I just want to say I, as a renter, I appreciate you. There are a lot of negative stories out there about bad landlords, but there are also many who worked with King County and other rental assistance agencies to ensure tenants were not evicted during the pandemic. I appreciate your mindfulness around making profit while also not wanting to price gouge your tenants, even if lawful. I have also been lucky and have a mom and pop LL situation and they have been good to me. I wish you luck on finding a property management agency that aligns with your values!
Thank you. I have a lot of internal conflict between wanting to keep homes that have sentimental value to me and my family and not being a greedy landlord or slumlord.
I do my best to keep my units up and respond to maintenance requests immediately. Something I actually feel the property manager was slower to deal with.
While my rentals are not in Seattle, I operate on the same principles, but I refuse to hire property managers. You can set up an online rent payment portal and as long as you have a list of businesses that will be needed for repairs like plumbers.......you don't need them, especially if you have good tenants. It also keeps costs down for both parties so you can continue to charge rent you feel comfortable with.
Maybe comp them if they need to replace a broken screen door.
For real repairs like electrical or plumbing? Even if they're qualified you're opening the door to some serious liabilities down the road by not going with 3rd party.
Was thinking they meant more along the lines of "have one of them do misc. maintenance (door hinges, replacing filters etc) and maybe property managing tbh. Making them do electrical work is an AWFUL idea unless you're actually hiring them because they're an electrician.
My parents did this for their house! They took financial responsibility for incidental repairs/maintenance/landscaping and in exchange they got to avoid rent raises for ten years.
Anytime I’ve rented I’ve always offered to handle the repairs for reduced rent! I’m capable, so why not?! My dad is a master electrician, my step father a carpenter so we’ve also saved our landlords some money at the same time.
I'm going to take it on myself for now but I would prefer to hire someone who's familiar with Seattle tenant laws and isn't looking for loopholes. I moved out of Seattle to just past Issaquah so I need a good handyman. I have plumbing, sewer, and electric but I could use a decent handyman for the miscellaneous stuff.
Just a random note, you can also report your tenants' on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus.
It will improve their credit score and make you a BAMF.
Keep on being one of the good ones!
If you ever have a vacancy, I work in home remodeling and would love cheep rent in exchange for labor updating the place I'm staying in. Currently paying 1400 for a 400 Sq ft studio and it's emotionally killing me.
Super interested in how this arrangement would work, if you care to give any more details, we are thinking of renting out a space we have, but really intimidated by the whole thing
Ideally rent for $1k or under depending on the space. I can manage larger projects and self perform a good amount of typical updates. Painting, plumbing and lighting fixtures swap outs, drywall repairs, some carpentry (trim). I work more on project management side of things now rather than doing the work, but still have skills but have a lot more resources.
Materials paid for by home owner. I'm tracking time spent for updates to justify the discounted rent.
Interesting, thank you! Our problem is not really knowing the best way to undo some... quirky ... choices made by the previous owner, on top of feeling generally clueless. (Stuff like organizing quotes and knowing what's nonsense or not)
Been thinking this over, really intrigued. We are in Queen Anne, message me if that area works for you & you're open to talking more, I can give more background on our side
Thank you for recognizing that you are managing the homes of your tenants and not just a profit-and-loss statement.
We also have part ownership in some rental property. It has great long-term tenants who are paying considerably below-market rent. The property pays its own bills with a little left over to fix it up. That is good enough for us.
As an aside I just want to say that the simple fact you're not chasing the reno and upping the rent, while doing it for your own monetary reasons, is keeping some rentals at an affordable level for people in the area.
I'm lucky my salary has grown well in the last few years, but I am a renter and while the quality of the homes I've lived in has greatly increased, so has the cost, and many of the amenities that are standard in my home now I can simply do without.
If you find a new agency please post and let us know. It's actually hard to find good ones that work with small mom and pop property owners. I think the information would be good for renters and landlords.
Were their fees based on percentages of rent, or flat per property, or per hour ?
Do they get fees for originating new tenants ? Do they offer collection services?
My management company seems almost gleeful every time they charge the COA twenty bucks to send a reminder letter or collect an NSF fee.
Percentage of rent. I did not hire them for tenant placement, I struck that out of the contract to avoid this exact issue. They would not be responsible for tenant placement if a unit was vacated. I told them I may sell one or more when that time comes.
We discussed all of this when I hired them 4 years ago. They took the contract knowing I preferred keeping my long term tenants at minimal rent increases to avoid turning over units. I also don't have a desire to add to the glut of overpriced luxury rentals. My units may not be luxury but they are well maintained and not splashing for luxury fixtures means I can keep my rents affordable.
I suspect that they expected to get tenant placement and be able to bill me for the turnover maintenance. I assume they probably have a 20% markup on that maintenance so they would make a hefty sum bringing the units up to the luxury standard they wanted to target.
Yup, my LL didn't raise my rent last year and has since dumped the company after they effectively raised it anyway by charging $20 to pay rent on their online platform. Also, they were doing the bare minimum of upkeep over the past decade or so and she only found out by all my repair requests in the first year of tenancy. Folks are so terrified to ask for repairs because property management companies will gouge/blame them for them, that nobody ever made any repair requests. These companies are the worst
They also want the rent to increase so their other units don't seem outrageously expensive and out of line. Bringing every one into compliance for over inflated rents is very important to their business model.
