Autumn Property Management (Michigan)
Is anyone familiar with Autumn Property Management in Waterford, MI? They are taking over the PM duties from Proway (which was an arm of Strategic Properties, LLC). One source was optimistic that they'd be more responsive to and communicable with properties owners. It was my understanding that this transition would take place in January, but just yesterday I finally received a PM Agreement via DocuSign from them with essentially the same verbiage the Proway agreement. I'm stuck on the "Fee" Section...Why should I pay a $200 "Lease Renewal Fee" if the current tenant wishes to extend? This is a nominal cost. The second issue is under the "Term" section - Why should I agree to pay a $1000 finder's fee if I chose to sell the property prior to the end of this agreement which extends to 2/28/22? Autumn did NOT place this tenant!?
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
- 3,639
- Votes |
- 7,029
- Posts
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
@Patrick Stone @Geraldine Araneda they are now also terminating owners, claiming they don't have enough staff to manage.
Quote from @Drew Sygit:
@Patrick Stone @Geraldine Araneda they are now also terminating owners, claiming they don't have enough staff to manage.
Hi Drew, yes I got the same notice but I gave them my 60 day notice at the start of August. I'm officially out from under them, but have not received a dime or a statement since August. They say they will settle-up this week??
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
- 3,639
- Votes |
- 7,029
- Posts
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
@Patrick Stone @Geraldine Araneda you may want to report them to the Michigan Board of Real Estate and the Attorney General.
So many bad experiences... either I am too patient or too stupid for waiting so long. I just posted a complaint in the Michigan BBB and already looking for some other PM company to take over. Autumn PM is a total disaster..
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
- 3,639
- Votes |
- 7,029
- Posts
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
@Raul Sales Contact us with any questions, we are familiar with Autumn issues.
In our experience, the #1 mistake owners make when selecting a Property Management Company (PMC) is ASSUMING instead of CONFIRMING.
It's often a case of not doing enough research, as they don't know what they don't know!
Owners mistakenly ASSUME all PMCs offer the exact SAME SERVICES and PERFORM those services EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, so price is the only differentiator.
So, the first question they usually ask a PMC is about fees - instead of asking about services and HOW those services are executed.
EXAMPLE: PMC states they will handle tenant screening – what does that specifically mean? What documents do they require, what credit scores do they allow, how do they verify previous rental history, etc.? You’d be shocked by how little actual screening many PMC’s do!
This also leads owners to ASSUME simpler is better when it comes to management contracts.
The reality is the opposite - if it's not in writing then the PMC doesn't have to provide the service or can charge extra for it!
We have a 14-page management contract that we've added our real experiences to over the years, with the intent of protecting both us AND the landlord. Beyond the Monthly Management, Placement & Maintenance fees, all other fees in our contract are IF EVENT -> THEN fees.
We don’t know any PMCs to recommend in the area mentioned, but since selecting the wrong PMC is usually more harmful than selecting a bad tenant, you might want to read our series about “How to Screen a PMC Better than a Tenant”:
We recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.
EDUCATE YOURSELF - yes, it will take time, but will lead to a selection that better meets your expectations & avoids potentially costly surprises!
P.S. If you just hire the cheapest or first PMC you speak with and it turns into a bad experience, please don’t assume ALL PMC’s are bad and start trashing PMC’s in general. Take ownership of your mistake and learn to do the proper due diligence recommended above😊
For 3+ years we have been helping many, many current / former clients of the topic of this thread. The stories their clients have told us, the information we have gathered in the transition to us for management (or not!), talking with tenants….needless to say it is mind blowing.
The takeaway’s I can share on an open forum:
- Download everything from your portal today. Doesn’t matter if you think you need it or not, get everything
- Knowing how you are being treated, imagine how your tenants and your assets are being treated (or not). We have seen examples of clients being charged for a new roof that was never put on. We have seen examples of clients being told they need a new furnace but all it required was a blower motor. Tenants having similar complaints to owners
- EVERY client that has come over has had identical or extremely similar issues. I don’t know if it helps to know you are not alone in your struggle, in your feelings, in your experience, but you are not. Sad to say, but it is the opposite
- If you signed the management agreement they made clients sign in mid-2022 you likely have a 60 day termination period. Read this section of your agreement and understand that you need to act NOW.
