Dealing with tenants and management company

[Jason W.]

We are stuck in a situation that keeps repeating itself. We have a rental property in a high demand area. Houses in this area do not go on the market very often and a lot of our tenants try to exhaust/frustrate us into selling our property to them. They either do this by running the property into the ground with neglected or forced repairs (meaning they cause the damages and neglect to report them). Or, they exhaust the management company’s maintenance department with never ending petty requests, claiming every request as a serious safety hazard. Or, a combination of both.

Our current tenants place a magnifying glass on the house looking for any and all imperfections and exaggerate their seriousness, claiming everything as a safety hazard and demanding they be repaired. They have even called code enforcement out to the house in attempt to find issues. Within the first month of moving in, the tenants placed 37 repair claims/demands with a cost of about $8,000. Seven of those “issues” we know were working days prior to them moving in because we were at the house and saw them working. **Side note, the wife’s dad is a broker and is heavily involved with this too.**

The second month they demanded we fix $75,000 worth of “repairs”, treating our home like it is a HGTV makeover episode and showing no end to their demands.

The management company has been complacent in their behavior/management; caving to the tenant’s constant demands and spending our money to shape our house however the tenants deem fit. Per the management owner, their solution to this problem was to spend our money and make the tenants happy in hopes that the tenants will eventually quit making demands. This “solution” was getting out of hand, and we decided that we had to put our foot down with the tenants and management company. We reminded the management company that we are their clients and homeowners, and we expect them to protect us. Shortly after, the management company said they didn’t want to “manage” for us anymore. They obviously were okay with the arrangement as long as we allowed them to manage however they see fit.

I want to give an example of what we are dealing with. The tenant’s dad used his capabilities as a broker to look me up. He knew all about me; my phone number, my wife’s phone number, and where we currently live (out of state). He had this information only days after the tenants moved into our house.

He blindsided me with a load of issues regarding my house and demanded that I get them fixed. I explained that I would have to look into these issues and contact my management company. He continued to explain that my management company was awful, recommended that I leave them, and continued to make more demands. One of those demands was regarding an outlet near the kitchen sink. He began to quote code violations regarding that outlet (according to his state not the current state) and demanded that I fix this issue. Now, we have rented out this house for a long time and we have never had anyone complain or report any issues regarding this outlet. Never less, he demanded that it be fixed (he and his daughter always demanded requests).

I eventually got off the phone and looked into this outlet issue. I could not find any code violation. Plus, and as I mentioned before the tenants contacted code enforcement (on their own accord) but code violation didn’t report any issues with the outlet so I ignored this complaint. Regardless, the tenant kept demanding the outlet be corrected. So, I obliged and closed it off so it could not be used. She then demanded that the outlet not be closed off, but be relocated because of the inconvenience of having one less outlet in the kitchen. I said that that rearranging our house for her convenience was not an option. When that backfired on her, she demanded that the outlet be opened back up as it was so she could use it, literally wasting our time and money. I told her that this was not an option and that the outlet would remain closed.

Anticipating that she might open the outlet on her own accord, I asked my management company to ensure it remained closed. The management company agreed on multiple occasions, via email, to keep the outlet closed off. However, that is not what happened. I later found out that the management company not only opened the outlet, but also upgraded it because that was an easier solution for them. Both parties, management company and tenants, were wrong in this example, and there are many more like it. The tenant follows any repair workers with her phone recording them, looking for issues and reasons to complain.

Even though the management company placed this difficult tenant and basically caved to their constant demands, they are tucking their tail and leaving us; claiming that they can’t meet our expectations. We know this is not the truth. They want out of this situation, leaving us to clean up their mess and with far less money. We feel stuck between a bad management company and horrible tenants. We know we have to have rights as a homeowner.