Greetings all,
I was hoping to get opinions and advice here. My wife and I own some rental condos in Honolulu that are managed under contract by an agent we've known in the building for 25 years. She works her butt off, and seems honest and straightforward. A year or two ago she switched to a very well known national agency. All rent comes in and goes to the "broker/owner" of the franchise, who then passes it on to the property owners.
BUT, for the past few months he is NOT passing it on--either to us or many other owners that our agent represents. He has changed bookkeeping platforms 3 times this year and used this as an excuse to delay payments. The accounting has been an absolute mess. I have corporate bookkeeping experience and can see all the money coming in online but there is no one there I can speak with about our account. Only him. At first we thought he was just incredibly incompetent and over his head, and we wearily gave him some patience to get his act together all the while pressing him for at least partial payment. But it's gotten progressively worse, now the only time he's passed on any rent to us is when we've threatened to report him to the Board of Realtors. He'll make that deadline with some partial payment--but those checks are eventually charged back as NSF.
Through November he owes us around 30 grand and others even more so I've heard. The bounced checks are of incredibly deep concern, we can only imagine what he is doing with all the owners money behind the scenes. I've confronted him so many times throughout this year and the excuses and now outright lies when pressed only fuels our anger and suspicion. Our agent seems incredibly stressed by it all, she's spent decades building her reputation which is now being dragged down by this guy but I don't know what she can do.
He's still very much in contact and reachable, but my biggest fear is that he will run or file some sort of Bankruptcy. We have tight contracts and tons of email correspondence for a claim, if there's even any money left at this point. He's got a boat and a nice house but it's likely all protected under some corporate structure.
This is unchartered territory for us--we are fortunate to have had only responsible and trustworthy agents in our past. What would you all do?
Thank you,
Jason M
