Very bad experience with a property managers

I have a bond/carpet cleaning company and that taree job is terrible I'd be embarrassed to leave it like that. If your after a good PM in Western Sydney I use Raine and Horne St Marys and never had a issue with them. They are on the ball with everything especially rent reviews :D I hope everything gets sorted and you get some $ back.
 
I have a bond/carpet cleaning company and that taree job is terrible I'd be embarrassed to leave it like that. If your after a good PM in Western Sydney I use Raine and Horne St Marys and never had a issue with them. They are on the ball with everything especially rent reviews :D I hope everything gets sorted and you get some $ back.
Been plenty of bad stories about them here over the years too

Isn't this agency part of Nathan Birch's empire ?

Yes!
 
And just when the conversation about bad PM's in St Marys was getting low, we get to the even worse...

Funny you should say that........We had a tenant that was really hard to get rid of. They were filthy & always late with rent. The Tribunal kept letting them stay 'because they have children'. Anyway, they eventually left & my PM told me they went to Raine & Horne BUT THEY NEVER ASKED FOR THE LEDGER, or a reference.
 
I probably picked that tenant up by the sounds of it.


Anyone ever get that morbidly obese islander couple?
 
I probably picked that tenant up by the sounds of it.


Anyone ever get that morbidly obese islander couple?

Mine was a morbidly obese Islander single mother with a morbidly obese son of around 20yrs or so. Thankfully got rid of her 2 or 3 years ago. From memory, she had one or two other kids, but I can't remember exactly.

If you've got her now, she has some kind of tenants advocate that gives her advice on how to hold onto her leased property. She was always heaps behind in her rent, so I started to get nasty & put her rent up each 6 months. So when the tribunal said she had to pay her arrears back at, say, an extra $10pw, I'd throw in a $10 or $20pw rent increase as well.
 
I have a bond/carpet cleaning company and that taree job is terrible I'd be embarrassed to leave it like that. If your after a good PM in Western Sydney I use Raine and Horne St Marys and never had a issue with them. They are on the ball with everything especially rent reviews :D I hope everything gets sorted and you get some $ back.


And just when the conversation about bad PM's in St Marys was getting low, we get to the even worse...

Even worse? I wouldnt like to think much worse than the story of this thread was.

I have my places with them they have always been really good ( particularly for 5.5%) and they have even coordinated two interstate cosmetics renos for no charge with minimal vacancy
 
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Skater, you don't muck around when it comes to dealing with smart alec tenants. lol.

Nope! By the time we got rid of her, she was paying about $40pw above market. That was my little 'extra' to help with the inevitable clean-up. :D
 
Updates

Thanks Dark Knight for your kind wishes. I just want the matter to be resolved soon, it's been too long.

I finally received an email from PM today. First update on the matter since 7th May 2014. I'm glad that at least communication can start again and hopefully leads to the matter being resolved, but was a bit wary as I feel that the email 'tone' was a bit off - not sure if it's just me reading too much into it:

(1) PM stated that she sent me an email with an update on 24/11 (with another email below it, like it's forwarded - with a cc of another company PM). I'm on gmail and set the option to keep all mails (incl. junk ones). I just checked my mailbox (on Mac and online) and can confirm that the email from Nov never hit my mailbox. I just hope that this was not another ploy/game to twist the matter to something else than effort to resolve the issue.

(2) PM stated that she did not have my phone number in spite of the fact that it's on all 6 agreements we signed with them and I always left my number on all voice mails to her mobile and messages I left with their reception.

The gist of the update was that there was a tribunal hearing on 19th Dec and they sought eviction, but no info on what came out of that. PM also asked me to confirm that I'd still want them to continue with our case, or cease further action on our behalf if not hearing back by Friday.

There was also the bit where PM said that tenant claimed the property was in inhabitable condition as his reason for not paying rent. This was new to me, as the last inspection report from previous agent (done a month before management move) showing all good with photos. A repair was requested at the time to a bathroom light that was acted promptly afterwards. I did requested an ingoing condition report from them and another one around last Sept, but had received nothing for both so far. I'm not sure now if condition of the place is really bad, or if tenant had successfully tricked PM to not pay rent. I like to feel that I'm pretty prompt with repairs. So far the only repair ever requested for this IP during management by them was a change of HWS for $2,013, which was done promptly.


I'm not sure if Nathan is reading this, but if he is I just like to say that we're not looking for drama or confrontation. We just want the issue to be resolved so that we could have the property earning again. It's sad that it's gotten to this, involving tribunal and all, but we just couldn't get through them via other ways.

Anyways, it's late now. Night2 everyone.
 
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Sounds like it's all just blame shifting to me. I can't see anywhere in your post that the PM has taken responsibility for any of their (in)actions.

As others have said, I think it might be time to lawyer up. Often the first consultation is free, so you've only got an hour of your time to lose if you go and see one.
 
I can't read another fluffy post from you! FFS take some real action. This is YOUR business, that YOU need to take head on. Relying on the PM or the company now is futile, they clearly don't have YOUR interest in this!

They can take the small hit of their rent percentage and get another client to take the small shortfall! YOU on the other hand are losing potential $hundreds every week this is not resolved.

I know what I'd be doing and I'm not talking about crossing their name off the Christmas card list!

pinkboy
 
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I had a PM similar to yours. Great at collecting rent, incompetent at resolving post tenant destruction. Similar to you the owner of the biz was a nice guy and also a SS member (nothing to do with this company).

It dragged on and for 4 months, with it always having trades in next week or waiting on quotes etc etc. Nothing was done.

Eventually I cracked it with them and changed PM's. House repairs completed within 2 weeks and back with tenants within another 2.

Stop losing money due to what appear to be a bunch of bumbling amateurs, and get a decent PM.
 
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I have to say that I agree with both Pinkboy & DaveM on this. You really need to take control & DO something. You have to separate the friendship from the Business. It appears you have an issue with the Business, not Nathan, personally, so get in there and protect YOUR Business. If you consider Nathan to be a friend, then you need to let him know that this is a Business decision, not a personal attack.

The PM that I was using in this quote below, I also considered a friend at the time. Much of the stuff that happened, happened because I believed him when he said that there was an issue with the software they use for their statements, and that was why they couldn't provide me with statements. My gut told me to get out of there, but like a fool, I held on, because he was a 'friend'.


There was another PM in St Mary's that embezzled a heap of money. Sent some LL's to the wall. I got done for around $25k, but couldn't get any money out of him because he declared Bankruptcy. The worst part was, that even months after moving everything from him to another agency, you'd still find more bits missing - like Bond's not lodged (and pocketed).

I had no idea on where we stood at the time, and how much rent each tenant had paid on each property, or how far in arrears each property was. I later found out that he personally went to the tenants address and collected payments in cash, and didn't provide a receipt, so by the time I moved everything to the new PM, it was a real mess.

We had tenants stating that they were paid up to date, and more than one of them telling the same thing, so no reason to doubt it, but no proof either. They also wouldn't release records to my new PM, but like Dave said, once the deed was done & the new PM in place, things started to get back to normal, however we were still paying for this years later as tenants moved on & there were no bonds lodged.
 
I guess the positive out of this thread is that Nathan has read it and a response has been given to you. Even though the response is trying to shift blame to you, it gives you a starting point to work with.

Their response makes it clear that they are unable to manage distant properties when they actually need repair or arrears sorted. I find it difficult enough to find reasonably priced trades in Orange even with a local PM, so I highly doubt a Sydney PM would have any chance of building a relationship with tradies there.
 
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