What should I do?
The last tenant was evicted out due to not paying rent. Our PM agent was able to claim back the bond. There are some minor damages. He said he will pursue to claim back some money from the tenant & landlord insurance. The property has been vacant for over a month. It’s not easy to talk to the agent. We have to ring many times & leaves many messages before we can talk to him. He never returnes our call.
What can we claim from the tenant & the landlord insurance? Do we have to pay for court cost if the PM agent sues the tenant?
Many thanks in advance for your advice.
Regards
Huey
While my neck is growing longer waiting for an advice, more problems keep rolling in.
We went to visit the IP on Sat, 9 August & did a good clean up inside & outside the house. We watered the garden. We faxed them what we saw, what we did & requested them to order some missing things.
Yesterday, 3 Sep we went there to water the garden again. The house is still vacant. Today we receive a montly statement from the agency. They deducted from the bond money $495 for Cleaning & Painting, $285 for Remove Rubbish & $28 for Consumer. Trader & Tenancy tribunal. All dated 14 August. The house was the same yesterday as when we finished cleaning on Sat 9 Aug. There were 3 small bags of weed in the bin.
I feel upset! How could they pay for someone to come & did almost nothing! I want to change PM agents but don’t know how to handle without messing up more! The current agent is handling the tribunal case on our behalf.
I just want to sell the IP & forget about property Investment all together.
[
]Huey
Get some advice from the department of fair trading about recovering some of those charges.
Find a new PM and have them release the place.
You may well have to cut your losses and put this down to experience. This sort of thing is fairly unusual.
I am sure you have learnt from this.
Good luck for the future.
Simon Macks
Mortgage Hunter
[email protected]
0425 228 985Hi Huey
Quick question, if the agent claimed back the bond what are they at the tribunal for? Shouldnt it now be a matter between the agent and the insurance company.I would go and talk to all the other agents in the area and find one you like. Look through some of their vacant places to seee what condition they are to see how they manage them. We all come across bad agents and it does cost us money but look at it as a learning curve not a disaster.
ErikaHi Huey,
As with any dealings in life, if you can’t get along with them go somewhere else. If your agent isn’t responding to your needs get another one, you pay his wage remember!!! And state with any agent you deal with they are to check all costs with you before proceeding.
With chasing the tenant for more money maybe you should be enquiring through the tenancy tribunal for your rights, and wouldn’t claiming on landlord insurance be up to you. If you’ve got it it’s in your name, you pay for it, so ring the insurance company and get them to start working for their money.
good luck and hopefully your next tenants won’t abuse your trust
melinda
What should I do?The last tenant was evicted out due to not paying rent. Our PM agent was able to claim back the bond. There are some minor damages. He said he will pursue to claim back some money from the tenant & landlord insurance. The property has been vacant for over a month. It’s not easy to talk to the agent. We have to ring many times & leaves many messages before we can talk to him. He never returnes our call.
What can we claim from the tenant & the landlord insurance? Do we have to pay for court cost if the PM agent sues the tenant?
Many thanks in advance for your advice.
Regards
Huey
Many thanks for your advice.
> Quick question, if the agent claimed back the bond what are they at the tribunal for? Shouldnt it now be a matter between the agent and the insurance company.
I don’t know much about its procedures. There may be good reasons for everything that I don’t know of because I only managed to talk to the agent once. He is over-worked. I will ring the Insurance company to find out more.
> Find a new PM and have them release the place.
In the Management Agency Agreement we signed with them, if we want to terminate their service we have to give them 1 month notice in writing. This means at least another month of vacancy! They didn’t inform us when they evicted the tenant, didn’t forward the inspection report … didn’t ask us before doing anything.
It’s lucky that we didn’t go over our limit when buying IPs so we still can afford to pay the bank without any rental income for few months.
Once again, many thanks
Regards
Huey
I think if you explained your issues with the Office Principal they might very well waive the one month wait. Esp when you point out that you will be calling ACA [:0)]
Simon Macks
Mortgage Hunter
[email protected]
0425 228 985Hey Huey
is the guy looking after your property the manager of the PM agency if not go and see him. Do they not have it up for rent? Dont ring anymore go and see them in person talk about all the things that are bothering you its your property you are paying them to look after it just remember that if you approach them respectfully you will probably get further than if you go in all angry.
Dont get discouraged its all part of learning
ErikaThanks Simon & Erika,
He is a property manager there. I haven’t met him but he seems a nice person & overworked. Since I can’t talk to him I fax to him asking for an appointment tomorrow. Last Wednesday we went to the office but he was not there.
I’m just too nice to get angry with anyone. Sometime it’s a weakness but most of the time people are very nice & responsive.
