(Another) Rant about property managers

[evan1875]

So twice in 3 months I could have paid a lot of unnecessary money for property "maintenance".

3 months ago the property manager (from a fairly typical large national RE company with two names separated by &) rang and told me that the tenant complained that the front door of the house was suddenly unable to be locked. It was in the afternoon, she asked if she had my consent to arrange a locksmith urgently to ensure tenant's safety that night.

I decided to drive 45km to inspect the lock myself. An hour later I arrived at the house and it turned out that my tenants pushed a button on the lock that kept it in an open position. I pressed another button and lo and behold, the lock works again.

The PM's office was about 1km from this property and she did not bother take that 5 minute drive to have a look herself.

I spent the hour driving home thinking about that fact.

Yesterday another property manager (from a different fairly typical large national RE company with two names separated by &) emailed me and forwarded a long email from my tenant living in another property. The stove and cooktop had apparently stopped working suddenly. She wanted to arranged for an electrician urgently as the tenants could not cook.

I told her that it was strange if an element needed replacing then the other bits should work. I asked her to check with tenants that it was not the circuit breaker. I told her I would go there today to have a look.

Today I was pleasantly informed that the tenants had "followed her advice" and worked it all out. I asked her if it was simply the circuit breaker jumping she said it was.

Her office was about 15min away from my unit.

Obviously while this may start recurring in the future and an electrician may need to be called (non-urgently), it might also never happen again.

But I wonder what property managers do apart from sitting at a desk bouncing tenants' emails and phone calls to me, whilst charging me $X%+GST for collecting rent on my behalf. Have they not got the responsibility nowadays to, go and have a good GD look?!

Rant over.

 

[Xenia IM]

I need a new maintenance boy who will drive around to look at locks and ovens - potentially hundreds of them

 

[D.T.]

Hmm I see what you're saying.

I think if the PM was to head right over every time the tenant had a herp derp moment then they may as well live with them

I think its up to the PM to know what appliances etc are in the house. Eg I heard of one who wanted to send a sparky out to check a fuse, then backed down when the owner reminded them it was a gas stove.

Perhaps one way of handling it is to get agreement from the tenant that the handyman cost is on them if error is found to be carbon based. That way it a) doesn't cost the owner anything or b) tenant may just have a 2nd attempt at whatever they found issue with

 

[Biz]

Yep, i feel where you are coming from. Worse still are the trades they use. I reckon after a while they get to know you are not around much and start charging extra because no one checks or can prove otherwise.

I had a toilet blocked recently. Plumber came out and "fixed" it but then had to come out the next day and do it again. I was told it was under warranty but then at the end of the month i was charged twice!

 

[S.T]

Helps to have documentation on any 'tricky' items at your properties, maybe dig up instructions for the lock and include them in a folder of manuals for appliances at the property. Keep a copy of said documents as they always go missing.

 

[balwoges]

I need a new maintenance boy who will drive around to look at locks and ovens - potentially hundreds of them

Had a chuckle at this - in another life when I was working in Sydney as a PM one of the hardest things I tried to do was educate an owner of a rental to expect repairs, vacancies and they would have to paint etc every few years - not many listened.

 

[bumblegoodie]

Evans,

you are exactly right, I don't think the property managers cares about the cost of maintenance as the cost goes directly to the landlord and doesn't affect their pay packet.

I remember the other time when the tenant laundry room was flooded and as always the PM will say "IS URGENT" or "IS A SAFETY ISSUE" and requires "IMMEDIATE ATTENTION" so they just got a plumber.

what happen was the plumber removed a section of tiles approx. about 1m by 0.5 m and realised it was not leaking internally but it was leaking at the outlet thread where it connects to the tap. IT WAS MISSING BECAUSE IT DIDNT HAVE ENOUGH PLUMBER TAPE!!!!!!

It costed me almost $1000 to open up the tiles, re-tapped and re-tiled....


very disappointed.

I don't think the PM cares and they just sit on their desk and wait for the payment to come.

In term of PM maintenance management is a disaster and requires real improvement.

 

[Domus]

We are not builders or tradesman but often we have to think like one.

Often a tenants description of a problem is very vague or generic e.g. there is no water. Thus begins a series of questions to tease/trace out the problem, is it hot or cold water, are all taps effected etc.

This is where the full service, experienced property manager shines.

 

[Xenia IM]

Tenants ring up and say:
My taps are dodgy
A spider landed on my head
When I'm cooking all I can hear is drip drop drip and I'm sick of it.
There is a smell in my laundry
The neighbours weeds are coming through the fence
The light is stuck
My wife tried to open the door and fell over
Who is responsible for the size of my bush
There is a strange man in my back yard
My air conditioner makes noise
There are problems that are too hard to explain
The light is coming through the blinds and waking me up.

All above are real - now the pms job is to turn all that to English and create a work order for the right trades person.

 

[evan1875]

I have only had one property manager who responded to tenants enquiries by visiting the house and check the faults himself. Twice in two years he did that for an evap cooler that was no longer cooling well. It took longer to have the thing fixed. But he made sure the landlord did not have to pay unnecessary maintenance costs by verifying the tenant's complaint.

Unfortunately I was the tenant!

 

[property_girl]

So twice in 3 months I could have paid a lot of unnecessary money for property "maintenance".


Rant over.

