A Fish Stinks from the Head! - Anonymous employee Nelson Brothers Property Management Employee Review

It is hard to know where to begin. When I joined the company there were almost no managers and minimal staffing. Several of the properties literally had no employees…I soon found out why. The biggest issue with this company is the owner. If he could be removed from the picture by the other owner (his brother), this company might have true potential to take off with no limit to how well they could do. The owner has an ego like I have never encountered and I have encountered many big egos. He constantly flip-flops back and forth on topics, can’t stay on-track, and spends the majority of his time talking about himself. To say that he is long winded would be an insult to anyone who is long winded - a short/quick conversation with be a minimum an hour with 50-minutes spent talking about him. He is not above insulting you publicly in front of the whole company. In fact, he seems to prefer to do all of his rants/insults publicly either via email, or on calls with others on the line. The worst part is that he goes from saying that he is hiring subject matter/industry experts and wants to learn the industry one minute to saying that he can do everything better than anyone else and that he is the best in the industry. The results of his actions and performance tell a different story. He hires talented people, tells them what he wants to accomplish, then spends his time telling them that they don’t know what they are doing and tells them why he so much smarter than they are (one reason was because he once worked as a waiter at Red Lobster!). Then he reverses all the work that they’ve done and puts everything back to the way he had it to begin with. Unfortunately, many potentially great employees recognized this and exited quickly. The newest Director of Marketing joined the company earlier in the year, relocated from the Midwest to California, then left the company after only about 6-weeks, and after spending only 4-days in the corporate office to witness the chaos, tension, and volatile behavior. Another talented leasing/marketing person joined the company in summer and subsequently left the company in less than 90-days for similar observations and was constantly under attack and threatened to be fired. This is an unfortunate pattern with this company. Most former employees won’t even put their employment with Nelson Brothers on their LinkedIn profile. That should tell you something. The owner has hired highly questionable individuals, with a known reputation for stealing from their former employers, as part of his management team and then is surprised to learn that they’ve been stealing from him, along with other significant inappropriate conduct with other employees. He speaks openly about other former employees and blame them for all of his problems, then secretly rehires them, against the advise of his own partner and executive team. This nearly caused a walkout of several corporate staff members. The owner spent the next couple days calling everyone asking them what they had heard about her, to which everyone replied "only what you told us", which he did not like I'm sure. Several employees spent at least 6-months at the company cleaning up her mess, and he has placed her back in charge. When his EVP and a member of the Executive Team disagree with him, he tells them that their opinion is wrong and fires them. I don’t understand how the properties can be mostly 100% occupied but most still struggle to pay the bills. As a site employee you will have vendors calling on a daily basis seeking to be paid for invoices that range anywhere between 60 days to 12-months old. The owner tells the staff that there is no reason why we aren't paying these bills and tries to accuse the accounting team of not doing their job. In actuality, he’s the one who tells the accounting team what bills are allowed to be paid. The properties/corporate are also severely understaffed but the owner does not believe in spending money on marketing. He believes that all it takes to lease up a property is to have a BBQ or a volleyball game. He constantly emphasizes that the former owner(s) operated with only 1 staff member. He also does not believe in corporate employees. To quote him "a manager should be happy being a manager. Why would they want move up in their career when they can make a ton of money being a Property manager for me". He says that he wants to pay HUGE bonuses, but then argues with everyone when it’s time to pay the bonuses. His best comment is that "I am a millionaire (Said MANY times) and you all should learn from me."