Tenant playing hard ball??? PM happy with kick backs???

[newbietoinvstng]

Hi everyone,

I bought this IP back in April. It was already tenanted, self managed by the previous owner, with rent below market value and no bond. I suspect the tenant is some kind of relative of the previous owner but I can't be sure. Anyhow, the lease expired in July and I brought the price back to (the lower end of) the market and put the tenant in a bond plan to deposit the bond in weekly installments. After the beginning of the new lease the maintenance requests started to pop up (between April and July I had none and in the 3 weeks after the beginning of the new lease I had 3). 2 for things that mysteriously just broke and 1 for cleaning the aircon filter. The PM seems very keen in organizing repairs and even have someone to service the aircon to clean the filter and I believe she gets some kick backs for the services. What would you do in this situation? If things continue breaking in a weekly basis I will be the one who is going to go broken!

 

[Jake D]

Keep a record of your costs and stick it in your tax return.
If you feel like the tenant is being a dick, don't renew their lease.
If you feel like your PM is being a dick, don't renew your contract and find a new one.

 

[citystar]

I would do the following:

1) Instruct the property manager in writing to set non-emergency repairs to $0. This means everything must go through you first.

2) Call up your own tradies/ handyman to do the repairs and give them the property managers phone number to organise time to do repairs/appropriate notice being given for repairs.

3) Property manager is to tell the tenant to write a list of issues/ problems over the next month or two. Review the list after this time frame and approve urgent repairs to be dealt with in one day.

4) If the tenant continues being a pain in the back side consider replacing them with a new tenant that will enjoy the privilege of living in your property.

5) Make sure your landlord insurance is up to date for that day when the tenant decides they no longer need to pay rent to live in your property.

 

[marg4000]

What was the condition of the property when you bought it?

If the tenant was on a low rent they may have been prepared to put up with defects, but now they are paying full market rent they may feel entitled to have a property in better condition.
Marg

 

[see_change]

all good advice

We have found when we're buying in cheaper areas things always go wrong in the first few months . Sometimes this is because the vendor knows things are wearing out , instead of doing a reno and getting things up to scratch , they sell , take the capital gain and move on .

As noted , if the tenant had to pay a bond and an increase rent they will , justifiably , feel they are entitled to a better property to live in . That's just human nature . You may find the tenant was fixing things up themselves but now they're not prepared to now because they're paying more of their money to you .

Cliff

 

[jenni_nextplace]

You should find things will settle down pretty soon. The tenant is maybe making a point about something. Things like the Air con are fair enough.

Think of it the other way, the tenant could be really happy that now she has a landlord who will fix everything and only tolerated it previously because the rent was low and the previous owner too stingy. She wouldn't have been able to fight the issue either because it was self managed.

 

[DavidMc]

BTW servicing an air con is the biggest waste of money IMO. Anyone can open the thing and wash the filters in a kitchen sink.

The exception would be if you have a rattling fan in the outside unit, or it's full of leaves in a leafy area.

In general though an air con service will be the guy walking in, holding up his hand and saying 'yeah, cold enough', and washing the filters. $150 thanks.

If there is a specific problem, that's a different story.

 

[newbietoinvstng]

BTW servicing an air con is the biggest waste of money IMO. Anyone can open the thing and wash the filters in a kitchen sink.

The exception would be if you have a rattling fan in the outside unit, or it's full of leaves in a leafy area.

In general though an air con service will be the guy walking in, holding up his hand and saying 'yeah, cold enough', and washing the filters. $150 thanks.

If there is a specific problem, that's a different story.

It's ducted, so servicing is recommended. However dirty filters is no reason for servicing. It's the tenants responsibility to keep'em clean.

The funny thing is when that when I said (through the PM) the servicing is not due until in a few months time, the tenant argued that the previous owner serviced it twice a year and that the aircon people would charge me more in the warmer months. Yeah, right. I have the previous invoices for the servicing. Once a year! Also, I'm very touched she wants to save my money .

 

[newbietoinvstng]

What was the condition of the property when you bought it?

If the tenant was on a low rent they may have been prepared to put up with defects, but now they are paying full market rent they may feel entitled to have a property in better condition.
Marg

When the PM took over he did an inspection. The tenant reported the property was in excellent condition (their words).

I think legit maintenance is fair enough. My concern is that they started to break things on purpose to make a point.

 

[Coldspace]

BTW servicing an air con is the biggest waste of money IMO. Anyone can open the thing and wash the filters in a kitchen sink.

The exception would be if you have a rattling fan in the outside unit, or it's full of leaves in a leafy area.

In general though an air con service will be the guy walking in, holding up his hand and saying 'yeah, cold enough', and washing the filters. $150 thanks.

If there is a specific problem, that's a different story.

There's a lot more to servicing AC units than just washing filters.if you payed 150 for just filter cleans then yes you were conned by a back yard tech. Yep clean filters, but the indoor coil needs an evaporative coil flush using coil x or similar commercial products to flush mold and contaminates from the system every 12 to 24 months at most. This keeps the fan motor less stressed, coil evaporator heat exchanger running like new and prolongs life of the unit. Cleans out the drain pan/ line preventing water leaks in the house. The flare nuts should be tightened in every service call as they can loosen due to temperature fluctuations by metal contraction and expansion. Don't do this, get a refrigerant gas leak and with the extreme cost of gas these days = kiss good by to your unit. Also electrical terminals can vibrate loose. See this happen all the time. But please don't service the unit, we want to sell you another new machine . So there is plenty of things to do in a service.

Out of all appliances in the house the AC units usually rack up the most hrs and are the most complex of machines around. They are not cheap and install costs are high so getting a full licensed RAC tech out to service regularly instead of all these guys who just did the restricted split system install course is the best approach.

We have done tests using AC clamp meters on full blocked coils they can draw very high amps, after coil flush this can improve efficiency by as much as 80 percent.

Most aircons in domestic never get this and that's when they usually fail after 5 to 7 years. Our buisiness has been doing a booming trade pulling these out and fitting new ones. The ones we service regular like every 12 to 18 months we have never pulled out because of major faults some of these are 12 years now.

I love when people don't service their units. Myself and my staff love pulling them out and installing new gear after major failure due to lack of maintenance.
It's better for our bottom line and nicer work as well.

Cheers

 

[b simpson]

Coil clean only needs to be done that often in the tropics.

In sydney I never had a problem, but when I worked in Karratha they needed to be cleaned 12-24 months for sure. The humidity, dust and running them 24/7 killed them. The filthy insides of the houses didn't help things either...

Also watch out for the frogs blocking the drains. They don't like coil clean haha.