In 1996 my boyfriend and I moved from a Monument Avenue apt. to 2313 W. Grace Street, both were owned by the same landlord, but 2313 W. Grace Street had a back yard for our dog. Our rental deposit was transferred because we left the old apartment in good condition.

During the 3 years that my boyfriend and I lived at 2313 W. Grace Street, we got engaged and married. Also during that time, our (nice) landlord sold the building to Mason Brothers Investments LLC. That's when the troubles started.

The motion-sensored front light for the whole building was wired to our apartment (#2 downstairs), so we would have to pay the electricity for whenever that light came on. Previously, we had the switch in the hallway turned off b/c we did not think that was fair (hadn't been told about it upon move-in) and no one had a problem with it being off. When Mason Brothers took over, they covered the switch in the hallway with a box so we couldn't turn it off, therefore, forcing us to pay the electricity for the light that serviced the whole building.

Our refrigerator stopped working. They brought us another one which stopped working within days. So they brought us another refrigerator, which was the worst refrigerator I've ever seen. It was avacado green colored, the freezer was not frost-free and the the inside shelves of the refrigerated section were dirty with jelly stuck on them. I called to see if they could just give us a new refrigerator and they said no and left us with the old green one.

HERE IS THE WORST PART THAT STILL STICKS IN MY MIND AFTER ALMOST 6 YEARS HAVE GONE BY NOW:
I got pregnant so my husband and I bought a house. The day upon moving out of 2313 W. Grace Street, we were there until 11:00 p.m. cleaning the apartment to ensure we would get our deposit back. I was 6 months pregnant. Yet I swept, mopped, cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom with Ajax, scrubbed the toilet - everything! as well as it could be done.

The following day we met at the apartment for a move-out walk thru with -----, who we knew b/c she worked with our old landlord and then she worked for Mason Brothers. She pointed out nothing wrong with how we left it. She said they would be mailing our deposit refund to us at our new address.

Weeks later when we received a piece of mail from Mason Brothers, it was not a deposit refund check, but a letter stating that, not only were we losing our deposit, but that we owed them money! There was a checklist of things wrong with the apt., including that they had to send in people to clean! And another thing I recall listed was "forced door damage". We still don't know to this day what that was. We left no damage to this apartment. And we left this apartment clean.

I wrote them a very detailed letter and the written response I received was, we no longer owed them money, but they did not owe us any either, and if we were to bring it up again, they would reinstate the monetary charges against us.

The very limited pictures that FANRENTALS.COM / Mason Brothers show of 2313 W. Grace Street on their website today show floors in much better shape than when we lived there. Maybe they are unscrupulous people who don't mind ripping off honest, hard-working people. Or perhaps when they bought our building it was not up to their standards and they have renovated it. But when we were living there and they purchased it, they did no type of inspection or made note of the building's condition. If it was not up to their standards when they bought it, it was certainly not the renters' fault and they should not have kept our deposit. It was totally unfair and it still burns me up to this day!

Every other apartment and house I have rented in my life I have received the full deposit back because I leave the places in good condition.

Moral of the Story: DO NOT RENT FROM MASON BROTHERS INVESTMENTS aka FANRENTALS.COM aka FANAPARTMENTS.COM. They will rip you off. vWhRVi5nYYIuEh4W7K3l

