All Forum Posts by: Mike A.

We're planning on doing something.  I just cannot believe the fees that they charged.  I understand making a profit, but it doesn't cost 150 bucks to change a key lock.  What's even worse is the lack of communication from the PM and the employees.  

You don't even know the half of it.  The owner and his underlings are posting about their great services on Facebook and Twitter, but not answering my e-mails.  I'm just trying to stay in so at least one of the buildings do not have a termination fee.  They were good up until last year.  I have no idea what happened.  Everything started to change once we started to audit their reports.  We've requested the original invoices from the workers numerous times; they refused to provide them.  We're taking over the evictions and turn-overs now from our crew at home base.  We're small (ironically larger than them though), but we have a team that works with us and they have sub-contractors.  The building would be 2k+ after all expenses positive if 100% filled and not the expensive turn-overs.   We just bought a building in Stamford, and we had to redo each apt.  No where near what they are charging.  Just moving all these units into another PM is just going to be a nightmare as well.  You know, they will not cooperate.

We're toying with the idea for our attorney to file a complaint of negligence on the building management and excessive and unneeded fees charged to us.  Thus, we can see all the original charges that they paid for the service work plus the additional fees they put on top.  I would not be surprised if they tacked on 40% - 50% of the fee as their own service fee.

Pretty much done with this company.  Another tenant moved out and they want 3500.00 to turn over the unit.  I requested to terminate the management agreement, but they want, as per the agreement, 2 months of a termination fee in order to exit the agreement.  Since they collect the money for the rent, I am not sure what to do here.  I already have another property management company willing to take over, but that is some management termination fee.  

Should we consult a lawyer?  I've left messages for the owner as well as few e-mails, he doesn't respond.  The only ones who respond are the on call Tim, the property management coordinator, and Patty the "executive assistant".  It seems the owner is impressed with himself with all these people that report to him.  

It's a weird situation as one building's contract will expire in 35 days.  Which, if we cancel in five days, no termination fee.  The other one, has about 7 months left.  It will cost around 4k to terminate the contract on that one building.

Here's another idea on why I do not think these bills are either severely inflated or fake.  They had to replace a door handle in one building last month.  It cost $43.19.  Then, this past week (we receive weekly reports), they had to replace another door handle.  The charge? 169.47.  Does this make any sense?  When inquiring about these charges, no response.

Ideas?  This is an absolute nightmare.

In three years, all but three left due to non-payment and were evicted.  The majority of the evictions happened at the beginning of this year once we ran an audit on the building and figured out the PM was letting the past due accounts "more time to pay" because they were under the impression we didn't want vanacies.  WTF?  You let people stay w/o remitting rent???

The three who left were as follows.  One left because the tenant wanted to have the ability to break their lease early if they so chose.  This was a mistake on their part, and we went 50/50 return on the deposit.  The two other tenants didn't like the apt. because they said the tenants were too loud, so a month prior to their lease, so they paid for the remainder of her lease and they moved her into one of the other buildings they manage...  Just not one of ours.  All the rest were evicted due to non-payment 2 months +.

We have a super there, but all he does is clean the floors and take out the trash.  Anything more, he's not much help.  His rent is discounted by 300 a month for this service.  Problem is, the garbage containers are next door, so that is what he does.  He moves the trash from one building to the other.  Again, it's right next door, but the tenants are too lazy to do this.

Since we're based out of Hartford, we're not able to self-manage this building with 200+ people.  We do stop by bi-weekly.  We've started to remove the bills they were paying on the behalf of us (utility/water/etc), as they were always late on the bill.  We have both buildings wired for CCTV, so we monitor them from our office.  I met with a realtor yesterday and we're going to list the buildings for sale.  In the meantime, his uses a PM company for his and his investors, and I am meeting with him on Wednesday.  He's a member of BP, so that is a plus I guess.  We're just hesitantant for the change, as it's such a big move from one company to another.  Plus, the current PM was great for 3 years.  I guess as they got bigger, they got worse.  This new PM is small, only about 75 units under management.  We're concerned that if he's just as bad, we cannot go back and then we're screwed.  

I called a few other PMs, and some are actually higher costs then they are.  None of them give actual bills from contractors, so there is no way to know what the real price of the service is.  I'd rather see a real invoice and they put 15% or what they charge as a service fee.  They had to rekey a lock yesterday which cost us another $145.75.  Do you know how much it costs to rekey a lock in our Bridgeport apts?  $15.00.  It seems their pricing is in line with all others.  If we have 90% + occupancy, then we're clearing approx $3k a month after all expenses.  It's the turnovers which are killing us.  The nickel and diming do not help either.  We have no problem with a company making a profit off of a service, but there's no transparency.  

Do property managers usually give transparency?  I am also concerned that if we do switch, it will not be a smooth one, and if they are worse, then we're really up stream with no paddle.  We hate to sell the apt buildings as we really brought them back from being in crappy condition, but the quality of tenants is filth.  We even took on a few section 8 tenants.  We have a 12 unit in the east end of Bridgeport.  Real bad area.  If a turn over is 650, we'd be surprised.

I also checked narpm.org, they are listed there as well.

Not sure anyone would want to rent a house in this part of town.  It's in the "C" area of town. 

Yea, it's a trip...  

I checked Yelp and Google reviews.  Not many are open to service Ansonia it seems.

I should clarify, it's 825 profitability a month due to the approx. 7 vacancies we now have.  Should the vacancies be filled, it would be approx. 3400.00.

If we could find another PM in New Have County, I would.  We paid 30k a unit, so we didn't over pay.  The PM was initially very good.  When they started to grow, the quality and nickel and diming started.  

We already have to approve anything over 250, but the little things add up.  I think one of the issues are the quality of residents.  Since it's a depressed area, the type of tenant is limited even though the building is very nice, just the area around it is a bit gritty.  

We have final approval on the tenant, however, like I said, with them charging a month's rent to find a new tenant, then the turn over when the tenant leaves after a year, that's where we lose.  We're not approving anyone with bad credit, collection accounts or prior evictions. We use the same formula with all the buildings we own.  Only these two have issues.

We have a team that we used our own company for extermination instead of the one they recommended.  The one they recommended wanted $100 a month per unit to spray.  If you can believe that, we should had known then that they were padding the bill.  We have no problem some one making a bit more, like 10% - 20% on to of the fees from the provider, but that was crazy.