Brick and Timber Lawsuits: Receivership, Evictions, and Getaround

Two San Francisco real estate companies share nearly the same name, and both have been in court — but for very different reasons. Brick + Timber, the residential property manager affiliated with Ballast Investments, has been named in lender litigation, tenant rent strikes, habitability complaints, and eviction filings. Brick & Timber Collective, an unrelated commercial landlord founded by Glenn Gilmore, has itself sued former office tenants over abandoned leases. The lawsuits tied to the Brick and Timber name fall into these two separate tracks, and knowing which company you’re dealing with is the first step to understanding the legal issue.

Which Brick and Timber Is Which

Brick + Timber (with a plus sign) is the in-house property management arm of Ballast Investments, a San Francisco multifamily owner-operator led by CEO and co-founder Greg MacDonald.¹ It manages residential apartment buildings across San Francisco and Berkeley.² Ballast also operates under the name SF Multifamily.³

Brick & Timber Collective (with an ampersand) is a commercial real estate firm founded in 2013 by Glenn Gilmore, with Jesse Feldman as a partner. It converts historic Gold Rush-era warehouses into office space for venture capital and tech tenants, mainly in Jackson Square and North Beach, with additional holdings in Miami’s Wynwood district.⁴ The San Francisco Chronicle has stated explicitly that “Brick & Timber Collective is unrelated to the San Francisco apartment rental agency Brick + Timber, an affiliate of Ballast Investments.”⁵

Lawsuits Involving Brick + Timber and Ballast

RBC Receivership Over 82 Buildings

The largest legal action tied to Brick + Timber’s management arose from a lender default. Between 2017 and 2020, Goldman Sachs partnered with Ballast to acquire San Francisco apartment portfolios totaling $704.5 million, financed with $687.5 million in loans from the Royal Bank of Canada between 2020 and 2021. The borrowers defaulted.⁶

RBC sued, alleging that Brick + Timber, as the property manager, had failed to prevent the “deterioration” of the buildings and was not managing them in a “prudent” manner. On July 11, 2024, a San Francisco Superior Court judge appointed Los Angeles-based Wald Realty Advisors as receiver for two of the three portfolios, covering 58 buildings.⁷ Six days later, Goldman Sachs and Ballast surrendered all 82 buildings across the three portfolios — 1,211 units — to RBC affiliates through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. RBC indicated it would replace Brick + Timber with Mission Rock Residential, the property management arm of Hamilton Zanze.⁶

Ballast disputed the deterioration claims, pointing to a 90 percent occupancy rate and describing the portfolio as “stable and moving in the right direction.”⁶

Parkmerced Habitability and Security Complaints

Brick + Timber became the property manager at Parkmerced, a World War II-era complex of 11 high-rises, townhouses, and over 3,300 units near San Francisco State University. Previous owner Maximus Real Estate Partners defaulted on $1.8 billion in loans, and the Douglas Wilson Companies took control as court-appointed receiver on May 30, 2025, hiring Brick + Timber for day-to-day management under the receiver’s oversight.⁸

Residents reported widespread black mold that they said management had been painting over rather than remediating, along with broken elevators, leaking ceilings, overflowing trash rooms, and recurring heat and plumbing outages.⁹¹⁰ One tenant reported more than $5,000 in personal property damage from mold spores.⁸ Tenants also said management frequently marked unresolved maintenance issues as “fixed” in internal systems without completing the work.

Security was a second front. Residents described break-ins through windows and reported that security cameras were often broken. In October 2025, an armed home invasion occurred at a unit where the hallway camera had been down for a week. Tenants at 125 Cambon Drive said they reported a suspected prostitution ring to management starting in August 2025 but received only vague responses; police raided a nearby home on October 30, 2025, and charged one suspect with pimping, pandering, and maintaining a house of prostitution.⁹

A tenant petition also accused a specific Brick + Timber communications manager of making false accusations to facilitate wrongful evictions and issuing notice-to-quit orders, and alleged that staff were hostile and retaliatory toward low-income, disabled, and Section 8 residents.⁸

In October 2025, residents formed the Parkmerced Tenant Association, led by attorney Eva Shang, and announced plans to file a court motion in December 2025 demanding immediate intervention. Ballast CEO Greg MacDonald acknowledged “20-plus years of deferred maintenance” at the complex and said “the tenants haven’t been treated very well.”¹⁰ The receiver pledged to install 500 new cameras and increase security staffing.⁹

