All Forum Posts by: Nancy Sathre-Vogel

I thank you all for your thoughts. I talked with the tenant last night and was stunned. The PM quite literally did NOTHING to collect the unpaid fees. In fact, the tenant was not even aware the fees existed. She "knew" she was paying the rent late every month, but had worked out an arrangement with the previous PM for it - she got paid the first Friday of the month, then on that Monday or Tuesday she got a check from the bank. She had been doing that for three years prior to this new PM taking over and just continued. In her mind, she wasn't even late - because she was just following the same arrangement she had made with the previous PM.

She quite literally had NO CLUE that those fees were building up. None. At all. The PM never once called her to say, "Hey - those late fees are really piling up. You need to get them paid." Never.

Crazy.

We have parted ways - split about 6 weeks ago. I will NEVER deal with this woman again. I've learned a lot from this experience and have a better idea of what kinds of things to look for in the future. Now, I'm just trying to figure out what to do about this mess.

Just found another tidbit. On the contract with the tenant, the rent is listed as $1045 plus the $25 pet rent. On my statement, she lists $1040 every month.

At this point, I am still trying to figure out all the pieces to the puzzle. I heard from my tenant that the PM NEVER followed up about trying to collect the late fees. Never. I will be sitting down with my tenant tonight to hear how this all went down on her side.

It's looking like the PM got money three ways: 
1) She "charged" late fees, never attempted to collect said fees, then just took the entire security deposit.

2) She charged the pet rent every month, and kept 100% of it.

3) Every single maintenance issue came in VERY expensive. As in - WAY more than it should have been. I have no proof that she was pocketing money from the maintenance stuff, but this was the first issue that tipped me off that there was a problem.

I think you are right that the amounts aren't worth what it would take to get it back, but I definitely will be putting out reviews and filing complaints wherever I can.

I have asked the tenant to sit down with me and go over what the expectations were on her end. I suspect the manager was telling me one thing, and telling her something else. I know the tenant is really busy packing and moving (she needs to be out tonight,) but I'm hoping she will sit down with me for 30 minutes so I can get this all sorted out in my mind.

At the very least, I think I should have been getting the pet rent of $25/month, minus the 8% management fee. I didn't get any of that - nor did I know it was being charged.

Is it typical that the owner not have a copy of the tenant lease? When i didn't get it, I assumed that was how things normally worked, so I never asked for it at all. Should I be demanding copies of every document the PM has?

Thanks Marcia. I will be the first to admit that I was naive, and that part of this is my fault. When we first started renting our house in 2008, we had a fantastic manager. She was truly awesome and I trusted her entirely. Unfortunately, she retired in May of 2017, and sold her company to this new person. 

When the new PM came on board, it never crossed my mind to question her. I know now that I should have. I should have done due diligence and looked into her background, but I had had such a good experience with the other PM that I just never thought to do it. I accept responsibility for that. 

However, even with my naivete, this should not have happened. The PM should have been ethical. She should not have been charging pet rent without my knowledge - and keeping it. She should not have let the late fees build up for a whole year. She kept all this from me, and it never occurred to me to ask. I mean - I shouldn't have to ask if she's doing this stuff, right?

As for the tenant eviction... you are right that we probably didn't need to evict her for being late. However, at the same time all this was happening, we were looking for an apartment for our son while he goes to college. A perfect situation was that he would move into the house with some roommates - so kicking out the tenant played into that scenario perfectly. If I could turn back the hands of time and known then what I know now, I might have made a different decision.

Mostly at this point, I have learned my lesson. I don't know that this woman did anything illegal, but most certainly unethical. I want to file complaints wherever I can in order to warn others.

That's my thought. I didn't even know she was charging it - but now that I see it on the ledger, it's one more indication that she is unethical at best.

Here is a side by side comparison of the owner statement I got (on top) and the ledger she kept (bottom).  You can see that she never listed the pet rent or the late fees on my statement.