Regards
Huey
Hello Huey,
I think you should go to see your solicitor if the PM willn’t let you terminate the Agreement. I think the Agreement/Contract is void as your PM breached their duty of care at the first place. I am not a lawyer, but I studied Contract Law and Agency Law before, you also can find out more detail from any Commercial Law book, just to equip and protect yourself.
Huey just don’t give up, since you have started and thing can never be worse than you currently have, it can only be become better and better as you become more experience in property investment.
All the best to you.
Jason.
I do my homework and also pray, God is my only trustworthy help.
Thanks Jason,
I’m a softy so I wait for another week. The PM agent promisses to try his best to find a tenant for me this weekend. He was too busy to see us last Saturday but he rang last Monday.
All cleaning, painting & rubbish removing jobs were done before we inspected. The evicted tenant left a real mess. We got back 4 week lease less around $800 bills. He was still 3 weeks behind in rent. The agent is trying to claim back this money. The lease was expired before the incident so I can’t claim rent loss through Landlord insurance. The agent said that I couldn’t even claim expenses for the cleaning, painting & rubbish removing work either.
CGU won’t cover for building & home contents if the property is vacant for over 60 days. It will be 60 days next week.
I just want to sleep & forget the whole thing.
[
!][
]Cheer up HueyLife puts up obstacles to weed out the weak the more you jump the better you get. if there were no obstacles everbody would be persuing the same easy furtunes.
anyway i was renovating a property for around two months my agent kept saying they would have a new tennent by completion. this didnt look like it was going to happen so i faxed and emailed them a letter to end the management authority surprise surprise great new tennant the next day.
in other words the noisy wheel gets the most oil if you want to win this game you cant do it from behind the curtains.good luck
jerry
hey huey
hang in there. in the big scheme of things this is only a small hick up (i know it doesn’t feel like that at the moment) i used to worry when i had these problems now its part of the process.
lots of landlords sell after these types of hassles. Some learn from these situations and go on and buy more and make lots of money.
I had an agent mismanage a property of mine so bad it cost me $2000, i’m wiser now (i hope), another time the tenant did 5000 damage (luckily covered by landlord insurance).
i’m not trying to belittle the obvious stress these thing can give us but today i can laugh about them.
Now lets help solve this problem can you share with us where the property is so collectively we can refer you to a very good agent (they are out there)
regards westanHi Huey,
Change the locks and get another managing agent.
Your insurance is in place for just such circumstances. Sounds like you need to take control of it yourself in the interim though, while you wait for the slow cogs to turn.
If your IP is in the ACT also, please let me know.
Kind regards, Phil
Many thanks for your advice and kind words. I’ve got some good news today. The agent found a tenant for my IP last weekend. I didn’t know until I talked to him this afternoon! He asked someone in the office to notify me but that person forgot. He also told me that the Tribunal ordered the last tenant to pay for the damages. The new tenant will move in this Saturday.
It can be considered a case of “the noisy wheel gets the most oil” like Jerry wrote (I’m not a noisy person). This should happen many weeks ago. I have to admit that some thoughts of selling the IP have come across my mind. It’s a beautiful & less than 2 years old terrace house in the Olympic village in Sydney. Mirvac has done a good job there. It’s negative geared but good capital gains. If I sell now I will not afford to buy another one like that later.
This type is hick-ups tends to keep me up at night because I feel it’s far away & out of my control. Now I’m in the position to buy more IPs & would like to consider Brisbane but still worry about the distance from home.
Regards
[]Huey
Great that it worked out for you Huey. It still may be worth your while to seek another agent. Even though yours finally came through, you need someone responsive managing your property, and definitely someone who will take your calls when you need to speak with them! If he hasn’t time to answert he phone, he hasn’t the time to effectively manage your property.
Huey…….I don’t know you, but you sound as if you are a very good person….and I hate seeing good people being trampled upon.
Get angry, mate….controlled anger can be a very useful tool.
I don’t mean being abusive or the desk thumping type but certainly being assertive is appropriate. You have made a significant investment in this property and in as much as you would not let anyone trash your own house, how much less important is your second or third house?
I am plesed that your agent has found a new tenant for you but I agree with slatzagain….find a new agentKind Regards and best wishes……Kas
Thanks Kas & Slatz,
Me … get angry![
!] It took me almost 20 years to make my kid’s dog & cat understand that I don’t like them to sleep in the couch because my kids are allergic to their hair.The agent promised to try his best to get a new tenant last weekend and he did. He even spent time to chase up extra money from the last tenant through the Tribunal. I think I should bear with him and try to encourage better communication between us. Somehow I think he is new to the job. He needs time to be familiar with the procedures.
Regards
Huey
]
]Cheer up Huey
The topic ‘PM & my IP’ is closed to new replies.
