’s assets and properties were affected by this situation — directly or indirectly. In fact, our neighbor’s apartment was so affected by the leaks that they had to move out from their apartment TWICE in the past two months in order to let a construction team repair the consequences of water leaks caused by irresponsible AirBnB transient tenants.
The new property manager — Sandra Nazario — was originally more responsive once toxic black mold was discovered. However, she eventually started acting exactly like the previous property manager Vivian Robinson. We spent countless hours emailing and calling the shareholders (as well as Sandra Nazario @ the Andrews Organization) in order to get them to conduct the necessary air and mold testing. Sandra told us that she was taking the situation very seriously, but we then didn’t hear from her again for almost a week. Black mold can be deadly and any responsible management company would have sent a mold testing company within 24 – 48 hours to at least conduct tests. Instead, we waited almost 2 weeks (from the first report we received from our neighbors about the discovered mold) and no testing company was even scheduled by the Sandra. The apartment of our neighbors was in such a bad condition that they had to move out of their apartment and go to a hotel for almost 2 weeks. Sandra Nazario said that she only became aware of the black mold a week ago, but we find that hard to believe since the superintendent had discovered this two weeks ago and the shareholder of the responsible unit causing leaks had hired a construction company that removed part of the ceiling containing the mold. How could they have started construction work without first going through the building manager and getting the insurance certificates approved? Clearly, she or someone else at Andrews Management had to be aware of the mold two weeks ago.
All I can say is that this company jeopardizes the health and well-​being of its tenants and shareholders, only to protect some of the shareholders that hire them. This situation could have been avoided if only they listened to our complaints 18 months ago. They are irresponsible and unprofessional. Would give 0 stars if I could, but Unilocal wouldn’t let me.
There are also other reviews online that say that the Andrews Organization’s agents often work with and recommend corrupt partners, charging an extortionate amount to do repair work. They sound corrupt on all levels.