What’s your experience with the Azzam Group/Remax Haven Realty?

Question

Hello. I would like some feedback please. What has been your experience (pro and con) with the Azzam Group/ Remax Haven Realty? Thank you.

Ryan Brouwer · Answer

Hi Rick. I recommend that you stay away from the Azzam Group and RE/MAX Haven. My wife and I are new out of state investors and I reached out to Michael Azzam in mid-November 2022. At first, he communicated well, but after only 2 weeks of sending some emails back and forth, he said that his group did not "have the bandwidth" to provide us with "adequate support/availability". I tried replying back after that email and he just ghosted me. I thought this was really odd considering that we were simply looking at 1-4 unit properties to purchase in Cleveland and I found it hard to believe that with a whole team of agents, they were unable to help us purchase some property. A real head scratcher. The only thing I can think of is that he did not want to be bothered to answer questions that we had about the process. Since then, we were able to find another agent, Chris Schlenkerman (with RE/MAX Crossroads), and he has been absolutely fantastic! His communication is excellent, he is willing and able to answer questions and give honest feedback about properties (he doesn't just try to sell you on anything and everything), and he has experience with investment properties. Additionally, since we are out of state (Washington) and unable to do walkthroughs of prospective properties, Chris has been great about taking videos for us, which has been very helpful. We were able to get a SFR and a duplex under contract last month and we will be closing on both properties in a couple of weeks, all thanks to Chris! With regard to RE/MAX Haven Property Management, you should know that they are part of the Azzam team. We got in touch with them and Gabrielle Gratz was out contact person. She was pretty good at communicating at the beginning (we began talking with her around the time we started talking with Michael), but she was not good about responding to emails and we pretty much had to call her to get a response. When she was on the phone, she spoke very quickly and sounds very salesy. Anyways, we felt like what they had to offer for management seemed fair and we still wanted to proceed to use them even though we did not have a good experience with Michael Azzam. Over the course of the past couple of months, we stayed in touch with Gabrielle and kept her informed each step of the way once we made offers on properties and got them under contract. Everything was going along just fine until the other day, two weeks before we are scheduled to close on our properties. Last week starting Tuesday, I sent her multiple emails and left her multiple voicemails to try to figure out the logistics of getting our properties under their management and rent ready once we closed. She did not respond until Friday and what she sent me was an email that said we could talk Monday and to schedule an appointment with her via her Calendly link. I went ahead and scheduled an appointment as she directed. Monday came and I called her at the scheduled time and it went straight to voicemail. I emailed her and got no response. She no call/no showed me, which is super unprofessional. I was able to get the email address for the property manager David Terbeek and I contacted him about the situation to find out what was going on. Well he didn't provide and explanation or answer my questions and instead he let me know that they are not currently taking on new clients! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! After all this time of communicating with Gabrielle and having a plan to use them as our management company, they let me know two weeks before closing that they can't take on new clients? Absolutely ridiculous. So, in summary, if I was you, I would stay away from both the Azzam Group, RE/MAX Haven, and anybody else affiliated with them. ***If you still need an agent, definitely call Chris Schlenkerman at RE/MAX Crossroads. If you need a property management company to help you with your rentals, George at Progressive Urban Property Management is super nice and will help you get set up as well. I hope my personal experience story helps you on your journey.

Heather Enciso · Answer

Vlad Kot · Answer

We're just getting started with them and so far everything is going extremely slow. They might not respond to emails for a day or two and when they respond back, there's no transparency in when things will be done.Stay away from them if you don't want to waste your time. You'd be lucky if you break even on your mortgage payment at the end of the month (yes, you can end up owing them :)). There will be charges after charges after charges, and you won't hear from them for days. Their replies wouldn't provide much useful information when they do reply back to you. They seem more interested in making money for themselves and their contractors than in making money for you.Here are some issues highlighted with them: 1) Communication: - Communication becomes extremely slow after signing up with them. Some simple questions can easily take up to 2-3 days to reply back to you. For a problem that could have been resolved in a matter of hours/days or just a week at max, you can easily waste a few weeks here; - It is very often difficult to get them to act. You'll have to ask them several times. When you ask them to do something, they don't do it, then they have to be asked again and again. It seems that pushing them to do their jobs is always essential; - There is a lack of horizontal connections between employees. It is very common for one employee to not know what the other is doing; 2) Fees: - Instead of requiring tenants to pay in one lump sum, they let them pay in chunks (which is very annoying as they will charge you $10 for each chunk payment your tenant make; that means you'll be charged $30-40 more per unit/month if they let them pay in 3-4 chunks); - Every bill they pay for you will cost you $10 (+$20-40 more per unit/month). To be fair, this fee is pretty well listed on their fees sheet - no complaints here. There is, however, a problem getting them to communicate with tenants so the tenants begin paying bills themselves, so you don't have to spend extra money every month; - Your account must have a minimum balance of $500. The fee is also listed in the fees sheet, but it raises many questions due to the way it works. Basically, they have the right to spend up to $500 without your approval, so you cannot really stop them from doing so. As soon as there is no more money left (or it's low), you must contribute again. Considering a PM company's main objective should be to represent the landlord's best interests, some expenditures might seem questionable and could have been avoided.- It seems that their prices are substantially higher than what would normally be charged for the same services. It's better to hire someone else to handle this, but that doesn't seem feasible because you don't decide what should or shouldn't be done if the budget is less than $500. As a result of all of this, what's written in the paragraph above can easily be the outcome. - You may be charged back for something that was done months ago (that will catch you completely by surprise when you have no money left at the end of the month and may even owe them); - They also advertise vacant units on rental platforms with weird fees (which you'll find out later when looking for your unit's ad online). As a landlord, it doesn't appear you would receive any of those fees. For example: - "1 time $129 non-refundable set up fee paid at lease signing" - "non-refundable pet fee of $200-500 per animal applies to all pets & must be paid prior to or when you pay your first month rent" - "$30/month required resident benefit package" Just my two cents.

Heather Enciso · Answer

Thank you so much for writing this post. This is extremely helpful as I look for a property manager in Cleveland, Ohio. Thank you again so much.

Matthew Ferreira · Answer

I have to agree with Ryan Brouwer: Stay away from the Azzam Group and RE/MAX Haven. My experience with them started out strong, but it quickly devolved to less than stellar. They don't even bother taking phone calls any more from their clients. All communications have to be through email, which is some cases is great, but in others it is horrificly time-consuming and inefficient. Also, the manager there, Mr. David Terbeek, is incredibly unprofessional. He recently emailed me that he was done discussing an issue that concerned me, and he didn't want to answer any further questions. Steer clear of these guys.

Yitzchak Khaimov · Answer

Wow! I was going to begin working with them this week. Thank you for this!

Arlist W Hunter III · Answer

I agree, I'm local to the area but highly appreciate the advice and warnings.Thanks much!

Bob Stevens · Answer

I know them all having been doing business there for about 10 years, Happy to recommend,