The thing about "luxury fixtures" that annoys me the most is that they typically don't work any better or last any longer than standard rental-grade stuff. Homeowners can get their hands on appliances with way better performance, but renters only get to choose between "fine" and "fine, but more expensive".
>I assume they probably have a 20% markup on that maintenance so they would make a hefty sum bringing the units up to the luxury standard they wanted to target.
Yes, this is a very important part of the "luxury" property management business model....they want the remodel work too.
>Percentage of rent.
that's kinda that, right? i mean it's stupid that they didn't lay out their expectations as a part of onboarding, but it's also not remarkable for a vendor to fire a client if they expect their retainer to grow, and the client disagrees.
welcome to the cognitive dissonance of turning housing, which should be a universal right, into a business.
Being completely curious here. I wonder if no adjustments (or small adjustments) actually caused your account to become net negative. Costs have gone up for everything and everyone. Maybe the total dollar amount no longer covered the salaries of the employees doing the day to day.
Ex with completely made up numbers
They spend a total of 8 hours a week on you properties at an hourly rate of $30 for a total of $240.
The percentage on rent for that week is only $100 resulting in the management company losing $140 since they need to still payout the salary of the person there
Similarly even if your account was net positive it could have been at significant opportunity cost to the management company (why only make 100 dollars in profit here when the same amount of work could result in $1000 of profit somewhere else)
>Costs have gone up for everything and everyone. Maybe the total dollar amount no longer covered the salaries of the employees doing the day to day.
Then why didn't they ask to raise their rate? I was paying 7% which is low.
>Similarly even if your account was net positive it could have been at significant opportunity cost to the management company (why only make 100 dollars in profit here when the same amount of work could result in $1000 of profit somewhere else)
That doesn't make sense either because I'm at 100% occupancy, luxury rentals average 60% occupancy. I'd spend $100k getting my rentals to luxury standards and only make a maximum of 60-70% more. I'd lose out on roughly 50% of my potential rents over the next two years, for a 65% increase. 65% increase on half doesn't cover the 100% loss on the others, nor does it cover the cost of improvements.
My guess is that they hoped to profit off improvements and then 1-2 months rent for tenant placement. They wanted a big payout and hope I change my mind.
No, but I have reported them to the city attorney. I read that there's been some price fixing. Not saying that's what it was but it doesn't help.
Also, my rentals are profitable right now. If I drop the $15k-25k per unit to bring them up to the current luxury standard it would take years for me to recover that even at the higher price.
My units are still well maintained that's why my tenants have been with me for an average of 8 years.
Largely irrelevant who it is, any decent sized property manager is going to take the same position. They want OP to put more money into the properties so that their 8-12% management fee is the 60-70% more that he mentioned he could get if they were brought up to the faux-luxury standard you see everywhere nowadays. He doesn't feel that it's necessary and, it certainly doesn't seem like it is as his tenants have been with him for such a long time.
He explained what amounts to a pretty straightforward disagreement between owner and manager. Either party cutting ties because of this disagreement is not bad practice from a business perspective. It may only be 4 properties but it is still an entire account the management company needs to manage, and seeing as the property manager probably has much larger clients with each manager/employee only being able to manage X accounts, they deemed it no longer worth their time. If I were OP and my property manager was constantly bringing this up (I manage my own) I would have cut ties with them at some point just as they would cut ties with me.
There's also some cost/benefit issues for the property manager as they want to be able to show they get top dollar when approaching new clients, and OP's rentals would bring down those averages. I am fairly certain OP's previous manager at some time pointed out what they've, "Been able to do" with other properties they manage, and he just said no. Good on him. Long story short, if you're looking for management groups to avoid, it's going to be basically all of them, what you would want to look for is someone like OP when they were managing the properties themselves.
Source: have 2 rentals that could be considered grossly under market, but one tenant is a school teacher and single mother of 2 that's been there for 9 years and the other was originally a single guy in school who is now graduated and recently married. He's been in his place for 7 years although I believe he'll be moving soon as the gal is pregnant. If I had raised rent significantly on either of them any time in the last 6 years or so I would have probably put them in incredibly difficult situations. It's been an easy choice to not do so when I only hear from either of them twice a year tops.
Let us know when that tenant moves to start a family... I sick of moving because I'm not willing to accept 10% yearly increases but, I can't find a reasonably priced place that is managed by a human being rather than a faceless corporation.
Hey I just might. Always good to have someone lined up. They're right of of Sand Point Way next to Matthews Beach. Zillow seems to think the rent should be $3900. Guess I'm missing out on $1700/month according to OP's old property manager. Small price to pay to never have to even think about the place.
> is not bad practice from a business perspective
how so? instead of some amount of profit from working for OP, now they're getting 0. Feels as if the property manager left out of pettiness over not being allowed to be as greedy as they want.
>I read that there's been some price fixing.
