All Forum Posts by: Jason W.

You are exactly right! according to the paperwork, these tenants were perfect. Great paying jobs, perfect credit score, no criminal history... However, the day they moved in they have been a complete nightmare. 

I really like this M2M idea. Does it deter people from renting the property or affect how much you can charge? Also, we have done M2M in the past but only after the tenant has pasted the year mark. Is it normal for PM to do M2M from the start? Does this mean more work for the PM? If I recall, PM companies don't like doing M2M. Is that correct?

Anyone got any advice on what I can do with my current tenants? Also, I find it hard to hold PM accountable. They talk the talk when they want your business but that goes out the door after you sign with them. Any real estate lawyers out there? 

Thanks everyone who has helped so far I love the advice that I have received. I will definitely be changing how I manage my property. 

I agree that no is a strong word but these tenants are not stupid. They have an agenda and that is what concerns me. They are looking for loopholes to place never ending maintenance requests. The wife is going out of her way to do this. For example, a few weeks back she checked the outside spigots (as we enter the winter season) and put in a request to have one spigot repaired. Admittedly, the spigot was turned off because a previous owner built a large deck and the deck height is too close to the spigot to allow anything to be connected. There is another spigot nearby (only a few feet away) so we, and every other tenant, simply used that spigot instead. It is not a large house so this was never an inconvenience. We even left a hose with the house to make it easier on our tenants. It really does not benefit the tenants to repair that spigot because they could not connect to it even if it was working (not enough clearance between spigot and deck). Never less, they still demanded that we fix it. Obviously, we said no to this absurd maintenance request but they still kept demanding that it be repaired. Today we have rejected this request multiple times and still today they keep contacting the PM to have it repaired. So obviously, no is not working. She is placing requests and being difficult for a reason. 

Just today we received another maintenance request to repair the dishwasher. It appears that it is not draining into the sink properly and now the PM is saying we need to pay to get it repaired. Now, before these tenants moved in we (the owners) ran the dishwasher a few times and every time dishwasher ran a full cycle with no problems. So, this should fall on the tenants, correct? That is my assumption. 

This will never end. I know we have to have rights as a home owner. 

Sorry for the delay guys and thanks for helping. 

There is a limit but most of the repairs came in below that limit. A few were above the limit and we did discuss those items but those items did in fact need to be repaired. 

The problem is that the tenant keeps flooding us with a ton of small "issues". Again, the tenant submitted 37 different repairs within the first month. I am not saying she submitted one or two items 37 times, she submitted 37 separate items to be repaired. She kept calling and emailing the PM daily regarding those 37 items until they were completed to her standard. She is a very demanding and difficult woman to deal with and rather than challenging her on these items, the management company simply complied with the repairs in hopes that she would eventually be happy. However, that is not what happened. The following month new repair requests continued to flood the PM office and as of today, there is no end in sight. Our house is in good shape. We have fixed all issues that were reported to us (speaking about past tenants). We would drive back to our house to inspect and beautify it (gardening, cleaning, minor maintenance). However, the house was built in the 40's and so there are always things to find. As someone said earlier, this house obviously does not meet her standard and she is trying to force us to meet her standard. 

I like the idea of including a clause to terminate if someone is being unreasonable but I fear that it will be easier said than done. I say this because she claims everything as a safety issue. Her father is a broker helping and helping her with this. I know this because he called me and rattled off a laundry list of items claiming they all were safety issues. And, like her father, she too labels literally everything as a safety issue. For example, hypothetically, if a lightbulb were to burnout then she would submit a claim with a list of reasons of why it is a safety issue and why we are responsible for repairing/replacing the bulb. Of course anyone can find reasons to declare a burnout bulb as a safety concern (government does this all the time) but most people see a burnout bulb as just that, a burnout out bulb. They simply swap it out with a new one without a second thought. We will be fighting over the definition of safety with every item. Saying all of this, I still like the idea. We have a list of addendums that we already use. We'll simply add that to the list, after speaking to a lawyer, of course.

Thanks for replying. Great suggestions, I'll look into those. Any suggestions on how to prevent this in the future? We get these kind of tenants all the time and I would like to be more protected in the future. 

Also, do you guys have any suggestions in dealing with PM companies. Any clauses that would hold them more accountable? It seems like everyone has rights than the guy who actually owns the home. That can't be right, can it?

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.