I recently blogged my concerns about the behaviour of some property managers when handing over files to a new agency in a lost management situation. My focus and thoughts now are on the opposite; when a new agency takes over management and places unnecessary pressure on the old agent and potentially misleads a landlord.
In Queensland the current law under the Property Agents and Motor Dealers Act requires a minimum 30 day notice period for termination of managements. In no circumstances can this be a lesser period.
I believe the views are best expressed from an experienced property manager who emailed me in response to my original blog. Her view are set out below.
“When we take a management over from another agent, we never abuse or bag out the other agent and merely focus on what we can do for them; not what their agent didn’t do. We also make a concerted effort to work with the outgoing agent and are happy to abide by their notice period requirements, if longer than 30 days is required by them. We respect that this is part of their agreement with the lessor and would also advise the lessor of this possibility of delay when taking over a new management that is already under management with someone else. We all work within the same legislation and respect their contract terms and we want our new managements to come across smoothly without stress or distress to any party, including the outgoing agent – however it appears that this is not common practice with some other agents.
Our preference is also to end a management with an owner on as good a terms as we can, where possible…. However I believe that “mean” managers as you put it, are also often the ones taking over the management as opposed to losing it.
What we have encountered on a few occasions in the last couple of years has been less than desirable behaviour and a total lack of disrespect by a couple of agents.
One well known agent’s team member turned up unannounced demanding keys and producing a copy of an email appointing them that day. They have then stood in our reception and rung the owner and actively endeavoured to destroy any remnants of our business relationship with the lessor by among other things, advising that our office refused to hand over keys and that no wonder they are taking the management because we are so difficult. When we have called the owner back ourselves to discuss and advise that this notice from the agent in our reception, is the first that we knew about it, they have advised that the property is vacant and the new agent has told them that they don’t have to provide any notice period at all so why are “we” being difficult and refusing to hand over the property.
Another agent who did a similar thing of turning up at one of our offices within an hour of the office receiving notice from the owner, then went to the vacant property, had their locksmith break in and change the locks and then sent an email to the property manager advising of the same and that they had let the property owner know that our agency were thieves (as the remote for the air-con was not at the property) and that if the pm went near the property, they would call the police on them and press charges for tress-passing as well as theft. On contacting the business owner of the office to discuss this, we were told that it was our own fault for mismanaging the property because the tenant owed money. (This tenant had been issued a notice to leave for failure to pay rent and a warrant of possession hearing was pending when they actually vacated.)
I believe that some property managers make it incredibly hard for the “old” agent and that this also has an effect on how our industry is viewed – I’m not sure of many other professions that general practice of building their business is to try and destroy someone else’s reputation through discrediting and demeaning them.
I guess we don’t really need tenants and lessors actively discrediting our industry image when it appears that some of our own industry members are pretty good at doing this themselves.”
Let us hope that these actions are very few and far between for our industry's sake.
No comments:
Post a Comment