Hi,
We have recently signed on a real estate agency to manage an investment property on our behalf. Unfortunately, we are already experiencing problems with the relationship and would like to hear from others how they have approached such hassles and your general experiences.
Our problems include:
the agent deducting costs for new locks being fitted to the property which is dated the month previous to our settlement to take ownership of the property;
the agent deducting costs for the removal of washing machine and fridge from the property without our requesting it;
the agent failing to advise us of the quoted amounts for garden irrigation repairs when asked to do so. The work went ahead and the costs were deducted from our account;
When these issues were raised with the agent/property manager she then claimed ignorance of the previous conversations we had had etc and then expected us to accept it was all just a matter of communication breakdown.
However, we are out of pocket the hundreds of dollars and have considered taking legal action and cancelling the contract for the management of the property.
Please let us know if you feel we should seek legal advice, and/or rather try to maintain the relationship and just accept this as usual behaviour with property managers?
Thanks and regards,
Sue[?]
Hi,
It is the greatest question in the property investment universe – who knows of a good property manager !
If my PM did the same to me I will kill the contact right away, not take legal action (unless she wants a fight – then mention that you post to a forum with thousands of readers in Aus) – cos who will win in the end, not you when you count the time and costs.
I would then try and get a new PM by first posting to this site and any other Aus forums to try and find a good PM.
Also search through this site for another post on PM’s – in one there is a set of questions you could ask your PM before signing up. So ->
1) Kill existing contract – if she gets excited then mention that you post to IP forums – this is not a threat she will get the hint that you could damage her.
2) Get a new PM by word of mouth
3) Ask a lot of questions.
P.s if you cannot find the questions – go to my web site and you can download the PM’s questions from my download page.
Best Regards
Marc
Hi
I agree with marc. I have recently ceased my PM contract taking immediate effect. They were very lax infact they were costing us plenty of money too. I have since found out that there were other people who were unhappy about the PM. In my opinion word of mouth is a good source of referal.
Tamara
Hi Sue
It should be written in your management agreement how much they can spend before contacting you. Alot of people say $150-200. We rent and I know that the owners are contacted for every little thing so they must have put $0 in this space. So take a look at your mangement agreement and see what you put. If you want to be contacted every time put $0. This is not word of mouth, the other point is that you may need to give notice that you are breaking the agreement like 1 mth
The locks ask why they were replaced and how did they do it 1 mth before settlement. Where did the washing machine and fridge go?
remember legal action costs money is it really worth it or should you just move on.Erika
Hi Sue
We had all sorts of hassles with our agent, and when sacking them they held back quite a bit of our money too. Check out your contract you signed with them. How many days notice must you give, and what sort of a Termination Fee do they charge. Unbeknown to me, our termination fee was two weeks rent per property, which added up to a substantial amount.
We are being refunded some of our money (although it hasn’t hit my bank account yet). My final correspondence with the agency was that further correspondence would come from my solicitor, who would also be putting in complaint to the REIACT (check if they’re a member of your states REI), and also the Department of Fair Trading. We got a fax fairly quickly saying that they would agree with our interpretation of the contract and refund our money.
They did go into other things that were lies on their behalf, but all I want now is my money back and the properties handed over to our new agent (which thankfully was achieved yesterday).
Cheers
MelBit of a late reply, but I would change property managers straight away if you have not been able to sort out some refund. Any work authorised prior to your purchase belongs to the previous owner but seeing they were selling, I would imagine only urgent items would have been done at that owner’s cost The previous rental agreement should have stated to what limit repairs could be done. I work part time in ppty mgmt and always ring an owner as soon as a tenant has phoned with a problem or breakdown. The exception is weekends/out of hours when a tenant may have to contact tradesman in an emergency, and the tradesman’s details are on their copy of the lease agreement. Also, I would suggest that you keep a diary near your telephone where you keep note of each time you talk with your managing agent. I also have a file for each of our IPs from the day we paid the deposit, and a section for any notes, conversations with ppty manager. They also should have a day book where every phone call/client is entered to keep themselves covered. If you decide not to change managers, you could ask that your property manager reverses the 1 week’s rental fee that you would have been charged on your statement if you are unable to get back the other costs.
If the property was tenanted previously and the tenants left the whitegoods, the removal costs should have come out of their bond. If you just purchased the property, a final inspection prior to settlement should have picked up that the goods were there and you may have arranged for the cost of the removal to be deducted from your purchase price. You should get the original invoices stamped paid from your property manager including rates if they are paying those, with your monthly statement. I hope you have picked up a copy of The Renting Guide – your rights and responsibilities as a tenant or landlord, from the RE office.
Annacontact the real estate instute in your state and the office of fair trading and find out what to do next.
i used to be a prop. manager, and i am still in shock of what has happened to you.
Many thanks to you all for responding – this has certainly helped us!
Sue
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