Bad Property Management or Normal?

[Mike Ferguson]

Hey everyone, I feel like I'm having a bad experience with my property management company, but I wanted to get some feedback for a sanity check. I definitely don't want to fire these guys just to find out that they were pretty much the average.

This is for a single-family home in eastern North Carolina, in a military town.

First, my receipt of rent fluctuates from the 4th to as late as the 12th each month, despite my confidence that they receive rent from the tenant on time in all cases. 

Second, on all tenant turnovers, they've tried to charge me ~$500 for "prep and paint as needed", with no breakdown of what needed to be painted, nor a list of what actually got painted. They tried this once after a short turnover of 3 months since the last painting, and were told to pound sand.

Additionally on tenant turnover, they have a tendency to try to charge me for things that were obviously tenant inflicted, such as bent towel rods, etc. 

Finally, their record keeping bugs me. They have finally started using appfolio which helps,  but pending charges still tend to float around on assorted PDF files, and on those months which the tenant pays before the first, his payment wont show up in the current month's statement, this can be figured by doing some homework, but to me the whole point of property management is so I dont have to worry about some of this stuff.

So there it is. Please share your thoughts with me, so I can figure out whether this is bad business or if I'm just stressing over triffles.

[Adam Schneider]

@Mike Ferguson Working with PMs is like working with any other vendor in many ways. This might be a good time to walk through the expectations that you and the PM have of each other and how common situations will be handled, such as the ones you mentioned. I would ask questions about what is causing things such as the fluctuation of the rent receipt. Is it a result of when the tenants are paying the PM, for example? Also, you might want to check reviews of the company. I'm guessing you are either talking about Fort Bragg or Camp LeJeune...both of those areas are heavy rental towns, so there should be plenty of PM choices available.