We’ve all heard the horror stories on programs such as A Current Affair from property owners who take it upon themselves to self-manage their properties, end up with “tenants from hell” and a large bill for cleaning up, damage, and rental arrears.
Just recently this again came to light on the Sunshine Coast where a home owner entrusted a family with his property and through failure on his own behalf to carry out regular routine inspections is now facing clean up and damages totalling over $50,000 not including the unpaid rent the tenants had not paid for over two years!
Of course this is just one example of how things can go bad for owners, and in particular owners who are not keeping ‘on top of things’.
Unfortunately this can also be the case with some agents who do not take responsibility for managing properties properly on behalf of their clients.
We encounter this issue quite often when taking over properties from other agents. Recently, upon taking over a property, we discovered that no real checks had been carried out by the previous agent before approving tenants. The tenants failed to pay their rent, and we received a myriad of calls from neighbours regarding the illegal activities taking place at the property. We successfully proceeded to a Warrant of Possession with police assistance to evict the tenants.
Here at Solutions, we aim to minimise risk to our owners by following strict procedures including:
- ¨ Strict tenant selection criteria with ALL applications that are received into our office.
- ¨ All new tenants undergo a sign-up appointment where their property manager imparts to them the importance of paying rent on time and taking care of the property
- ¨ Our dedicated office manager Carol checks rent payments and arrears daily, and alerts tenants as soon as they are 4 days in arrears
- ¨ Our Property Managers carry out Property Inspections every 17 weeks on every property, and send a detailed report—with photos—to the owner.
By Laura Valenti
Managing Director
Recent Comments