Hi all,

We are a bunch of tenants at Aviana Apartments (2101 California Street, Mountain View, CA). During the past year, many of us have been cheated by its management company HSC/Riverstone using dirty tactics such as raising our rent without prior notifications. We would like to find out who the owner of this apartment complex is so that we can notify them of such poor business act appropriately. Please help! Any information is appreciated.

Sincerely,
Kuma and other honest but angry tenants at Aviana

Good luck with that. The reason a mangement company is in place is the owners DO NOT want to be contacted. If I had to answer tenants all the time my business would suffer.

If they raised the rent without prior notification then all of you get a litigation attorney involved. They will usually take the case pro-bono if there was gross negligence involved.

Usually though in all leases signed the owner reserves the right to raise rents to keep up with inflation and renovations/upgrades to the property. You need to have an attorney review yours to see what your rights are.

If you call the tax assesors office you can usually get the mailing address of the owner. If it's a p.o. box you probably won't get much response from the owner unless it's from an attorny.

You could also look up the corporation from the state's website to get information.

Bottom line is if you are coming up for renewal they can raise the rents as much as they want to unless stated otherwise in your current signed lease for renewal provisions.

If you don't like the rate you either sign again or move out.

good luck and no legal advice

Since your in California and there are very strong tenant law there, I would look for assistance from a Tenant advocate service, I am sure there are some in Mountain View. Here's a link to some info that may be of help. Scroll down to your county and there are several places you can call for assistance.
Tenant Info

Hi folks, thanks for the replies. jbt4re, we already contacted some local advocacy services, and we're waiting to see what they can do for us. Super realtor, hmm... just one question for you, if you're the owner of the complex, wouldn't you want to know when your properties are being poorly managed and that the tenants are moving out left and right? Just wondering what the owner psychology is...

Well so far you haven't really talked about poor management. I'd be surprised if there's not an escalation clause somewhere in the lease, like Super Realtor was speaking of. Other than that what type of actions have you experienced.

That is your opinion and I am not privy to your situation. Alot of times tenants make a mountain out of a molehill.

Tenants have a UNIQUE way of looking at things and ALL of them feel they have something important to say. Again this is what a property management team is for.

As the owner I wouldn't need to hear from the tenants to know the property was doing bad. Property managers submit specific reports to owners monthly that cover rent rolls,vacancies,evictions,cash flows,etc.

If the reports are bad then you know there is a problem.

So just looking at those numbers I can tell if there is a problem or not. Now I am not saying there is not a problem as I am not there. There are many negligent owners and property managers out there.

That's why you always use the best which are the ones that belong to the IREM institute. They have to constantly take training and are rated at the top of there field. There are systems for multi-family of 50 units or less and ones for 51 units or more.

good luck