I hear you. I had a leak in a unit between the bathroom/shower wall and spare bedroom wall. I was told the shower wall was leaking. Spent $3.3K punching holes in walls, recarpeting spare bedroom, pulling down all the shower tiles, waterproofing and re-tiling, only to have the leak return. Now I'm told it's the tiles on the floor. Another $2,000. grrr.

 

[Biz]

Who is responsible for the size of my bush

oh dear...

 

[Salvatore1]

The trick is to find a property manager that has been around the block a few times. Older person that has owned their own home/s and understands what can go wrong. A lot of younger property managers/officers (many still at home) don't know, understand or want to know. Also my tradesmen inform me if the issue is due to tenants neglect or one that the tenant should of fixed, in these cases I call the tenant and inform them that they will need to pay the tradesman invoice.

 

[balwoges]

Tenants ring up and say:
My taps are dodgy
All above are real - now the pms job is to turn all that to English and create a work order for the right trades person.

I can go one better - a tenant in Sydney city apartment rang me every week to rant about the size of her underground parking lot, apparently her 4 wheel vehicle could just fit between 2 other 4 wheel drives and the only way she could get out of her vehicle was to crawl over the top, she wanted me to change the size of her parking spot!

 

[Lil Skater]

I do believe it is part of our job to ensure we screen issues, by asking questions (ie. does the whole street have power? Have you checked the safety switch? etc) and on occasion by physically inspecting the property.

However, we are not qualified tradespeople and aren't insured nor employed to "fix" anything ourselves.

The two issues you've outlined sound like the tenants didn't make reasonable attempts to check the problem. If a tradesperson was sent out, the invoice should be the tenants responsibility anyway.

Unfortunately many PM's take the path of least resistance and simply forward emails/messages/invoices onto their clients, but a good one will try to ensure all attempts have been made to troubleshoot the issue.

 

[Xenia IM]

I can go one better - a tenant in Sydney city apartment rang me every week to rant about the size of her underground parking lot, apparently her 4 wheel vehicle could just fit between 2 other 4 wheel drives and the only way she could get out of her vehicle was to crawl over the top, she wanted me to change the size of her parking spot!

Lol - so are you getting those demolition and contstruction quoted going so that the car can fit!

 

[Xenia IM]

I have only had one property manager who responded to tenants enquiries by visiting the house and check the faults himself. Twice in two years he did that for an evap cooler that is no longer cooling well. It took longer to have the thing fixed. But he made sure the landlord did not have to pay unnecessary maintenance costs by verifying the tenant's complaint.

Unfortunately I was the tenant!

In all fairness - jokes aside, I think you have a fair point Evan. I don't think it is feasible to drive out and look at every single thing but there are items where it's warranted for sure.

Property managers should be getting a thorough description of the problem and only sending out maintenance orders for items that are real maintenance - this takes experience and something that cannot be outsourced to juniors in the office. I handle all maintenance myself in my office. This is an area my PAs cannot do and I believe cannot be trained unless they have had years of exposure - 1 is almost there! I do get them to ring around and compare quotes however and send invoices. But I take care of maintenance not only for my company but also for other PMs too.

As for issues where the tenant is at fault - blocked drains due to hairs or electrical faults due to a tenants faulty appliance or broken windows - tenant gets the invoice. In our maintenance forms that is quite clear!

 

[twobobsworth]

On the flip side I received an email from my PM asking if I would be prepared to reimburse her $11 for a replacement light cover.

While they were doing the routine inspect it was noted a crack was starting to develop near where it was screwed in. A quick trip to bunnings and back to install it.

 

[Morbius]

I need a new maintenance boy who will drive around to look at locks and ovens - potentially hundreds of them

My PM has one. It's called a handyman service, and they get sent in if the PM has a suspicion the problem might be simple. Or she or one of her minions sometimes drops in on her rounds if it is convenient.

Of course, my PM is actually a bit of an expert on issues around housing and can ask the right questions. Given that part of a PM's role is being a customer support officer for rental housing, I would consider her unqualified for the job if she, or at least one of her minions, couldn't ask intelligent questions.

If expensive tradies get sent in to fix a handyman problem or explain to the tenant how to work a dwelling, then a screwup has happened somewhere. There is no getting away from that.

Edit for clarity: Of course screwups do happen. The trick is to make them as rare as possible.

 

[elsLan]

I think that your property managers are lazy or inexperienced to be honest.
They aren't tradespeople but you would expect that as a professional dealing with property related matters, they would have half an idea of situations and possible resolutions. They deal with it everyday surely a bit of attention or care would go a long way when it comes to actually recognising an issue and then relaying it to a landlord with a solution. It's too easy to say- yep, a problem. This is what the tenant said- fwd. I need to send someone to fix an issue I haven't even really read the description but landlord, you need to maintain the property and stop the tenant from bothering me.

My pm won't bother me with maintenance unless all the information is provided. She has given tenants a list of steps to take with different maintenance scenarios that they are required to follow prior to calling (in writing) the issue in.
If the problem is found to have been something that a trades person is not required for or could have been solved by following the maintenance guide the tenants are responsible for the invoice.

My IP's are not all close to her office but she has on occasions visited the property and called me from there if something wasn't clear, didn't sound right or the tenants were overly insistent. She has also gotten the tenants to take photos and sent them to me for further clarification.

I guess it comes down to good, bad and everything in between.

I value my pm more and more as I read these posts.