On the basis of my personal experiences with the Rental Agents/Property Managers who oversee the rental of Units in my Plan I too am critical; refer my original post on this topic where I stated that “they’re mostly the ones in the Agency who can’t answer telephones, who keep breaking pens, who can’t settle down, and who can’t sell properties — and so they get the job to manage them as they regularly migrate from one Agency to another“.
I should add to that by observing that most Rental Agents:
- don’t acquaint themselves with the Unit’s fixtures, such as the locations of electrical sub-board or the isolator for the water supply, or the operation of the intercom
- don’t supply incoming tenants with a copy of our Plan’s By-Laws and Special By-Laws or of Fair Trading’s “Strata Living” publication as the Act requires, even though both are “agent downloads” on our website
- don’t inspect Units during tenancies
- encourage badly-behaved tenants to voluntarily end their Agreements early with the quid-pro-quo that the Agent won’t place them on TICA (a bad tenants’ database), and so some other Owner/Landlord inherits them
- seem to select tenants on the basis of a social justice agenda, which is fine I suppose provided the tenant is also a potentially good resident of a strata community
- Have never heard of a S119 Notification, and don’t provide them
- Expect the Owners Corporation to attend to every repair and maintenance issue inside Units (and when I refuse, I’m told “every other strata manager does that”; well I’m not and I don’t).
I could go on (and on), but will instead say that the only mitigating circumstance to any of the above could on occasions be the demands of Owner/Landlords for them to get “bums in their beds”.
My original post suggested that Owner/Landlords use an owner-operated Agency where Property Managers are more carefully selected and generally stay around long enough to learn the ropes properly, and under close mentoring by a committed Licensee, but upon reflection I’m even more inclined to Austman’s suggestion that self-management is most definitely the best way to go.
So on balance – with regard to the best interests of both Owner/Landlords and Tenants …… Rental Agents/Property Managers are BARRIERS.