I have told this story before on this website, but since your post is new, I will repeat my experience with property managers.
We have tried 5 or 6 property management companies. None of them took care of any maintenance. We would get calls in the middle of the night or early morning telling us of some problem (like disposal being stuck) and for us to take care of it (even though they claimed to have a handyman that would take care of things). None of them did anything except collect their commission. We even gave the last property manager our long time tenant that came every Jan/Feb/March for the past 15+ years...so they didn't even have to find a tenant for those months, but got paid their commission...and they treated our tenants like they were trash. This particular property manager had her sister-in-law do the cleaning for $250 (a little excessive, I think, but then again she had to make sure her sister-in-law ate well!) before our long time annual tenant arrived. Our tenant arrived at the house and found the place dirty and disorganized, in addition to several other complaints. They contacted the property manager and were treated poorly. Then our tenant complained to us about how the property manager treated them, which we passed on to our property manager, and the property manager proceeded to tell us off. A few months later, this property manager finally rented it out for 6 months off season (the only time they ever came up with a new tenant). They told me this person was a lovely lady. The lovely lady trashed our place. It is a non-smoking home (which was in the contract) and she burnt cigarette holes in the custom bedspread, new carpeting and furniture. She spilled sticky coke on furniture and the carpeting. She then proceeded to invite her brother and wife and 2 little kids to live with her. The kids broke 4 lamps and drew crayon pictures on our newly painted walls and on some white dressers. She also let her brother bring in a dog, without permission, that also did a lot of damage chewing up things. Upon leaving, they stole sets of towels, sets of sheets, pillows, even laundry basket among other things. We complained to the property manager and was told that she had done a walk through and the house was just fine and she found everything in order. I told her she could not have done a walk through since anyone opening the door would have noticed how the tenant had trashed the place. Unfortunately she had given back the $1000 security deposit. The Property manager refused to take any responsibility. It costs us several thousand of dollars to learn our lesson...never hire a property manager again. We do it ourselves now and everything goes a lot smoother and I have never had a problem since. I do a lot of screening before I decide to rent to someone (which the property managers don't do).
It works a lot better. There might be some descent property managers out there...but after trying a least 5, I gave up.
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