- I know clients that have had to hire lawyers to try and get funds owed back. Start early and start now.
The bottom-line advice I can share to everyone looking to move is to give notice sooner or later (but after you download everything from your portal). Knowing where you are going isn’t as important as starting the clock. It took you months to get to this point, the time for action is now.
I would not waste one second today on filing complaints. That is a secondary task. I understand the anger and frustration, but you need to focus 100% of your attention on making the positive changes necessary for you to regain control of one of (if not the) largest asset(s) you have. Kind of like when you are in an airplane and they tell you to put your mask on first before you help others. In a week or three, after you know where you are going you can come back to filing complaints and warning others. And trust me, for others out there looking, there are already plenty of warning signs about the topic of this thread. You need to focus 100% of your attention right now on your own assets. Then send up the flare warning others.
Not saying we are the right partner for you, but it isn’t a waste of your time to have a call with a local real estate broker, licensed builder & owner of a full-service property management company in Metro Detroit. I am also a client of our services as I am an active 22 year, very active investor myself.
Here to help and assist those we can.
I can't believe that it's been over 2 years since my original post on Autumn. I did have a new manager take over for Monica and I did have one (fairly) productive conversation on the phone with the new PM. My rents generally arrive consistently at the very very end of the month (w/one exception that they skipped a month because they forgot to request section 8 funds from the MSHDA).
That said, I still don't get a timely response from property management. I have the same tenant who refuses to sign a new lease with Autumn (almost 2 years later) and who refuses to pay her water/sewer bill (even though it was expressly stated in original lease). This has cost me thousands of dollars despite getting some initial relief from the rehab co. and funds from MI to offset utility bills during COVID. I've researched (w/o an attorney) the MI requirement to provide an affidavit of tenant responsibility to the municipality, but this ship has sailed with this tenant until I can get them to sign a new lease or boot them out. I have also received absolutely NO help from the City of Dearborn Heights....the water department just states over and over that "water/sewer follow the property" - yes I know! I've left messages/sent emails to the city, the mayor, and they absolutely ignore me!
The PM was supposed to set up a ledger for the tenant to pay her water/sewer...and I've now been asking for an update for two months with nothing......I'm not sure if I should evict the tenant, or move to another management company first to see what they can do....I signed a Property Management Agreement back in 2/21...so I'd have to give them 60-day notice.....I've waited way too long..............venting....sorry.
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
- 3,639
- Votes |
- 7,029
- Posts
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
@Damon Riley you won't get anywhere with the city and the water affavit:(
Even though a Michigan law requires the cities to do so for a 12+ month lease, there is no penalty for cities that do not comply.
The reason - the cities do NOT want to worry about collecting past due water bills! Currently, if a water bill is not paid, the city sells it to the county, then the county puts it on the property taxes with 12% penalties, and if you don't pay the taxes they foreclose.
This tenant has now become "addicted" to not paying water and extermely unlikely to change.
Start eviction now so they will be out by spring - the best time to find a new tenant.
Email us if you have any other questions as we don't do the DM thing here.
Coldwell Banker in Brighton just opened up their property management division. Interestingly enough, they also manage Airbnbs. They have an office in Milford too which is closer to Waterford. The website is TCStayz.com
Quote from @Drew Sygit:
@Damon Riley you won't get anywhere with the city and the water affavit:(
Even though a Michigan law requires the cities to do so for a 12+ month lease, there is no penalty for cities that do not comply.
The reason - the cities do NOT want to worry about collecting past due water bills! Currently, if a water bill is not paid, the city sells it to the county, then the county puts it on the property taxes with 12% penalties, and if you don't pay the taxes they foreclose.
This tenant has now become "addicted" to not paying water and extermely unlikely to change.
Start eviction now so they will be out by spring - the best time to find a new tenant.
Email us if you have any other questions as we don't do the DM thing here.
Hey Drew - Thank you for the advice....writing was certainly 'on the wall'. Hope and wishful thinking are certainly not affective business strategies. I'll keep your info handy.
