All Forum Posts by: Payman A.

Thanks Jean.  Unfortunately, PM/agent is taking the exact opposite approach and saying that doing anything at this point will cause us to lose the sale and that would be my fault.  Also, the unpaid balance is not far from her listing commission so it would more than burn this bridge and very late in the game.

Hi Al and I can definitely appreciate your sentiment here.  To clarify (I had the same concern), risk of losing the sale is apparently not related to buyer's knowledge, but lender finding out about vacancy and or insufficient income.  According to my agent, buyer already has property in the neighborhood, is aware of my rent roll and will in fact be moving into one of the units (they know e/o from previous transactions and buyer is also the agent).  To help make sure, I want to require buyer to either add the tenant balances to purchase price (which will not happen) or sign an agreement waiving his right to those balances and acknowledging that unpaid balances will still be owed to previous owner/manager.  The problem will then be how do I as the old owner go after amounts that according to the leases are owed to the old management?  

Hi Amy and thank you for your kind post.  Funny you mention LA being a landlord friendly state as it is one of my necessary criteria if I'm considering a new market.  In fact, PM#3 was evicting tenants left and right...problem was he wasn't finding "qualified" applicants to replace them with.  Current agent/PM, however, has discouraged me and flat out refused to evict because of reasons like "court won't allow eviction when tenant is trying to pay", which I KNOW to not be true (and "trying to pay", at least for one tenant, means partial/diminishing payments month after month and an increasing balance) or of course the risk of losing the sale.   Again, this is the first PM manager I walk away from and would not have come back to if it wasn't for their office listing the properties, which was all supposed to take about 4 months...now going 10 (they were helpful in coordinating repairs).  Evicting is what I had been trying to do starting 4 months ago but now so close to closing, keeping deposits doesn't justify the actual risk of losing the sale (and to start addressing the next post, that is not to say that buyer is not aware...supposedly the worry is his lender...more on that with my reply to the next post) and the few hundred dollars that have been showing up on my statements for the last several months.  Again, if sale does not happen things are going to change and change FAST.

Thanks again for your thoughts and offer to help.  As I mentioned in my private message to Brandon, I will definitely reach out if I end up holding on to the building.  Meantime, please feel free to message me as well regarding NC.  I really do like the market, specially in/around Charlotte and happy to say that I've got a PM and separate agent that have made it all easier.

 just sent you a message

Hi Courtney and thanks for the posts.  This is north of Baton Rouge by Zachary and this far into the process, not looking to derail the sale by either firing the listing agent or adding back rent to the sales price.  Of course, totally different story if for some reason sale does not happen.  Only consolation here is that I am selling with enough profit to at least cover all these losses, which is definitely better than wiping out because you tried a new long distance market.  However, I still don't want to be giving away free rent (AND transfer security deposits) specially since I've been instructing PM to get rid of tenants that are adding to their debt every month.

Only contract with this PM is the listing contract through 12/31/18

No contract, I originally inherited this PM when I bought first Bldg and they were seller's agent and existing PM.  All was great for one full year so bought 2nd sister Bldg from same seller.  Soon after, all went downhill so I went to PM #2, then PM #3...one worse than the last so finally decided to sell thru first PM who does know the area and quads well and was the one who encouraged me to sell while prices had appreciated (we stayed in touch).  So original PM only took over management as part of listing the properties and helping with a LOT of repairs, courtesy of PM #3.  Theoretically, I could transfer management to someone else in the next few days while we proceed with the sale.  Of course, no one would accept that unless I was paying for their time to clean things up.

 Totally agree but forgot to mention that PM is also selling agent.

Oh Joe...if you knew what I went through with PMs in this area.  Had I been with my NC crew, I would have kept both buildings and enjoyed fantastic returns.  Now just want out of LA and already lost $3500 in unpaid rents with the first sale, which of course I was made aware of AFTER the sale (yes, same PM) so trying very hard to avoid a repeat while I still have 3 weeks.

 Tenant debt doesn't disappear if property is sold right?  I mean other than transferring debt to new owner because he is basically going to start with a clean slate (AND get tenant deposits from me!).  So I'm wondering if it is possible for I, current owner, or a management company to transfer leases to new owner with stipulation that tenants still owe previous owner or management company the unpaid rents.