Mishandling my money

[Mike McKinzie]

I just purchased 2 houses in Texas. They were with a property management company that I did not want to keep. So on June 2, I emailed them that I was changing property management companies but to please mail me any rent they had collected for June. Instead of sending me the rent, they returned the rent to the tenants. I believe this is mishandling of my money. Do you agree?

The original PM company deposited the rent checks and wrote new checks back to the tenants instead of to me.

I am thinking about reporting them to the Texas Real Estate Commission. Should I?

[Timothy W.]

Originally posted by Jon Holdman:

As I read this thread, I think the DID cash the checks, and then cut new checks to refund the money to the tenants.

I saw later her clarified this that they did deposit it into their account but now it seems that he "fired" them after they deposited it into their account.

[Timothy W.]

Ok, I figured out what's going on here. I have had to make this clear when selling properties with tenants in place. It is the responsibility the seller (if not outright, it's just good manners) to make sure everyone (including the tenants) is aware of the upcoming change of ownership.

Since the property management company had to notify the tenants of the change in ownership, I'm guessing not everybody was made aware of everything by the seller. As this is the case the property management company can't afford to send the rent to some guy 3 states away and hope it is the right person. The only people they knew for certain to send it to was the tenants. This wasn't done for spite. It was done to clear the pm of liability. You need to just take a breather and fix this very small, very temporary problem rather than looking for scalps.

[Elisha Lowe]

Originally posted by Mike M:

Moderators, you can go ahead and close/lock this thread.

ROTFLMAO - this was a good thread and it was interesting to read the difference perspectives.