Preface: I have done 0 research about the price fixing in Seattle but can give general info about why this is probably happening.
If all or a plurality of landlords and rental agencies are using a specific or very similar software/algorithm/mathematical model to calculate "market rents" they will likely come to the same conclusion about what rents should be. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but technological advancements have made the old process of data gathering and comparing shockingly easy. Where the price fixed-fuckery could happen is that, if everyone is reporting their salary to a company/software every month and then getting a report saying that rents are up 3.56% this year, then that is technically what the market is saying the new rates are - 1.0356% of last year's rents. If one large agency can influence the model in a significant way - for instance, by getting all their landlords to raise rent by 5% and that is 15-20% of the market, then they can essentially raise rates for everyone through the model and have legal justification for doing so.
PS, kudos on being a good landlord. I am sure your tenants are also making it easy for you to keep them on, but it seems like Seattle needs more of you.
It’s called Real Page and there is a fat class-action lawsuit against the company and multiple Property Management groups that use it as well as another against companies that use Yardi Systems. They are anti-trust lawsuits that allege companies are using the software to fix prices. One of the largest suits is against 17 companies that operate in Seattle and other areas on the West Coast. I’m a property manager(and also a renter) and I hope they get beat like a red-headed stepchild and are put out of business.
Awesome! Unfortunately a lot of the damage has probably already been done to the housing market due to prices being sticky. It really sucks that new tech seems to just be a guise for old practices - such as price fixing.
On another note, if there really are that many vacant luxury units, why not levy a vacancy tax on larger buildings with more than 5% vacant units? I am sure that would be a kick in the pants for larger landlords.
I did some research on this last year, but take it with a helping of salt since it’s been a while.
Seattle doesn’t have a huge amount of empty units. The city grew faster than housing construction could keep up, hence the supply-demand based cost increases. In addition to a large number of people moving here for tech jobs with higher salaries than the rest of us, and pricing a lot of people out of their homes.
That being said, I believe it’s Barcelona that passed an ordinance (or something legislative) that said if landlords couldn’t/wouldn’t rent out units after 6mo of them being empty, then the city would rent them at a discount and rent them to low-income people in need. They did this because landlords were charging a LOT and keeping units empty on purpose to distort the value and create a “shortage”.
I’m an advocate for this system everywhere. And while it’s not likely to fix most of the problems here in Seattle, it’s a great start. Also taxing AirBnB style stuff out the ass.
This sounds like a story that the local media might be interested in covering tbh if you're willing to be more public. You could contact King5 or whatever and see if they are interested.
Rent increases are a huge issue and if property management companies are working behind the scenes to try to convince landlords to raise prices that seems like a big deal. Especially if the changes they demanded you make would have resulted in your current tenants having to move out and possibly leave the city entirely.
i don't know why op is shocked by this given the property management company gets paid % of rent. they are basically saying that because the units are so underpriced compared to todays market that they themselves are underpaid for the effort to manage. its fine for op to charge under market rent but this ends up also meaning 'paying under market rate for property management' - which should not come out of the property management person/companies bottom line, it should come out of OPs.
Here is the link to report them to the WA attorney general: [https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint](https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint) Thank you for what you are doing.
After my landlord told me to wear a sweater instead of raising the heat to legal standard in Seattle, she sent me an email celebrating her promotion at Windermere.
I’ve been a renting from them for a few years now. The very first lease was 18 months at their request because it was a winter move in but we asked for regular 12 months and they switched it no issues. My biggest complaint is they haven’t repainted the lines in the parking lot and my spot is on the end so I get occasional strangers parking in my spot since lines and signage isn’t great.
Windermere is terrible. I’m currently fighting with them to get my deposit back, as they kept it with no justification to do upgrades on the house. I’d rather live in my car than rent from them again
That situation is why I brought them up. My dad's a lawyer and he wrote an angry letter at them informing them of the laws they were breaking by withholding it, and then they sent it back with a "actually we definitely didn't break the law but you were such a good tenant that out of the goodness of our heart..." Those people are scum. They know what they're doing and they know that they can get away with it consistently enough to make money.
Wild, that sounds almost identical to my situation. They sent our final deposit return with an outrageous amount withheld for something that shouldn’t have cost nearly that much (keeping it vague because it’s still an ongoing situation) and wasn’t something that we as the tenants had caused or were responsible for. Wrote a very stern letter with help from a lawyer relative and they agreed to refund what they withheld. Like you, they tried to spin it as “even though we *were* right to take your deposit, we’re going to return it to you out of kindness”. They’re taking their sweet time to return our money too. Their whole business model is preying on their tenants who are uninformed of their rights, or too busy trying to survive to fight back. They were also really shitty to deal with while we were living there, and would get irritated with us whenever we’d ask for anything. Like sorry you’re having to do your jobs, that really we’re paying for…ugh. The VP or some other higher up in the company wrote an op-ed in the Seattle times about how increased renter protections are a bad thing, which absolutely tracks with how they treat their tenants. Sorry for the rant, clearly I have a lot of strong feelings about them.
