“property managers” too busy to manage properties!

So Hocking Stuart, Balwyn are utterly hopeless.

We rent our current house from them and we are supposed to have a gardener included in the rent. Meanwhile I have been mowing the lawn since we moved in in July last year. We have called and called, emailed and emailed. Finally after a particularly nasty email from my other half, which included the fact that we had 5 rental properties of our own, we finally got one line back saying sorry haven't been able to contact landlord so we'll look into it and try and claim compensation (out of rent be about 15 bucks per week so about $500 bucks plus inconvenience) and get a gardener included. Before you go oh geez who cares about a gardener, I have two little kids and other half works 6 days and one late night a week. We have a whole page of special conditions we have to take care of including watering the garden but the one thing they have to do they cant even do! It is their PPOR and they are overseas for 18mths. I will add this to my list of questions I ask before renting, is the owner a professional landlord?

Now for the good news. Current propery manager Garvey and Co in Camberwell, who rent out our three units is a gem. She has bent over backwards and in fact the whole office (small team of 4 in total) have done everything they can to create a genuine business relationship. Opens every weekend, not even entertaining rubbish applications, more opens during evenings. Judi you rock! The good ones are out there, the bad ones are all around!!! I will always make sure I mystery shop our agents and I would take properties off bad PM's in a heartbeat.

Grrrr!

D

Hi this is a real eye opener, as not having to be in the rental market for a while now I haven't given this much thought.
Has anyone had any dealings with managemyproperty in logan central and barry plant melton.

Cheers

Thanks for all the comments on this topic!  I love this forum as its so fascinating to hear others experiences.

Reading them fired me up to contact one agency, bypassing the 'new' property manager and going to the director, to say we were expecting better service from them, as the previous p.manager had not returned our calls or the tenants, basically leaving us to liaise with them and manage the property by default.  (It was OK as husband was doing pergolas, etc.)

We only had one inspection in a year, and on occasion when I rang, the p.manager would tell me in an aggrieved voice that she'd been sick/in hospital etc. which tends to stop one's queries out of sympathy – but I never thought to ask who was doing her job while she was out of commission (no-one).

I told the director that I'd contacted her new p.manager, ringing 3 times with no responses, until I got through to her, to be told she had 100 properties to catch up on.  She hasn't got back to us yet…….and I believe ours is one of their highest renting homes.  Another p.manager in a different area is great, so you know it can be done!! Very frustrating, but I guess the lesson is to let your actions speak and change companies.  Meanwhile we've just rented 2 homes privately ourselves, conducting after hours inspections, checking references etc. and it wasn't that hard.  We would do the same with the house mentioned, but it is in a coastal town with a separate rental market.

G.

The ideal rent roll to manage comprises quality properties with few maintenance issues, gainfully employed carefully screened tidy tenants and polite generous calm easy going appreciative landords always willing to spend on their properties to keep them up to standard and keep the tenants happy.  A professional PM could single handedly manage a rent roll of 200 of these and do it properly.

Change any of those factors and you will need more staff and higher fees.

A low quality rent roll comprises lots of tired old properties poorly maintained, mostly  occupied by the only kind of tenants it could possibly attract, owned by landlords reluctant to spend anything at all because the lower rents don't allow it, and their budgets are low as well.  Expect frequent maintenance issues. Tenant default and tenant turnover are high, as are the associated costs in tenant replacement like Tribunal appearances, termination admin, ads, screening, open houses, inspections, re-let admin, first week's rent, lease prep, etc. – expect a high commission rates coz 8% barely covers the work required for these kinds of labour intensive confrontational frequently combative high stress property managements. With a marginally profitable rent roll like this one, no wonder why they can't service all the properties correctly, no time and not enough staff for all the issues. PM is stuck between 2 parties neither of whom wants to part with any money for the property. Long day.

Some agents refuse to manage properties because they don't want the daily drama. Others make good money from a well selected and well managed rent roll, , and also with a professional PM can use the rent roll as a holding pen for future properties for sale.

So consider carefully firstly what style of property you buy, so you can attract the tenants you want, and so you can expect the PM fees and commission rate you'd like to pay.
Secondly, consider the quality of rent roll your prospective PM is likely to have in their geographical area, & ask them.
Take a real good look around their office and their staff, see what it tells you.

The jury is always out on ratios of PM staff to properties correctly managed, but I'll put forward some ball park figures here. 
Low quality rent roll ….  1 person : 100 properties max.
Medium quality ….          1 person : 100 – 150
High quality  ….                1 person : 200 max

That's just a glimpse of the PM side of the equation. There are some excellent PMs out there, hope you find one,
and there are the others.

Cheers
thecrest

I couldn't agree more Property managers are just not doing there jobs and us the investors are suffering big time.