Ironically ... I was on uTube this weekend and watched a post by Ali Boone on Detroit. Her new contact there is none other than Al Bazzy with Strategy Properties. It blew my mind that Strategy Properties is out there with the same sales pitch and talking about the great work their rehab teams do. I could show you shocking pictures of that not being the case and they were always months late in delivering the final rehab. He talked up the property manager they refer their buyers to. [I'm assuming it's still Autumn Property Management. Everyone knows that Autumn ran Strategy Properties in-house property management team, ProWay, before she started her own company and 30 days later we were all unceremoniously 'assigned' to her new company. I think that's common knowledge, right?]
I have always followed Ali Boone, and learned a lot from her but this was an eye-opener. We connected with Strategy Properties through Real Wealth Network. I naively assumed if someone had an affiliate or preferred vendor they would do a better job of vetting them AND if things went wrong would proactively make things right. Tough and very expensive lesson to learn.
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
- 3,639
- Votes |
- 7,029
- Posts
#2 Managing Your Property Contributor
- Property Manager
- Royal Oak, MI
@Lisa T. no one local has anything good to say about the aforementioned.
Quote from @Lisa T.:
Ironically ... I was on uTube this weekend and watched a post by Ali Boone on Detroit. Her new contact there is none other than Al Bazzy with Strategy Properties. It blew my mind that Strategy Properties is out there with the same sales pitch and talking about the great work their rehab teams do. I could show you shocking pictures of that not being the case and they were always months late in delivering the final rehab. He talked up the property manager they refer their buyers to. [I'm assuming it's still Autumn Property Management. Everyone knows that Autumn ran Strategy Properties in-house property management team, ProWay, before she started her own company and 30 days later we were all unceremoniously 'assigned' to her new company. I think that's common knowledge, right?]
I have always followed Ali Boone, and learned a lot from her but this was an eye-opener. We connected with Strategy Properties through Real Wealth Network. I naively assumed if someone had an affiliate or preferred vendor they would do a better job of vetting them AND if things went wrong would proactively make things right. Tough and very expensive lesson to learn.
Hi Lisa,
Your contribution to the overwhelming dissatisfaction with Autumn Property Management (APM) was an eyeopener. but there are a couple of comments that I don't believe is accurate.
I started with Strategy back in 2015 and just before they spun off the property management division, they created ProWay and sold that to APM. The partnership with Strategy/ProWay APM was very short lived, so Strategy hooked up with Real Property Management (RPM) to manage the investment homes they sold. Yes, some of the tradesmen Strategy used were very poor and I also had a couple experiences with that, however, my complaints were always rectified at Strategy expense and also waved the new tenant fee because if what happened.
I have just parted way with APM and now spending over 10K to bring the property back because of the poor workmanship from trades people when they eventually showed up. They stopped attending to repairs requested by the tenant and not even dealing with the city on certs? I have just completed a complaint with BBB on APM and got no resolve!!
RPM has been wonderful to deal with and get immediate action, best of all is the rent money is deposited within days of them receiving it, before the 8th of the month...APM payments went into the following month.
My wife and I own quite a few properties in the Metro Detroit/Detroit market. We know all to well the pain of bad management. As an aside, RPM who is mentioned in the thread above does not have contractors for Detroit or all cities. They may say they do but check around, read other threads, lots of people have told us privately they don't and as such you should be careful.
Back to my main point, we almost gave up on our real estate investment dream due to poor managers and agents in the Metro Detroit/Detroit Market. We went through quite a few of them. Before throwing in the towel we ended up doing a massive research project. Contacted ~20-25 local managers and asked them all the same questions, a very large number of questions. Got all of their documents, compared everything. We then selected 2 and split our portfolio. After 6-8 months there was a clear winner and we gave them all of our business. They have been our manager now for some years and we could not be happier. We have done everything with them. Lease, release, maintenance, full turns, bought homes, sold homes.
They provide services and information and data that no other local manager provides. I have talked to quite a few former clients of Autumn as well before and after I sent them to who we use and 100% of them are thrilled.
Communication is beyond excellent. They are also investors and know what investors want/need and as such provide us with what we want/need.