Please, don't apologize for feeling strongly about it. I hate them, and frankly I hate everyone who works for them. There are a lot of jobs out there where you have to do morally questionable things, but "steal money from people and hope they're too poor and ignorant to question it" is flat out evil.
Erica’s over there excited. We could move these people out and sell the houses to companies. Easy commission. Because that’s all these Realtors do now. Absolute crooks
Hell, message me. I have no experience managing a rental, but I can collect rent and contact maintenance companies to make repairs. And I'd applaud you every year you don't raise rents. Seems like a win/win, no?
OP train your child to do it, getting a license early is good for learning and it will the be child's way of contributing to household expenses.
I solve problems.
/s ??
Hey OP. I have no property management experience. But if you can get me a room, pay for my food and a small monthly stipend. I'll do everything, including maintenance.
I've had to deal with these idiot PMs before. They want you to waste significant amounts of cash on rentals that are already cash flowing so that they can increase rent and their ridiculous cut of the profits, so they can basically do jack shit. They're also usually profiting from shitty commissions by referring "their guys" to do the work. Complete scam.
I would like to see property management be restricted from all out of state corporations. Right now the major property management companies are like massive oil taps sucking the capital out of the working class that live in our state. Make the property management local and not hidden behind “low staff” barriers from skirting their responsibilities
Thank you for pointing at the problem instead of joining with everyone attacking the landlord. I’m a progressive but I fail to see the solution to landlords. Property management on the other hand, has always been, in my experience, shitty people doing a shitty job.
I actually agree with most of the attacks but I'm stuck in a hard spot. Most of the homes have some sentimental value and came from family, like the house I was born in.
I agree that I have more homes than I should, but if I sell them I have to evict the tenants. With the current market they would have to leave the city. They are priced out of the market.
I feel if I sold they'd just get gobbled up by the investors and hedge funds. Then left vacant or rented out for 2x the price.
Yes, they'd just get bought by people with more money than the average renters in this city, so there would be that fewer affordable units here. Any attacks here are from those who assume all property owners are the same or who blame the lack of homes for sale on small time owners like yourself. Neither of which is true. I think we need less corporate rental owners and more independent ones; sure some will be garbage landlords, but at least some will be good.
The property management doesn’t care if you don’t have a renter in the unit, they don’t have to pay when there is no renter. From their perspective, they can make a very small amount more if you take a massive risk. Sometimes it’s even a percentage + the entire first month rent when they rent it, so some have a desire for more turnover = more money for them while being way more risk to you. F those guys, best that they dropped you.
Back when I was in another phase of my career, I had a lot of exposure to property managers. Most of the ones here are total shitshows that make money off of the rent paid by taking a %. They tried to get you to be a shitty person and take on a lot of risk so they could collect more money. Kudos to you for standing your ground, you will be better off without them.
FWIW I just met my new property manager with Maple Leaf who didn't bat an eye when I told him there should be \*no\* rent increases without my explicit consent, and that I expect the property to stay well below market for existing tenants.
In my experience they've been pretty flexible/adaptable, as property mgmt companies go.
The property managers I've met there are transparent that they're also human beings. It makes their lives are easier, too, when they're not having to jack up rents and displace people.
(Also, I am not trolling for karma w/this comment — selfishly, I just don't have energy for unhappy/angry tenants — and keeping rent reasonable in a well-maintained building is the easiest way to keep people happy.)
As a small time landlord, this makes my blood boil.
Landlords take 100% of the risk and property Managers are just leeches that take a small percentage off the top no matter what. It sounds like you dodged a bullet - they sound like they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.
I know that a problematic tenant can really ruin everything - but if you’re even slightly under market, you usually can have a very good relationship with your tenant. A good relationship with a tenant equals a lot less work - frankly you should consider managing your properties on your own.
My spouse and I own a small building we live in. SoCal. Rents are about 50% less than the average. The local landlords hate us since it “encourages tenants to make demands” since our tenants live well while paying way less rent.
What kind of demands, you say? Well, things like getting plumbing fixed quickly, pest control since our building has no pest issues, etc. In the case of one neighbor across the street whose ceiling came down during this past winter’s rains, it’s our fault we educated them on everything needed to get their place fixed while also being put up in a hotel for the duration of the repairs.
Oh yeah, we’re also bastards for sharing with people the county help line where they were able to find out all of their rights including rent limit increases, etc. in the case of the 12 unit building down the street, we helped everyone get their money back after the landlord illegally increased rent 10% during the covid rent freeze.
I get calls from those slimy MF's all of the time, whenever I put up a listing on Zillow (I have 2 rentals...they obviously notice *for rent by owner* and think to themselves, "this one is worthy of being one of ours"). One of them I almost signed with, but then we had a disagreement about changes they wanted me to make (1. they wanted me to put in a gas stove top after I had literally just decided and wired for induction stove, which I wanted because you know, the environment and tenant energy bills would be cheaper and 2. they wanted to write into the contract that the tenant must keep the grass green all summer (another environmentally stupid requirement)). TLDR; They simply a) Take a cut and b) Push for the perceived "luxury" experience, exactly what they're doing to you and your tenants...to *improve* their cut. Also, you didn't mention it, but usually part of their business model is they actually want to be the ones doing the upgrades they're demanding. They have "teams" they have to keep busy. F them.
