Quote from @Richard F.:
Aloha,
Your post is not clear...was written notice of address change for payment of rent given? "Formally introduced" and "made aware of the switch" are doubtfully lawful "notice". What does the original agreement state about "notice", if anything? Also, "Given a request to sign a new lease" is meaningless. It sounds like the tenant is probably following the letter and intent of the original rental agreement. If no written termination letter was sent via certified/return receipt requested, or posted on the door of their unit and properly documented with witness and/or photos, it could very well be they consider the original still in effect, and rightfully so (Depending on exact wording of that document and local law).
It is for this very reason that I have, on numerous prior posts, advised that the "old" Owner/PM be instructed to send an introductory letter to the tenants, informing of new management, which would be followed up by a more detailed letter from the "new" Owner/PM, along with new Owner/PM sending termination notice at the earliest lawful date to end the old agreement.
The unspoken question here is, why has it taken your "new" PM a year to get a handle on this; and is this PM duly licensed and qualified per local law?
Well I was trying to be brief so as not to bog down the post, but to offer more clarity to the situation and some of the questions you posed here is more information. With regard to the switch, at the time that new PM took over we walked the property with him and introduced him in person to each tenant at which time they were all given a written notice from him that stated his official start date (Which at the time was Nov 1st, roughly 30-45 days out from the time they were handed the notice) and all the formal instructions for rent payment, tenant portal info, new contact info, business office address, etc.
He took over in November 2021 and about mid-way through the month also gave the required 60 day rent increase notices to the tenants that starting in February (60+ days from time the notice was given) rent would be increased. The next month, which was December of 2021 this tenant stopped paying rent (It's important to note that at the time she was given a rent increase notice she had always paid rent on time and there was no indication she would not be paying rent) and said she had lost her job and was applying for rental assistance. It was impossible to evict both due to Washington laws and individual county laws. Even though she was on a month to month the county did away with no-cause termination of month to month and also put up huge barriers for non-payment of rent. The city was horrendously bogged down so the processes that the lawyers were going through were incredibly slow. During this time she applied for rental assistance from the city, which was also incredibly slow, but eventually they came through and paid her back rent and paid her future rent through September of 2022. During this time she was communicating with the property manager in a standard way and wasn't making any attempts to circumvent the PM and go directly to the owner, so this wasn't really an issue.
Because we accepted the financial assistance from the city there were stipulations that we could not make any attempt to evict this tenant for another 6 months from the time the rental assistance was accepted, which was in June, so basically no matter what we couldn't evict her until beginning of 2023. This is relevant because while the city paid her rent through September, once October came she didn't pay rent, then November she didn't pay rent, and December she didn't pay rent. BUT it turns out she was paying rent by going directly to the bank and depositing checks, but the owner has multiple checking accounts with this bank and the teller was just picking an account with his name on it and depositing the check so we literally did not know the money was going into an account for almost 3 and a half months until I checked one of our dormant accounts that we used for a separate purposed and saw that there were check deposits being made. I called the bank and verified who had been making the deposit. This was literally a few days ago.
The city acknowledged her rent increase and paid accordingly, but we think the reason she is doing this circumvention is because the PM payment portal has her rent at the higher rate and she is ignoring it and just paying what was on her original lease. The reason why it's taken a year is because up until this time she was communicating with the PM like normal but not in a position where she was having to pay rent for almost a year, and now that she was to pay rent she's circumventing the PM and trying to contact the owner directly for property related issues. We have refused to respond to her and have had the PM step in and make it very clear who she is supposed to interact with and how she is supposed to make payments.
I guess my overall theme in the question is that just because she didn't sign a new lease explicitly under the new PM, doesn't mean she should be allowed to ignore the fact that he took over in that position, correct? Him being brought on as PM and having the leases handed over to him doesn't mean that she either has to sign a new lease with him or can completely ignore him as PM? This happens all the time where a new PM company takes over at a property and the existing lease is basically just absorbed by the new PM, right?
