Property management bonus?

[Erika Lee]

I am selling over 100 MF units today to a private equity firm. I’m selling in large part because the management expenses got out of control. I really liked the ladies that worked on my properties and did the books, but their dad, the owner, is a jerk. I finally got fed up with him and decided to sell. I purposely didn’t use him to sell even though he always assumed I would. We were well down the road of due diligence when he found out and he tried to stop the sale by denying my broker access to the units. First he said I had to get the keys in person and they couldn’t be released to any one else (I couldn’t travel due to COVID and he knew that), then he later said due to COVID he couldn’t allow access. I eventually won that argument by finding legal reasons, but he refused to allow the lady who runs the office on-site (one of the few who is not his relative) accompany my broker in the walkthrough with the buyer even though I pay her FT hourly, medical, 401k match, etc. and the contract says she is my employee.

I say all this to point out that he didn’t make this sale easy. Yesterday his daughter emailed and asked for a sales/closing bonus for the staff. I had planned to give a nice bonus to the two ladies who worked their tail off at my place. But not to the owner and his daughters. The last owner sold about half the number of units as me, used the owners company to sell (so they made the commission) and gave $3000 in bonuses. Based on that I think they are assuming $7-8k in bonuses. Is this typical?