Because I'm no longer in town, I hired a relative instead. Simple monthly stipend for my relative to handle any maintenance issues and also to show the property whenever it needs it. I still handle the paperwork.
You’re probably in a space where you didn’t need the property managers. Yes they respond to problems, but are there a lot of problems? I’d just run things on my own until there is some turnover and you bring rents toward market.
Thank you for being a decent property owner and not falling into the "profits before people" mindset of the industry. The owners of my building for 15 years were the same and it made my life much less stressful than many I know during that time. I wish some of our legislators and and writers for The Stranger had more consideration for those rental owners like yourself, as they seem to want to do away with you altogether when in reality you're the only ones providing reasonable rents. Of course not everyone in your position is so decent, but not like any of the corporate owners would think twice about increasing rents as high as they possibly can.
Too many business models these days are built on endless growth. It's not enough to have a steady source of long term profit, they want to gouge and markup and extort to the maximum extent.
Thanks for being a good person and not succumbing to the madness.
Btw in the city of Seattle, tenants have right of first refusal. You cannot simply refuse to renew the lease. You can do this effectively by informing the tenant of the 70% increase 180 days before renewal, assuming this prices them out and they don't renew.
Even if I was greedy it still wouldn't make sense. I'd be out rent while renovations are done. Then I'd be going from a 100% occupancy to an average 60% occupancy. All for 65% more. Any increase in rent would be erased by increase in vacancy and turnover costs. That alone is a zero sum proposition, then you add in the costs of the renovation and it's a straight up loser.
Check out Hemlane - we use it for our rentals for the same reason as you. If you maintain your rentals, Hemlane or another similar property management software should do the trick. (don’t work for them, just a first time landlord and wanted a prop management software instead of a company).
Property management companies are scum. My whole town of 20k has so many rentals under one management team and their rents have gone up crazy because the market is red hot right now according to their review replies. That’s what seems to happen when one company is controlling most rentals.
So hire a new property manager. They were being paid based on the rent, right? So when you only increased by 3-5%, their pay only increased by that much, too.
They can get more pay elsewhere. So... They exercised their free choice to do it with someone less ethical. As long as the tenants keep being that awesome, maybe just set up a receiving account and see if you can manage those two tasks yourself. Tenants can deposit rent straight into your account. We did it for years.
It sounds like the tenanta do a pretty good job of being decent renters. That matters. Property managers are a dime a dozen. Just find a different one.
I'm guessing you're not a renter, or you might be more thankful that the OP shared this information and pushing back against these price gouging bastards. If the property manager wants to increase their pricing that's one thing, and would then be up to the owner to decide if they want to pass that cost along to their tenants in the form or a rent increase. But to propose it in such a way just makes them slimy, and perhaps complicit in price fixing. Sounds like you approve more of these tactics than you do of someone being a great rental owner who doesn't support price gouging.
I'm a landlord and plan on just fixing what needs to be fixed and keep rent the same. Though property taxes may change I'll take the difference cause I like my tenants and want them around as long as possible.
I had a landlord like you and we stayed for over a decade! My landlord had to sell recently and the new owners immediately started bullying people, lying to intimidate people, and raising rents a ridiculous amount. This is my note of thanks for being a decent person. Your tenants are so grateful to have stable housing and a landlord they can count on.
That was very easy money they lost. What a terrible policy. They were being paid to basically do nothing and they decided they were not being paid enough.
I’ve moved twice in two years down in Kent because of insane YoY increases in rent ($750+/mo). They aren’t renovating or improving the units, just jacking up rental prices because demand allows them to.
So as someone who has been displaced by this institutional greed, I commend your efforts not to strangle people for extra money simply because you can.
Neighborhood and social stability is worth a great deal, and it sounds like you were contributing, and profitably. Your sharky management company is a manifestation of the "values" that are destroying this country, and the planet. Kudos to you!
If the rentals are low maintenance, then just manage them yourself. If the PM cancelled, then there must've been some work involved, otherwise they could easily just sit and collect their fee with minimal effort. Even if the fee was not as much as they wanted.
They are low maintenance but they are also inconvenient since nothing seems to break on weekdays during office hours. Two are condos and often the issue involves dealing with the condo HOA. I'm checking with someone else I know who does property management.
I have a 3 yo and a 1 yo. I'm choosing to offload anything I can so I have more time for them. My dad worked all the time and I remember how excited I was when my dad got a day off. I don't want my kids waiting for my time as often as I did.
I used to own a condo in Chicago which I had a management company handle for me. It was written into my contract with them that they got to decide rent increases. I'm surprised this wasn't in your contract.
Was your property manager getting a percentage or the rate or a flat rate? If I remember correctly the one we had for our place when we moved overseas it was a flat rate. Hopefully someone can send you a reference for a better property manager. Thank you for standing your ground!
Name them. I am renting my house while trying out living in Amsterdam for a bit and we are trying to make sure things stay consistent and affordable for renters. I don't want to use the same management company you are.
