TULSA, Okla. — Dozens of Tulsans living in Vesta Realty owned apartment complexes contacted 2 News over the last few weeks, with complaints ranging from trash to maintenance.
After listening to their concerns, 2 News Oklahoma's Stef Manchen wanted to get answers, so she took their concerns directly to Vesta CEO Marc Kulick.
Q: How long have you been in real estate? When did Vesta open?
A: I started in property management in 2006 at my college dorm at the University of Kansas. I never got out of the industry. I started my own firm in 20 late 2016.OK,so that's when Vesta. That's when Vesta opened, and then we bought our first deal, which was in Bixby in June of 2017.
Q: How many properties does Vesta have around the area?
A: We're at about 39 properties, mainly between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. We have a couple of outliers in Little Rock and Wichita. We've also sold probably 13 or 14 buildings since 2017, so you know, we've bought more than we currently have.
Q: So we'll start, I guess, the biggest thing that's been going on and that we heard the most about was the trash issue. I know you gave us a statement, but if you can kind of explain to people how that happened, why it happened, and the process going forward.
A: One of the problems with growth is that I don't have the time to be over every single part of every single decision, or bill pay, or whatever. So with that trash issue, I was notified like. I want to say 3 or 4 days before you called me that there was an issue, and it does take me a couple, if I'm notified of an issue, it might take me a couple of days to mobilize my own response. And so by the time I think you and I had talked, I had already solidified all, you know, there's 2 different trash vendors spread out across our portfolio. One of them was,was paid but was having issues servicing on their end. There's this thing that people do which is all of our entities are owned, all of our properties are owned independently, but some vendors will say,you know what, Vesta owes me money, and I until Vesta pays me, I'm not gonna service anything in the, in the Vesta empire or portfolio or universe or whatever word you wanna use. And so, I think the day before you and I talked, I just said, OK, fine, give me all the invoices that need to be cleared, and we'll just clear everything all at once. And it's a less targeted approach,it's harder on me, that's me putting money in, but I felt like with something like trash, you know, I didn't feel like it was right to let it keep bubbling up, and we can deal with that internally rather than making that the residents' problem.
Q: We had a couple of people say, 'I can't talk to you guys because they're telling us that if we talk to the media, they're going to give us eviction paperwork...' Can you clear that up at all?
A: When you said that to me over the phone, that was one of the reasons I agreed to sit down. That's the type of thing that I really do want residents to know. First of all, leases protect both of us, right? Leases are joint protection. Residents can't stop paying, and I can't just randomly decide that the rent is a million dollars a month and it jointly protects us. In the same vein,there's no eviction that you can file because somebody spoke to the news or because somebody did something you didn't like... If you are getting that threat, please reach out to us at the corporate level because that is not... It's not right, like morally, ethically, whatever, it's also not right legally.”
Q: So residents pay for trash, sewer, and water, correct?”
A:"There is a water, sewer, trash reimbursement that is on the rents, correct.
Q: A lot of different people have said the water gets shut off for days, weeks at a time. At Woodland Oaks, it's happened, at villas at Midtown, somebody said they've been without hot water for 48 hours. How does something like that happen?
A: There's two different elements, right? Older apartment buildings don't have shutoff valves that are unique to each unit. So let's say you live in a unit and it has, I don't know, the shutoff valve might affect 3 buildings, 4 buildings. I've actually managed properties where 1 shutoff valve controlled the entire property. If you have a leak and you have to fix that leak, you have to shut off the water to the entire building or to however many buildings are controlled by that water shut-off. That process can be a day, it could be an hour, it could be whatever,and that's just to fix a leak so that the property doesn't degenerate more. That is a function of 60s and 70s vintage housing for sure. Some developers in the 80s had decided that this is not sensible and created shutoffs unique to each. So, if somebody says, I haven't had hot water for 48 hours, first of all, we have never ever had water shut off at any of our sites that lasted more than a matter of minutes because the only, we're not, I don't know of many times where we've actually had any shutoffs from the city, and the few times that I can remember it happening based on some sort of timing issue, it was solved within the hour, um, so I,I can say definitively it's never gone more, that would have never been an issue for more than, more than an hour.
Q: Somebody said at Villa's at Midtown that they weren't having their work orders dealt with in a timely fashion. Somebody said as many as 14 days with a roach infestation and mold and mildew. Do you think that it's hard for people to get their work orders quickly taken care of, or is there something that keeps maintenance from being able to get to them?
A: My goal of sitting down to try to get some answers to tenants that might be having issues is, if it seems abnormal, reach out to the corporate office. That's what we're there for, right? And I'm not saying that to circumvent our property managers, but you know, we're going to look into it... What could go wrong with work orders? Part delays happen. Complications happen. Also, we're an employer like everyone else. Sometimes we've had to terminate maintenance people, or they've left, and we are in the process of rehiring, and there's going to be a slowdown naturally because we are having turnover. Like we are not immune to the same things that any business could have, but I think that if a resident is needing an answer and they feel like an inappropriate amount of time has gone by, the best thing to do would be to reach out to corporate.
Q: Is there a protocol that you would recommend? I know you said going to corporate, but if these things aren't being dealt with, what should residents be doing?
A: That is the answer, come to corporate... We can't fix problems we don't know about, and it's totally possible that a resident has tried to talk to their property management team and hasn't gotten anywhere. We need to know that.
Q: Is there anything you want to say to residents who are writing into us?
A: This business and this company means the world to us... We genuinely do care and we're fighting a lot of battles on a lot of fronts, and we're trying our best for our residents. So if you're feeling frustrated and you don't know if you can trust us, the best thing I'd ask you to do is please give us a chance.
If residents have questions or concerns for Kulick or the Vesta Realty team, they can be reached through the Vesta Facebook page or by emailing info@vestarealproperty.com.
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