Walsh Property Management Shuttering After 45 Years
photo by Mike McGuire
Ed (at left) and Ilona Walsh are looking forward to retirement after 45 years running Walsh Property Management from this office a few doors down from the Castro Valley Post Office on Santa Maria Avenue.
Castro Valley’s Ed and Ilona Walsh are retiring after 45 years spent running Walsh Property Management out of an office two doors down from the Castro Valley post office on San Miguel Avenue.
They had gone from managing a single townhome development that they also lived in to running some 115 townhomes, condominiums, and planned developments throughout Alameda County at various times.
Mesa Verde, Columbia, and Five Canyons were some of the Castro Valley communities they managed.
The 21 managers and accounting staff they employed took care of some 12,000 housing units. Each manager handled seven to 10 properties, and an accounting staff kept track of the money at each development, Ed said.
The Walshes owned none of those properties and did not manage any outside of Alameda County.
“Our job was to hire vendors,” Ed Walsh said. “And we handled everything from taking care of dead trees to parking conflicts to new roofs.”
Ilona Walsh added, “Our experience as business owners in Castro Valley was always very pleasant.”
Ed and Ilona met in college, and after earning a Master of Business Administration degree, he became a captain in the Army, based in Oakland. Ilona worked for U.C. Berkeley and gained accounting skills there.
They bought a townhome in Ravenwood West in San Lorenzo after their son Fred was born, and Ed was soon elected to the board there. He quickly saw a need for outside help managing the complex and an opportunity.
“It took a little while to convince them, but they decided to go with our company,” Ed said.
They started one of the first full-time property management firms in the country, with Ed in charge of management and Ilona in charge of accounting.
“We got another client in about a year, then a few more soon after, and then a lot more,” Ed remembers.
They moved to Castro Valley in 1981 and soon became well-known in the community. They sponsored a little league team, the Veterans Memorial, the annual Rodeo Parade, and the Fall Festival.
Son Fred grew up with the business, coming back to work there in 2000, even after graduating from law school and having his own practice for a time.
“The big challenge in property management is people, especially figuring out what people want,” Ed Walsh said. “Then there’s training your staff to discern what people want.”
The Walshes have no big plans for retirement other than spending more time visiting their extended family, which extends to the East Coast and internationally, they said.
They’re not planning to move anywhere else. “The people in Castro Valley are very nice,” Ed Walsh said.