Your general assessment of management companies is pretty on-point right now, based on general experiences shared from neighbors. My building was originally managed by Thornhill Properties, which never rolled out the red carpet but were decent with communication overall and I didn't have complaints. My apartment itself has had few to no issues in the past 3 years, so I cannot attest for what Thornhill would have done back when they were in charge.

What I've gathered over the years of living in Mount Vernon:

Decent management, straight forward leases, but higher priced apartments:

• Southern Management
• PMC
• Zahlco
• Greystar

Hit or miss managements, a few okay-ish reviews (where the apt itself didn't have many issues, which always helps) and also several notable, complete horror-stories:

• American Management
• Bay Management Group / Mount Vernon Apartments
• STAR Property Management
• JBZ Management
• Horizon Management
• Chasen Companies = special shoutout. From what I've seen from friends... Chasen bought up a bunch of old contracts of apartments, gave ridiculous increases to current tenants to force them to vacate, hastily renovated units that are now showing issues just 1-2 years later, and are either selling the flipped properties (causing the tenants more headaches), or are being really sketchy with their treatment of current tenants.

A lot of times issues between renters/owners/management comes from miscommunications from one side or the other TBH. My advice to you and anyone else reading: wherever you end up looking or renting, don't be afraid to ask questions and ALWAYS follow up with email documentation to recap any convos + photos.