Because of the high number of scamming/terrible management companies we are happy to talk to anyone who wants to ask us questions. Investor to investor. We can share our experience, answer questions and give our recommendations as well.
Feel free to send us a message here. We love helping out other investors and saving them from the pain we went through!
Quote from @Patrick Stone:
Quote from @Stephen Allen:
I had the same problem with these companies. They have changed names 3 times and when Autumn took over in December 2020 I lost $8533 both Proway and Autumn say they don't have the money, I am now taking legal against them. Anyone else loose money?
Hi Stephen and all other investors that deal with Autumn Property Management. I'm sure we all have had and are still having bad experiences with APM and if anyone one has consulted an attorney, please lets do this together. They are committing Froud with all their business practices.
Can you give me more information please. I have recently fired APM
Thanks
Quote from @Julian Espino:
Can you give me more information please. I have recently fired APM
Thanks
I just received a notice in the mail that APM filed Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.
They are no longer my PM. I do t believe they owe me anything, but their accounting is so convoluted that it makes it hard to know what they did especially since they took over Proway leases. That was also shady dealing and reasons they moved SOME accounts to APM.. still in business… amazing! And they were a Real Wealth Network affiliate and “hook in.”
Hi all, I’m late to the party as I have endured the same things with this property management. Had been with APM for about 3 years and hoping it was going to be better. I have fires them and would like to take legal action. Any info about this would be appreciated
Thanks
Yes I’m so disappointed with RWN. I just found out today from them after notifying them about Autumn. They did not at least give me a heads up about all the problems related to this PM
Yes I’m so disappointed with RWN. I just found out today from them after notifying them about Autumn. They did not at least give me a heads up about all the problems related to this PM
Quote from @Julian Espino:That’s terrible and not a good way of doing business.. but their model is to probably snag in new investors or OOS.
Yes I’m so disappointed with RWN. I just found out today from them after notifying them about Autumn. They did not at least give me a heads up about all the problems related to this PM
Yes, my relationship with Proway/Autumn (and they tried to get me to sign a new PMA under the name "Alamo" last month) was about as toxic as any business entity that I've ever dealt with. I had way too many issues to name. I'm not surprised that they're going under. I can't say anything positive about them. I'm disappointed in RWN too. In fact someone from RWN emailed me a few months back to see how things were going. I responded with OK, but can you give me some advice on Autumn PM or perhaps some 'real' PM's that you've actually vetted? (I wasn't that snarky, really). I never heard back.
@Kiki Helland@Julian Espino @Damon Riley
I am not surprised at this news of Autumn property management filing Ch 7 bankruptcy. It was clear to us they had major problems within the first few months of their acquisition of Proway Property Management.
Did you not receive communication about these issues from RWN? As soon as we received complaints from investors, we let other investors know. Dozens of RealWealth members transitioned over to RPM Detroit and the feedback we received was night and day.
We had to be careful about how we approached the situation, as Autumn Property management hired an attorney and threatened to sue us for introducing our members to an alternative property management company. Geez...
As you know, Strategy Properties was a former referral partner of RealWealth in Detroit. They were fine initially, until they started to grow too quickly. We discontinued our relationship with them nearly 3 years ago once we started hearing complaints from members.
Remember, we don't own these companies that we refer investors to. Just because everything passes vetting initially doesn't mean things can't change. We are constantly refining our network based on what our thousands of members experience and tell us.
Please reach out to your RealWealth investment counselor if you are ever in a tough situation with one of our teams. We will try to help when we can. And if you receive a "snarky" response from one of our team members at RWN, I want to know immediately!
We care about your success and your experience, while also recognizing we only have so much control over companies we don't own. It's more of a Yelp type situation where our referral partners are there due to great reviews - but that can change, and when it does, the referral partners is removed from our list.
I hope this helps explain the situation. Let me know if you want that referral to RPM
RPM didn’t workout as well. Ended up with squatters and only found out because of neighborhood association blight committee and also trash and debris fines from City of Detroit arrived in the mail.
@Kiki Helland Oh no! Did you let anyone know at RWN? I hadn't heard about this but I personally got my @$$ handed to me in Detroit. We had dozens of properties in our SFR fund and it was very difficult to manage and even sell. Were you able to sell yours?