All Forum Posts by: Dave Jackson

Waiting on additional details, but looks like two dumpster runs. Labor, they're saying $50 an hour, but then we're talking between 60-70 hours of labor given the cost breakdown, which again, seems completely unresonable.

Thanks for the reply.

No items were stored, that was sorted out legally before the trashout.

No ozonation treatments.

Just trashout and pest treatments.

I wanted to see if anyone's ever come across something like this before. I have a 2 bedroom, 1 bath unit (about 900 square feet). A tenant lived there for years and passed away and everything was pretty much left abandoned without family to take it. There was a lot of trash and junk in the unit (borderline hoarder), a few buckets filled with feces apparently. The unit had to be treated twice for pests.

Property Manager gave me an invoice (pretty weak one without much detail and it was their own, not from the company they used) that said the dumpster fee was about $425 (reasonable including haul-away), but then the labor fee for the trash out was over $4,000, and with a few other things thrown in, it was nearly $5,000. Now, I've had a number of turns before, but I have never heard of anything like this for a trash out only. Granted, I've never had a unit left with so much junk inside, however I don’t understand how a trash out (no repairs) is coming to $5,000, when all they had to do was haul everything to the dumpster and then treat the place for pests.

Has anyone ever come across something similar to this? Any response is appreciated. Many thanks.

Thank you everyone for the advice. I am having an attorney handle this now.

Hello BiggerPockets Community, I am having an issue with one of my rental units in Indiana. Keeping the story short, a tenant passed away in the unit a couple months ago. They had no will. There are four family members that are claiming rights to the tenant's property. The tenant was a hoarder and the property is filled with junk, but the family still wants it. Problem is, the family does not get along. There is no power of attorney and thus they want to take this to court. Obviously, this can take a long time. Meanwhile, I can't turn the unit or rent it. It would cost me considerable time and money to move and store the junk, not to mention concerns with trash and bugs.

What are my options? Since we can't just throw everything away since family is claiming property rights, property management is saying we have to now go through an attorney which is going to cost me a lot of money. Property management is also saying since there's no power of attorney or will, I can't bill back the family for lost rent or cost of this. Even if the court does grant an executor to state, they're saying it would likely be an uphill battle recouping costs. Is it really this complicated? Many thanks.

@Joe Splitrock Thank you for your response. Between the eight units, I'm grossing around $5,000 a month. Are you saying it's typical to leave $5,000 in the shared checking account at all times?

My concern is that keeping too much in the account encourages them to take out money without approval first or spend more than they need to without providing an invoice first. Seems appropriate to me to keep enough for utilities and miscellaneous repairs, so about $1,000, but are you suggesting it be more? If there's that many expenses in any given month, it seems like they should be notifying me first or requesting more funds before just drawing indiscriminately.

@Steve Maginnis. I agree and you make excellent points. I'll keep this in mind when I hire the next one. Many thanks.

@Jon Kelly Yes they are a full service property management company. I agree they should hold the deposits, but because they kept drawing from them to pay bills, I decided to hold onto them myself. Not ideal, but there are unfortunately limited options in my market for property management, but I will be looking for a new one now.

I pay the current company 10% of gross rents received, although expenses have been extremely high so sometimes I'm led to believe there's something else going on.

@Nathan Gesner I appreciate your response. I did a lot of researching and vetting and unfortunately the options for property management are very limited in my area and this is the biggest company there that seemed like the best company. The problems didn't start arising until after the fact.

You provide good questions to ask, so thank you. I will add them to my checklist when interviewing new property managers.