We're just getting started with them and so far everything is going extremely slow. They might not respond to emails for a day or two and when they respond back, there's no transparency in when things will be done.
Stay away from them if you don't want to waste your time. You'd be lucky if you break even on your mortgage payment at the end of the month (yes, you can end up owing them :)). There will be charges after charges after charges, and you won't hear from them for days. Their replies wouldn't provide much useful information when they do reply back to you. They seem more interested in making money for themselves and their contractors than in making money for you.
Here are some issues highlighted with them:
1) Communication:
- Communication becomes extremely slow after signing up with them. Some simple questions can easily take up to 2-3 days to reply back to you. For a problem that could have been resolved in a matter of hours/days or just a week at max, you can easily waste a few weeks here;
- It is very often difficult to get them to act. You'll have to ask them several times. When you ask them to do something, they don't do it, then they have to be asked again and again. It seems that pushing them to do their jobs is always essential;
- There is a lack of horizontal connections between employees. It is very common for one employee to not know what the other is doing;
2) Fees:
- Instead of requiring tenants to pay in one lump sum, they let them pay in chunks (which is very annoying as they will charge you $10 for each chunk payment your tenant make; that means you'll be charged $30-40 more per unit/month if they let them pay in 3-4 chunks);
- Every bill they pay for you will cost you $10 (+$20-40 more per unit/month). To be fair, this fee is pretty well listed on their fees sheet - no complaints here. There is, however, a problem getting them to communicate with tenants so the tenants begin paying bills themselves, so you don't have to spend extra money every month;
- Your account must have a minimum balance of $500. The fee is also listed in the fees sheet, but it raises many questions due to the way it works. Basically, they have the right to spend up to $500 without your approval, so you cannot really stop them from doing so. As soon as there is no more money left (or it's low), you must contribute again. Considering a PM company's main objective should be to represent the landlord's best interests, some expenditures might seem questionable and could have been avoided.
- It seems that their prices are substantially higher than what would normally be charged for the same services. It's better to hire someone else to handle this, but that doesn't seem feasible because you don't decide what should or shouldn't be done if the budget is less than $500. As a result of all of this, what's written in the paragraph above can easily be the outcome.
- You may be charged back for something that was done months ago (that will catch you completely by surprise when you have no money left at the end of the month and may even owe them);
- They also advertise vacant units on rental platforms with weird fees (which you'll find out later when looking for your unit's ad online). As a landlord, it doesn't appear you would receive any of those fees. For example:
- "1 time $129 non-refundable set up fee paid at lease signing"
- "non-refundable pet fee of $200-500 per animal applies to all pets & must be paid prior to or when you pay your first month rent"
- "$30/month required resident benefit package"
Just my two cents.