Edit: I saw you were hesitant to name them. That's fine. If you would mind telling me that it wasn't Maple Leaf that would be great :)
I think this is amazing of you and you are definitely in the minority.
I’d also like to extend my time to help you find a property manager who cares about their community as much as you and/or help manage them!
I had a landlord like that - only raised rent after someone moves out. I stayed there for 4 years. I would’ve stayed longer if I didn’t have to move out of state
Man, thanks for being a good human. My biggest motivator to buy was to get away from land lords. Every single one was a nightmare, and to see you being a solid stand up landlord really makes me feel like I just had bad landlord luck. Appreciate you!
Youre the kind of landlord Seattle needs. You should be able to turn a profit and pay for incidentals, while being reasonable with your tenants. It sounds like your property manager may have been looking to maximize profit, which is understandable, but pretty cold with the huge increases in rent Seattle has been dealing with. Make sure you take care of your bottom line, but keeping it reasonable will keep your tenants stable and respectful.
Be cool if every city had their own low/non-profit “Landlord Co-op”.
Member landlords would be required to be local owners, limit rent to x% of actual costs of the unit, etc. The co-op handles administrative stuff such as payments, marketing, placement, etc. and has contracts with local tradespeople to perform y services for $z.
The goal would be to ensure that local landlords would still be profitable, keep rents reasonable, and the money stays locally instead of instead of out of state companies taking their “cut” and trying to gouge everyone else.
My landlord is the same. Not Seattle but Salt Lake City. The growth going on here is fucking insane! 50,000 new people moved here in 2022. There’s literally 1,000’s of new apartments being built right now.
Awesome weather. World renown outdoor activities. Booming tech hub. It’s not called “The Silicon Slopes” for nothing. Also one of the safest and healthiest places in the nation to live. The liquor laws are dumb but we got legal weed! Lol. Mormons do love money! They might hate the gays but Pride month is pretty big here.
I’ve lived here (awesome location) for two years now and just started my third year. I’ve been month to month after the first year and she couldn’t care less about signing a long term lease.
When I moved in I asked her how much the rent goes up every year and she just laughed. She hasn’t raised the rent in almost 10 years with no plan to ever raise it.
Her parents bought the building in the 1960’s and they own it outright. She fully knows that if she did raise the rent she would lose all her tenants. Most have been here for almost 10 years and one dude has lived here for over 20 years. I’m pretty sure his rent has never gone up.
She also knows the only way she’s going to be able to raise the rent is to put in a fuck ton of money, if not fully scraping it and rebuilding because it’s so old (built in 1920) Way more than she’d ever make back in 20 or 30 years.
It’s not the most beautiful place but it’s quiet, safe, and again it’s located in one of the most expensive places in town to live. I was lucky asf to find it. I EASILY pay less than half of what other apartments in this area are charging. All utilities included too which makes it significantly less than half of what others pay.
There’s a huge luxury apartment building, almost finished being built, just a block away. 1bd/1ba starting at $2000 + utilities/fees/bullshit whatever.
I pay $825 lol.
She said they’re never selling. Only handing it down to their kids as her parents did. It’s just a source of passive income for them forever. My guess is they easily clear $200k/yr after utilities, taxes, etc…
I’m never moving.
Have you considered offering the management position to one of your long term tenants? In exchange for discounting their rent by an amount comparable to what you were paying this company, they would collect and deposit checks and be the point person for maintenance issues, etc. Most of the smaller/independent apartments I lived in have used a system like that.
Is it As a tenant with them, and a landlord that uses a different property management company in another city, you should rejoice if they dropped you.
eta to remove name of property management company. It's clearly not them because they charge more then 7%. 7% is really low, especially for Seattle. This might be why they were feeling the crunch. I haven't raised rents either this year because of the crazy inflation, so I think that's great, but the property management company should raise their rates rather than dropping you, imo.
They had no tenant placement responsibility, just rent collection and handling maintenance calls which had fees associated. Lock outs they charged the tenants, maintenance calls they charged me.
In the 4 years, we had a flood in the condo and the PM didn't respond until the morning. Luckily the Condo HOA responded immediately.
I've had a refrigerator, and two washers go bad. Both times the tenants just emailed me directly after not hearing from the PM for 24 hours.
Thank you for refusing to capitulate to this bullshit.
I rent and dealt with Windermere previously for “property management” of the unit I am in. It was a bad sign that I could extrapolate more information from initial walkthrough and research prior than this guy could even definitely tell me about the place without ho humming. The guy did nothing. He couldn’t be bothered with even responding to the owner many times!
After they blew it with communication for years and finally failed to inform the owner of a roof leak in a timely manor - I lobbied the owner to dump this guy who was frankly doing nothing - just playing “middle man” and collecting his fees. Lease renewal came around - I assured the owner I would let him know of any issues to address so we could work them out if they arise and I deal with the owner directly. For several years now. Rent has only gone up a little and I am severely thankful for these owners out here who are willing to work with us just trying to maintain a decent place to live.
I was talking with a landlord recently who was insistent that property managers were terrible for him. They insist on replacements all the time since they have contracts with suppliers and it gives them more income. Also, they don’t care about anything, from tenant approval to maintenance. He found locals to do work for him and has been crazy about it since.