User Responses
From: FanApartments	Date: 06/09/2009
We have waited long enough to respond to these accusations. First of all the facts are incorrect on this letter. We have been in business for over 20yrs now and have owned over 260 apartment units. We are a family business, not realtors. We are not nasty but when people do not want to hear what we are saying and we repeatedly have to repeat ourselves, it can become annoying. We know who these 2 parties are and quite honestly if 2 parties out of about 10,000 tenants want to complain about us, there is nothing we can say about it accept the following: 1. We follow the rules set up by the City of Richmond and install whatever detectors are necessary. 2. We do encourage tenants to take responsibility for their own safety, if they want to install any devises on their own. 3. Our policies are such that we only accept work orders for repairs on our properties by the tenants - this protects the tenant and us, so that the tenant knows we are coming,gives us a detailed description of the problem and gives us permission to come. We also have a 24 hour emergency cut-off service for emergencies. 4. The buildings are "Old and Historical" - 100 yr old buildings. Things break, and break and we fix and fix. 5. We have found, in certain instances, that the tenants that complain are the ones that cannot follow the rules set forth in our "Rule and Regulations" pages of the lease, are late on rent, have violations in their home - keep their animal food out and then wonder why they have mice or never clean and blame us for having to clean for days. What bothers me the most is that this website will allow names to be printed yet I will not print the names of these tenants who so carelessly wrote these damaging remarks. Come look at one of our apartments and see for yourself - and by the way, we renovated the apartments at 2313 W. Grace Street 2 yrs ago which included refinishing the hardwood floors. The pictures are of the actual apartments. See for yourself at Fanapartments.com
From: richmondrox	Date: 08/21/2009
I also rented from Mason Brothers in 2001 and 2002. We left the apartment cleaner then it was when we arrived. After moving all of our stuff out we spent the entire day cleaning. I even soaked and washed the mini blinds and rehung them. The only comment upon moveout was about a torn screen on the front porch my husband offered to repair it and they said that it was ok it would only cost about 30 dollars and they would take it from our deposit refund. We were exhausted and so agreed. We later received a bill that totalled over $700 in damages and cleaning charges. Which were absolutely false. I was very angry I had scrubbed and scrubbed to ensure we would get our deposit back and now we owed them! We were young and didn't know how to fight it. so we paid. Don't rent from them!!! They are indecent and do not care abut their tenants. Oh and i almost forgot the washer and dryer in our basement were unoperable for an entire year of the two that we lived there. I noticed they took Mason Bothers off their website and now just go by Fanrentals.com..........gee I wonder why. If you were a reputable company and you knew it would you take the time to defend yourself on this site. Probably not because your name and good rep would speak for themselves.
From: Anonymous	Date: 09/16/2009
I am "Anonymous" who posted the original review in 2005. I was the first to put 2313 W. Grace St. on aptratings.com. While looking at some other apts. on this site, I decided to come over and see if my review was still here. Yep, it's still here and guess what? The landlords have come aboard to tell everyone that they know who I am, that they are polite enough not to mention me by name, that my facts are incorrect, and that, often, tenants who complain are often dirty, late-rent-paying low-lifes. It does not matter how long they have been in business, how many units they've owned, or that they are a "family" business. None of that makes them look better after they treat people the way they do. We are not the only 2 parties to complain about Mason Brothers / Fan Apartments. There are (4) bad reviews and (1) sort-of-good review for 2313 W. Grace St. on this site alone. There may be other bad reviews for their other bldgs there may also be others out there unhappy with them who have not put their experiences into words. I doubt Mason Brothers really know who I am, but I invite them to go ahead and post my name or the name of the person that lived with me at 2313 W. Grace St., on this site. I have nothing to hide. Our rent was never late. Period. I have a FICO score of 850. That shows that my payments are never late, anywhere. Yes, we had pets, but our apt. was not dirty. The fact that we had a dog and a cat (and therefore the pets had food) had nothing to do with the cleanliness of the apt. and was not the cause of them claiming they had to send someone in to clean after we had already done so. Mason Bros / Fan Apts mentioned mice in their response. We never had mice and never complained of mice. (???) We had roaches, but I did not mention this in my original review. Once we got roach motels and sealed all of our pantry food in sealed containers, we no longer had roaches. I see that other tenants have complained of roaches. I assume that roaches just live in this part of the city and it's hard to get rid of them completely. I don't know what Mason Bros / Fan Apts are talking about when they babble on about themselves or me installing devices/detectors and City of Richmond rules and 24 Hour cut-off emergencies. What I do know is that we were not told that the exterior, motion-detected light was wired to our apartment. We wished not to pay for a service that benefited the whole building, however, Mason Bros. made it so we had no choice but to pay for it and would not reimburse us. Neither the "richmondrox" reviewer nor I complained about the building being old (and historical) and things needing to be fixed while we lived there. What we both did say was that we worked very hard cleaning the apts. after moving out, only to have Mason Bros / Fan Apts tell us it was not clean enough and that there were damages - so they could not only keep our deposits, but so they could also charge us hundreds of dollars on top of that. If I were the type of person that paid my rent late and left my apts. damaged & dirty, not getting my deposit back would be something that happened to me all of the time and I would not be so outraged that I would come to aptratings.com and create a category for 2313 W. Grace Street and detail the experience. I can see that the Mason Brothers / FanApartments are still making things up.

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