I conducted an experiment last week and am still waiting for the property manager of more than one agency to get back to me.

I have also conducted the same experiment in Bulimba Queensland and the surrounding suburbs and the same lazy reaction from all the PM'S i contacted the properties are opened for a max of 15mins and if you are even a second late the lazy property manager will not let you thru as she is busy closing up the apartment.

Worse still they do not get back to you even when you put in an application, little wonder tenants the people who help pay our investments off get irritated and ticked off and then complain over the smallest thing it is there way of kicking back at these hopeless property managers.

What has worked for me is keeping on top of my property manager and when they stop returning my calls i fire them.

I have since found an awesome property manager and my tenants are extremely happy have had no more fix it requests as the tenants are happy i will ask them if they want to be named in the forum as they handle my Queensland properties.

John

In VIC in Yaraville to Footscray area I would highly recommend the team at Jas H. Stephens – very professional and highly focused on the job.

Wow Steelar … you'd think having a managing agent would help solve some of your problems with tenants … even more so when you live so far away. I wonder how much of their decision making came as a result of knowing you were in Australia and, in their opinion, not so easy to contact as a local owner?

Good luck with the sale and your new life here!

Hey, I thought I'd put in my two, three, four cents worth as a tenant in Melbourne. I've lived here for 11 years now and I can tell you there are many terrible real estate property managers around.

I've been that tenant trying to see properties on lunch breaks and being crowded into a place for a 15 minute showing! I've been that tenant waiting for calls, text messages and emails to see a property and they never come.

At my last rental property the house was moving due to a large tree in the back yard. It was slowly but surely destroying the house. As the cracks got larger the doors jammed, the bathroom tiles split and water started getting into places it shouldn't. Where did all my requests to the agent go?

Nowhere!

I managed to get in direct contact with the owner after a chance conversation with a neighbour and discovered she knew nothing about the damage to the house. The agent had LIED directly to me in writing, claiming he had told the owner.

At my current property, after I moved in it took some 36 forms of communication to get some very basic maintenance done. Calls and emails all ignored. We're with Metro Property Management (director Leah Calnan) and they are simply terrible from a tenant perspective. We currently have a rat or something large living in the ceiling. This was reported to them during the last inspection (months ago). Nothing has happened and I'll bet a $100 that if I were to call, they'd have no knowledge or record of it.

Is it chewing wires? Maybe.  It it running around filling the roof with feces? Probably. Is it damaging the property and the owners have no idea? Very likely.

It go so bad with Metro Property Management that I finally started writing about it on a website: http://www.metropmsucks.com.au

When a tenant is forced to write about such terrible experiences, you know it's bad.

I highly recommend all landlords pretend to be a tenant to test out a property management company. I also HIGHLY recommend  that your tenants can actually get in contact with you in some way – even a PO Box so they can write to you. My last landlord didn't know for FOUR years all the damage that was occurring. I doubt my current landlords have any idea what is going on here right now.

Yikes, it seems incompetence is widespread. I just thought it was Kalgoorlie because towns like that always struggle for decent staff in service industries.

I was told that about 70% of residential tenancies were owned by out of town investors, so if it's useful, my two cents about Kalgoorlie PMs…

Avoid First National for residential – never returned calls when I wanted to inspect rentals – I saw properties I was interested in sitting vacant for weeks. 

Avoid John Matthew Sons – as a tenant, maintenance averaged 6 to 7 weeks, even on things that should have been considered urgent.  The owner was used as an excuse most of the time – may have been true but no idea how much the owner was actually told.

Murphy Boyden is the biggest outfit in town with lots of staff (they absorbed LJ Hooker) but they were very brusque when I enquired about inspecting a rental  – the girl at the desk barely looked up and said "it's 2-2.15 next Wednesday" without so much as a courtesy Hello or Can I help you with anything else.

Goldfields Realty were the agents recommended to us when we moved to Kal, and were a pleasure to deal with when we enquired about property – prompt and professional with the best customer service.

The Professionals laughed me off when I enquired about commercial property renting below 50K a year on a 12 month lease – but there is plenty out there, and I ended up with one from First National, who were very friendly but didn't do an ingoing inspection and the lease didn't arrive until months after we'd taken possession – meanwhile there were plenty of maintenance issues to argue over.

Ben and Mina,

That is pretty disgusting! I worked in sales for about 8 years and I remember helping a customer who no one else would based on how they were dressed. Meanwhile they bought something VERY expensive, they were farmers and had plenty of cash but were not dolled up. It is a very important lesson to learn not to judge people based on how they dress or look or anything. I look like a bum most days of the week, great disguise if you ask me, it sorts out the decent people to deal with

Property managers (anyone in a service industry really!) should never judge anyone, how do they know what you will be like as a paying tenant from what clothes you are wearing!

D