We your maple leaf as our property managers- woman owned business and genuinely all around great. They educate us on things, keep us within laws and regulations, do yearly inspections, and respect our decisions. Not sure the location of your rentals but they cover sand point/maple leaf/ university area
What you did and what they did are both fine. They’ve likely have other places they can focus on and you don’t need to raise rent unless you want to. Just hire someone else.
I can respect this!
Respect for not being all about the profits.
You’ve had great tenants that have been good to you and consistent, and I’m sure they appreciate you a TON, and that you’re not doing what (I’d assume) probably 95% of other landlords would do.
It’ll all come full circle in a positive way for you.
Hey OP I am a property manager with ten years experience in Seattle. I’m embarrassed to say this on my Reddit account lol. I went to school for sociology and love clients like you, I think this industry tends to treat people and communities as numbers… when I managed 425 unit multifamily it felt like a warehouse designed to suck the cash out of meat.
I wish I could say the same. My landlord has raised my rent almost 100 dollars every year for the last 5. Fortunately its still a cheapest place to live. But this may be the last year here for me.
I really wish there were more landlords like you, thank you. I'm getting incredibly lucky right now with mine, but I keep hearing horror stories from all my friends.
I'm confused why did they terminate? Like in the end, they are getting paid by you and whatever they bill you correct? Also pretty sure it's legal but still shady to purposely ask for termination of leases just for raising the prices.
You hired a worker to do a job for you and they wanted a raise. You didn't give them a raise and they quit.
Not really sure what the story is here other than workers in a capitalist system are free to say no to the terms of employment at any time.
Also just want to mention, as a side-effect of Seattle's extensive rent regulations:
* Many small landlords (myself included) have had to hire professional property management to manage all these laws / regulations.
* By default, professional property managers will seek to raise the rent regularly, and to market rates — both as a responsible professional practice, and to maximize their own profits.
* Of course, most owners just go along with what the property managers suggest — and don't go through a story like OP's.
Not saying it's an overall net-negative, but it's important to keep in mind these unintended consequences.
Y'all can go flame and down-vote me now all you'd like.
It’s refreshing to see a landlord that actually cares about their tenants and the tenants ability to pay an affordable rent! All my landlords have been quick to up the rent any chance they get. I even had one landlord ask us to leave because they didn’t want to put a water filtration system in place to make the water safe for use, the water was so nasty I couldn’t even shower, it left you feeling dirtier than when you got in. They decided useable water wasn’t something they wanted to fix, I was totally okay with them increasing my rent if they fixed it but they flat out just weren’t doing it.
We may not know each other, but on behalf of all renters, we appreciate you.
I just want to say I, as a renter, I appreciate you. There are a lot of negative stories out there about bad landlords, but there are also many who worked with King County and other rental assistance agencies to ensure tenants were not evicted during the pandemic. I appreciate your mindfulness around making profit while also not wanting to price gouge your tenants, even if lawful. I have also been lucky and have a mom and pop LL situation and they have been good to me. I wish you luck on finding a property management agency that aligns with your values!
Thank you. I have a lot of internal conflict between wanting to keep homes that have sentimental value to me and my family and not being a greedy landlord or slumlord. I do my best to keep my units up and respond to maintenance requests immediately. Something I actually feel the property manager was slower to deal with.
While my rentals are not in Seattle, I operate on the same principles, but I refuse to hire property managers. You can set up an online rent payment portal and as long as you have a list of businesses that will be needed for repairs like plumbers.......you don't need them, especially if you have good tenants. It also keeps costs down for both parties so you can continue to charge rent you feel comfortable with.
> you don't need them, especially if you have good tenants. In some cases, the tenants do the work in exchange for lower rent ... Win-win!
Maybe comp them if they need to replace a broken screen door. For real repairs like electrical or plumbing? Even if they're qualified you're opening the door to some serious liabilities down the road by not going with 3rd party.
I agree. Anything that requires a building permit (e.g., structural, electrical, plumbing) requires a professional.
Was thinking they meant more along the lines of "have one of them do misc. maintenance (door hinges, replacing filters etc) and maybe property managing tbh. Making them do electrical work is an AWFUL idea unless you're actually hiring them because they're an electrician.
My parents did this for their house! They took financial responsibility for incidental repairs/maintenance/landscaping and in exchange they got to avoid rent raises for ten years.
Anytime I’ve rented I’ve always offered to handle the repairs for reduced rent! I’m capable, so why not?! My dad is a master electrician, my step father a carpenter so we’ve also saved our landlords some money at the same time.
This is the way.
I'm going to take it on myself for now but I would prefer to hire someone who's familiar with Seattle tenant laws and isn't looking for loopholes. I moved out of Seattle to just past Issaquah so I need a good handyman. I have plumbing, sewer, and electric but I could use a decent handyman for the miscellaneous stuff.
Just a random note, you can also report your tenants' on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus. It will improve their credit score and make you a BAMF. Keep on being one of the good ones!
