Having not experienced working with other property managers for apartments in Portland, I have no idea how BellPort compares with the many other management companies so I'm writing based on my experience of living in a bellport managed apartment for 2 years.
My criteria for an apartment was that it needed to be ~ $1000 and needed to allow dogs. After searching for a long time, we found a small apartment near Woodford's Corner with hardwood floors and a gas stove.
The location of the apartment was great for my commute. And I think we were excited to just move in together that we looked over a lot of the other things. I think this is less so a criticism of BellPort and more a criticism of the property, owned by some not great owners, and old, crudely maintained buildings. The windows were huge which I loved, but the air around the neighborhood was disgusting. There was so much soot that came in it made us question if our health was at risk. Neighbors who smoked indoors and outdoors in a non-smoking building was a huge pain and annoyingly, the whole apartment was slanted and was missing flooring here and there. The kitchen and bathroom were gross drop ceiling and we got flooding from upstairs, which was not due to a pipe issue as we called maintenance many times, but due to a tenant issue.
All of this just illustrates that in general, we didn't have problems with the manager, but with the tenants around us and the property itself -- something that while BellPort maintains and manages, is ultimately at the discretion of the owners for updating things to code and be "liveable".
BellPort has an online payment system that is a breeze, they have 24/7 maintenance which is pretty responsive, and even though we had to pay a monthly fee for the dog (required by the owner), they were generally pleasant to deal with. They did raise rates by $50 each year which was stupid for the place we had, and when we left, they had raised it $100 even though they told us we were getting no hike because of the pandemic. Well we got out of there and are happy we don't have to deal with eggs that slide to one side of the pan because you have to walk at an angle throughout the whole apartment.
Unfortunately, we have also seen some pretty terrible apartments in way worse condition so it's hard to have an objective opinion on the quality. The worst part was the lack of control of the radiators. Loud and clunky, our apartment would get so dry that humidity would fall to the teen percentages. This cost us in acoustic instrument failures because of the dryness. Not worth staying in a place where you can't control the temp because they have it cranked up to 80F in the winter.
At least there were no bugs. read more