The owner sees what we see
Every invoice, every inspection photo, every piece of tenant correspondence that matters. You should never have to ask what happened at your own property.
About us
A local management company built the way owners keep asking for.
O'Connell Cornerstone manages single-family and multifamily rentals across Greater Hartford. We started it because the choice for a small owner around here was a national firm that treats your building like a row in a spreadsheet, or a part-timer who stops returning calls in July.
Why we exist
Greater Hartford runs on small landlords. Somebody who owns the three-family they grew up in, a couple with two rentals in Newington, a contractor who kept the houses he flipped. Between them they house a very large share of this region — and almost none of them are served well by the property management options in front of them.
The large firms are built for portfolios of hundreds of doors. Their pricing has a second page. Their maintenance runs through a call centre and a marked-up in-house crew. Their account managers turn over every eighteen months, and the person who knows your building leaves with them.
The alternative is usually one person doing this alongside their real job, which works right up until the week they are on holiday and your tenant has no heat.
We built O'Connell Cornerstone for the space in between: professional systems, published pricing, and a small enough footprint that somebody can be standing at your property this afternoon.
Who you will be dealing with
O'Connell Cornerstone is owned and run by Daniel O’Connell. When you call, you are speaking to the person accountable for your property — not a rotating account executive and not an answering service reading from a script.
How we operate
Four things we will not compromise on.
We make money when you do
Our fee is a percentage of rent collected. A vacant unit costs us too, which is exactly the incentive you want your manager to have.
Tenants are customers, not liabilities
Good tenants stay when they are treated decently and their repairs get fixed. Turnover is the single most expensive thing that happens to a rental — the cheapest retention strategy is answering the phone.
Say the uncomfortable thing early
If your rent expectation is too high, if the unit needs $8,000 of work before it will lease, or if you would be better off selling — we will tell you at the start rather than let you find out over six months of vacancy.
What that means in practice
The difference shows up in the boring details.
Actually local
We live and work in Greater Hartford. We know which streets rent, which buildings have knob-and-tube surprises, and which contractors show up. A national call center does not know any of that.
Nothing hidden
Published pricing. No onboarding fee, no lease renewal fee, no markup on repairs, no management fee while you sit vacant. If it costs something, it is on this website.
A person replies
Every message is read and answered by the people actually managing your property, within one business day — not routed into a ticket queue. Owners and tenants both.
Compliance handled
Connecticut landlord-tenant law, Fair Housing, security deposit escrow, lead paint disclosure, notice periods. Getting these wrong is expensive — that is our job, not yours.
Licensing & compliance
Leasing and managing residential property for others in Connecticut requires a real estate broker licence issued by the Department of Consumer Protection. Licence details will be published here as soon as they are issued. We carry general liability insurance, hold security deposits in a separate escrow account as Connecticut law requires, and comply with federal and state Fair Housing law on every property we handle.
Let’s talk about your property.
No pitch deck and no pressure. Tell us what you own and what is not working, and we will tell you what we would do about it.