Not sure if this is the best category for posting, so apologies in advance.

We’re looking to put our house on the market that is currently a rental, and we’re going to fire our property manager as part of this process. However, we need to get ahold of the tenants in advance of firing the property manager and asked the PM for the tenant’s contact information.

The PM doesn’t know we’ll be firing them, yet they refused to give us the contact information. Their argument is that if we need to get in touch with the tenants we should go through them.

Anyone have any experience with this? Any best practices?

@Michael Shively you should have been given access to the leases. Does it say anything in your contract? Ask them to upload the leases info your owner portal review.

Also, why fire them? If you sell to another investor, having professional property management in place is a good thing. Let the new investor fire them.

Thanks for the response. 

We have the lease, but their contact info is blocked out. Our contract with the PM doesn’t say anything about sharing info one way or the other. 

Fair point about leaving them in place. You may be right. 

Yikes. I am a property manager and if any of the owners I work for asked me for tenant information they would have it in a heartbeat. No reason for me to withhold that information. I would also follow up with "If there is anything I can help with please let me know" I also tell both sides ie. Call tenant to let them know I will be passing their number onto the owner and if they have any questions to let me know. 

If the tenants are at your house just go knock on the door and introduce yourself as the owner and inform them of the situation. They should have copies of the lease agreements. First thing I would do Is meet the tenants and then notify them that you are changing the locks to the doors so that PM doesn't have access. Best of luck!

I agree with Dylan.  If you don't want to go buy their house, then send a letter.

Wow that is so out of line for the PM to not give you info, or even a legit copy of the lease. I think if they tried that with me I'd fire them on the spot. My guess would be they are paranoid of you collecting rents directly and want to be sure they have a way to get their piece of the pie. I can't think of any other reason to withhold tenant info. How many doors do you have with them?

This is a tricky one. I know that different property management companies have their own approaches as far as communication logistics, but I can't say I've heard of an instance where they'd withhold that information from the landlord. Sure they want to protect themselves (in not losing their cut) but that's a bit out of line to completely withhold tenant info. This is one of the many reasons that other landlord solutions are out there because of instances like this. I also understand the predicament that you're in because it isn't like you can just drop by the property without proper notice, yet not having the tenant contact information makes it a challenge to be able to reach them. Could be worth direct mailing if you honestly don't have any other method of contacting them (at this point, I'm assuming you don't have any of their information? Otherwise, could approach doing a LinkedIn search by the name and career/profession they provided; is that anywhere within the lease or was that information blacked out/omitted as well?). @Michael Shively

I probably wouldn't get rid of the PM automatically, but I would get rid of one the minute I saw a blacked out name on a lease. That just isn't reasonable. 

Telling the tenants early is probably the right thing to do - and if they want to buy the place, then it can be an off market deal with no realtor cost.