434 Leavenworth Rent Strike

Immigrant tenants at 434 Leavenworth Street in the Tenderloin went on rent strike against Ballast, citing pest infestations, broken infrastructure, and a refusal to make repairs. Advocates from the Housing Rights Committee alleged that Ballast removed bilingual property managers and issued critical notices only in English, exploiting language barriers among non-English-speaking residents. After tenants received eviction notices, the San Francisco Rent Board ordered both sides to meet before a decision would be rendered on April 30, 2025. The outcome of that hearing has not been publicly reported in the available record.¹¹

Eviction Filings and Broader Tenant Complaints

Court records show that Brick & Timber, Inc. filed a residential eviction case against Mary Matvy and others in San Francisco County Superior Court on December 18, 2023. The specific allegations and outcome are not publicly detailed in the available record.¹²

In 2021, the company faced hearings over alleged violations of the San Francisco fire code related to accessory dwelling unit construction, along with accusations of displacement through constructive eviction and unlawful business practices tied to construction and demolition work. Tenants at 530 Stockton Street reported unexplained fees beyond rent, construction noise at unreasonable hours, power and water shutoffs without notice, and refusal to address security problems. In Berkeley, where the company owns 13 buildings, tenants have accused Brick + Timber of using short-term tenancies to circumvent rent control and impose repeated rent increases.³

The Inherited Veritas Litigation

In January 2024, Ballast partnered with Brookfield Properties to acquire $915 million in troubled mortgages tied to 2,165 Veritas Investments units, effectively foreclosing on 76 apartment buildings. That made Ballast and Brick + Timber the managers of properties already tied up in tenant litigation.⁶

The underlying case, Evander et al. v. Veritas Investments, was filed in October 2018 with 69 plaintiffs and grew to 106 tenants across 39 buildings by early 2019. Represented by Bracamontes & Vlasak and Greenstein & McDonald, the tenants alleged that Veritas neglected maintenance in occupied units while performing frequent renovations in vacant ones to inconvenience current residents, passed inflated construction costs through as rent increases, removed asbestos and lead paint unsafely, and fabricated late charges by falsely denying receipt of rent payments. The suit also alleged that minor children at 57 Taylor Street were poisoned by lead, with San Francisco Department of Public Health records confirming three lead hazard cases at that building since 2015. Plaintiffs’ attorneys described the case as potentially an “eight-figure” matter. Veritas denied all allegations, calling them “boilerplate” and the suit “frivolous.”¹³ Veritas itself defaulted on $1 billion in loans tied to more than 95 residential properties in 2022.¹¹

Lawsuits Filed by Brick & Timber Collective

The commercial firm has pursued its own landlord-side litigation against tenants that allegedly walked away from leases.

Getaround at 55 Green Street

Brick & Timber Collective sued car-sharing company Getaround over a 10-year lease at 55 Green Street in San Francisco. Getaround had negotiated a $3.6 million settlement to exit the lease early, with a $1 million upfront payment followed by $1.1 million in monthly installments through May 2026. According to the lawsuit, Getaround stopped making payments after January 2025, and the company announced in February 2025 that it would shutter its U.S. operations. Brick & Timber Collective is seeking roughly $200,000 in damages plus additional costs and fees.¹⁴¹⁵

Amyris in Wynwood, Miami

In July 2023, a Brick & Timber Collective affiliate sued Emeryville-based biotechnology firm Amyris in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court. The complaint alleged that Amyris abandoned a 10-year lease at 2724 and 2734 Northwest First Avenue in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, failed to build out the interiors, failed to maintain the building, and failed to pay rent of roughly $133,000 per month. The landlord sought more than $20 million in damages.¹⁶ No public resolution has been reported.

1
Ballast. Ballast Investments
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Brick + Timber. Brick + Timber Rentals
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Worst Evictors Bay Area. Worst Evictors List
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The Real Deal. Brick Timber Collective to Invest $500M in SF Offices
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San Francisco Chronicle. Brick and Timber Collective Office Building Portfolio
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The Real Deal. Goldman Sachs and Ballast Hand SF Apartments to Lender
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Bisnow. Ballast Goldman Hand Keys to 1211 San Francisco Apartments Back to Lender
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Change.org. Demand Immediate Mold Remediation in Park Merced Apartments
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San Francisco Standard. Parkmerced Housing Development SFSU Crime
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Multifamily Dive. Ballast Multifamily Special Servicing
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El Tecolote. SF Immigrant Rent Strike
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UniCourt. Brick and Timber Inc. vs. Mary Matvy Et Al
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San Francisco Public Press. Searching for Truth in Tenants Lawsuit Against SF Corporate Landlord
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The Real Deal. SF Landlord Sues Getaround for Unpaid Lease Termination Fees
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San Francisco Business Journal. Getaround 55 Green Brick Timber
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The Real Deal. Brick Timber Sues Biotech Firm for Allegedly Ditching Wynwood Lease