I’ve been away the last three days visiting clients in South East Queensland. And I was surprised when I sat down with them just how many where still missing the point. You can own 10, 20, 200 investment properties and you can manage them yourself or via a property manager.
If you’re not investing sometime in your management things can and do go wrong.
I’d like to provide everyone with an example of a situation that did happen and that we are seeing more and more of.
This example is of a landlord who incurred loss due to tenant default and damage.
Amount awarded by the Tribunal $ 4,061.54
Less Bond $ 971.00
Balance owed by tenants $ 3,090.54
Insurance payout $1,396.21
Balance owed to landlord $ 1694.33
So my question is this can we as landlords and property investors afford to have this sort of monies out standing to us.
More importantly can we afford to incur theses sorts of costs onto of already tight profit margins on a residential property.
Please remember that buying the investment property is only the 1st step. There are many more along the path to property investment wealth.
Hi Bendbanks,
I'm unclear about what you are saying? Did these clients have a property manager or self-manage their IP? What do you mean by investing sometime in their management?Maybe you can help with my questions re what recourse do investors have when they do have a contract with a property management service & the property is damaged, rent unpaid & then the prop manager "loses" the bond refund paperwork "in the post" & doesn't respond to written requests to resolve issues – go through the legal process & spend even more money? – & don't even start me on insurance companies worming their way out of paying claims!!! I would say we have had a bad run with property management services & find it very difficult to believe much of what any of them say at this point. Self managing IP's has it's downsides of course, but our experience says using a property management service isn't all that much better.
(More than happy to provide the list of damages to our IP that the property manager "didn't notice" at the most recent inspection (3 mths before the tenants vacated) to anyone that's interested – it's a good read & goes on for 3 pages….)
We're trying to learn from this debacle & will be scrutinizing the work of any property manager very closesly in the future – but it does appear to me that property management contracts are incredibly favoured towards the property management not being responsible for anything – which doesn't leave you with much recourse when things go wrong.
A.
Anni,
The case above does in fact have a property manager involved. I try to make clear to all landlords that whether you manage the property yourself or have someone do it for you it takes time and you need to invest some in time in the management. Now what do I mean by this well rather than give you a simple answer I'll draw up a post today on what should happen as a PL and a LL who has the property managed by an agent and go into some detail.Benjamin this is all beside the point! at the end of the day any landlord can experience unfortunate incidents, we could also get run over on the street and you have little chance to stop either really apart from not walking on the road or not owning an investment property!!
True, but by spending sometime on the simple things involved in the management of your property you will find that you are less likely to experience unfortunate incidents.
For instance we attended an eviction for one of our clients the other week. Only to find out the tenant we where evicting was moving down the road (it was a little further than that in reality) to another clients property. When asking that client had they done a search on the tenant (which is recommended for all landlords and property managers to do) they said "NO" even though the service (FastTrack Tenant Search) for that property is free. This simple act prevented the landlord for a possible unfortunate incident and in this case his property manager from being held liable for any damages or money owed.
As Landlords the worst mistake you can make is by simply saying I have the property that's all that's required from my part until something goes wrong.bendbanks can you detail how the property manager would be liable for any damages & money owed? We are in Qld & our property management contract clearly stated the landlord's agent isn't responsible for anything that goes wrong in a tenancy. I'm really interested in getting as much knowledge as I can re this issue.
thanks
A.Bend is just having a go at some free ads people. No probs with that, but you need to see it for what it is.
I hope he gets some business. Actually; no I don't – if all tenants were good ones, we wouldn't need Bend.
Agents are not gunna let themselves be liable for anything regarding management issues. We the Landlords cop it all unfortunately, but luckily we now have Bend to go in on our behalf and get some cash back; for a fee.
bendbanks wrote:True, but by spending sometime on the simple things involved in the management of your property you will find that you are less likely to experience unfortunate incidents.
For instance we attended an eviction for one of our clients the other week. Only to find out the tenant we where evicting was moving down the road (it was a little further than that in reality) to another clients property. When asking that client had they done a search on the tenant (which is recommended for all landlords and property managers to do) they said "NO" even though the service (FastTrack Tenant Search) for that property is free. This simple act prevented the landlord for a possible unfortunate incident and in this case his property manager from being held liable for any damages or money owed.
As Landlords the worst mistake you can make is by simply saying I have the property that's all that's required from my part until something goes wrong.Unless the second owner was self-managing, surely the PM of the second owner would have done a Tenant Search?
Everything is for a fee isn't it?!!! This website is also a big ad for products which we can take up or not – clearly just like bendbanks post with his details showing his website – no harm in that & I see loads of people on this forum doing the same thing. But a good thread just the same, raising some valid points which I've learned from already – eg reflecting on our situation we could have – should have – been more questioning of our agents actions regarding our IP. Will be in the future!
A.
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