Barkley Houses

DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THESE PEOPLE. My private information from a lease was leaked from their office employees to a one of their tenants, who is now using the information to harass and stalk me. Medora and John Barkley are illegally selling/sharing their tenant’s private information!!!!!!! Legal processes are underway. Edit: the response from Medora and her office is too little too late. I was harassed by your tenant using my private contact info received from your office. The posted response says they are “happy to discuss,” but when I emailed Medora Barkley to inform her that I would be seeking legal action, she sent me several hysterical emails accusing me of “threats” in an attempt to intimidate me. It didn’t work. Add legal intimidation to the list of laws you are breaking.

I LOVED my time and home in Cherrywood. Full of character and charm, it was the best home I ever had. While I would whole heartedly recommend renting in darling duplex nation I would highly recommend NOT renting from Barkley. This review is directed solely at ownership and their choices, as I had nothing but wonderful interactions with the staff. In the 2 years I lived there my rent was raised over 35%. Despite overall rising market prices in Austin, this is egregious. Especially in a home where 50% of the windows don’t open and the rest don’t fully close. More importantly, I know of several instances where this means that Barkely is charging nearly $500-$600 more than your neighbor in an identical apartment down the block. Our good friends currently pay $1650 while Barkley wants to charge $2300. While maintenance was mostly timely, “fixes” we requested nearly always left us worse off than we were before. Towards the end of our stay my partner was performing all maintenance requests to avoid the inevitable frustration it would cause. Here are a few examples: 1. Asked for locks on the the front door when we first moved in (mandated by Texas law). This took several weeks to complete and when it was finally finished, I was informed by our downstairs neighbors (both young men) they had gotten copy of our house key. This was later remedied, but the oversight was astounding. 2. Asked for our broken screen doors to be repaired. When I came home they had taken them away entirely. It took several months to finally get replacements. 3. They literally taped our refrigerator shut for two weeks until they could “fix it.” They repeatedly told us the door would not close because we had “too many condiments in the door.” With the fridge empty as we moved out, the door still refused to close. 4. We informed them that the ceiling had several ceiling leaks and visiblea damage leaving the ceiling soft to the touch. They fixed this by spray painting over water marks with a different color paint. 5. Don’t get me started on the time a possum died in our attic and they said there weren’t any holes in the roof 6. …this list goes on. While annoying, this poor “handywork” became mostly a running joke amongst friends and family. Ultimately, it is the ownership that sealed my impression of Barkely. As you can see from other reviews, we were not the only tenants that suffered from callous, greedy, and frustratingly inconsistent communication from Medora Barkely. From trying to bully me into moving in early when I first signed (another complaint depicted elsewhere) to horribly inconsistent and often entirely contradictory communication over the course of moving out, the impression I was left with was that of an incredibly greedy, callous and manipulative person. Business is business, but humanity is humanity. Despite what their marketing might suggest, it is clear what ownership’s priorities lie. Now that I am no longer a tenant and subject to the consistent abuse of power, I am happy to share my experience