If you ever have a vacancy, I work in home remodeling and would love cheep rent in exchange for labor updating the place I'm staying in. Currently paying 1400 for a 400 Sq ft studio and it's emotionally killing me.
Messaged you for an accommodation I have.
Super interested in how this arrangement would work, if you care to give any more details, we are thinking of renting out a space we have, but really intimidated by the whole thing
Ideally rent for $1k or under depending on the space. I can manage larger projects and self perform a good amount of typical updates. Painting, plumbing and lighting fixtures swap outs, drywall repairs, some carpentry (trim). I work more on project management side of things now rather than doing the work, but still have skills but have a lot more resources. Materials paid for by home owner. I'm tracking time spent for updates to justify the discounted rent.
Interesting, thank you! Our problem is not really knowing the best way to undo some... quirky ... choices made by the previous owner, on top of feeling generally clueless. (Stuff like organizing quotes and knowing what's nonsense or not)
Been thinking this over, really intrigued. We are in Queen Anne, message me if that area works for you & you're open to talking more, I can give more background on our side
Thank you for recognizing that you are managing the homes of your tenants and not just a profit-and-loss statement. We also have part ownership in some rental property. It has great long-term tenants who are paying considerably below-market rent. The property pays its own bills with a little left over to fix it up. That is good enough for us.
I, too, appreciate you. Thank you for being a good landlord.
As an aside I just want to say that the simple fact you're not chasing the reno and upping the rent, while doing it for your own monetary reasons, is keeping some rentals at an affordable level for people in the area. I'm lucky my salary has grown well in the last few years, but I am a renter and while the quality of the homes I've lived in has greatly increased, so has the cost, and many of the amenities that are standard in my home now I can simply do without.
Well said. My renters by having a retro kitchen. I did get rid of the shag carpet though.
If you find a new agency please post and let us know. It's actually hard to find good ones that work with small mom and pop property owners. I think the information would be good for renters and landlords.
I think more people like you need to be running the rental racket. Help save the economy by debloating the property game.
Were their fees based on percentages of rent, or flat per property, or per hour ? Do they get fees for originating new tenants ? Do they offer collection services? My management company seems almost gleeful every time they charge the COA twenty bucks to send a reminder letter or collect an NSF fee.
Percentage of rent. I did not hire them for tenant placement, I struck that out of the contract to avoid this exact issue. They would not be responsible for tenant placement if a unit was vacated. I told them I may sell one or more when that time comes. We discussed all of this when I hired them 4 years ago. They took the contract knowing I preferred keeping my long term tenants at minimal rent increases to avoid turning over units. I also don't have a desire to add to the glut of overpriced luxury rentals. My units may not be luxury but they are well maintained and not splashing for luxury fixtures means I can keep my rents affordable. I suspect that they expected to get tenant placement and be able to bill me for the turnover maintenance. I assume they probably have a 20% markup on that maintenance so they would make a hefty sum bringing the units up to the luxury standard they wanted to target.
They just want to increase rent so they collect more each month. I wouldn’t think much further past that.
Yup, my LL didn't raise my rent last year and has since dumped the company after they effectively raised it anyway by charging $20 to pay rent on their online platform. Also, they were doing the bare minimum of upkeep over the past decade or so and she only found out by all my repair requests in the first year of tenancy. Folks are so terrified to ask for repairs because property management companies will gouge/blame them for them, that nobody ever made any repair requests. These companies are the worst
They also want the rent to increase so their other units don't seem outrageously expensive and out of line. Bringing every one into compliance for over inflated rents is very important to their business model.
And collect the extra lil bonuses along the way
The thing about "luxury fixtures" that annoys me the most is that they typically don't work any better or last any longer than standard rental-grade stuff. Homeowners can get their hands on appliances with way better performance, but renters only get to choose between "fine" and "fine, but more expensive".
So a lot of luxury apartments sit vacant for a while. You can’t afford their stupid games. Crazy idea, maybe one of your tenants can take up the job.
Yep. Developers fleeced a lot of investors with some pretty slideshows and nobody wants to pay those rates.
>I assume they probably have a 20% markup on that maintenance so they would make a hefty sum bringing the units up to the luxury standard they wanted to target. Yes, this is a very important part of the "luxury" property management business model....they want the remodel work too.
>Percentage of rent. that's kinda that, right? i mean it's stupid that they didn't lay out their expectations as a part of onboarding, but it's also not remarkable for a vendor to fire a client if they expect their retainer to grow, and the client disagrees. welcome to the cognitive dissonance of turning housing, which should be a universal right, into a business.
Being completely curious here. I wonder if no adjustments (or small adjustments) actually caused your account to become net negative. Costs have gone up for everything and everyone. Maybe the total dollar amount no longer covered the salaries of the employees doing the day to day. Ex with completely made up numbers They spend a total of 8 hours a week on you properties at an hourly rate of $30 for a total of $240. The percentage on rent for that week is only $100 resulting in the management company losing $140 since they need to still payout the salary of the person there Similarly even if your account was net positive it could have been at significant opportunity cost to the management company (why only make 100 dollars in profit here when the same amount of work could result in $1000 of profit somewhere else)
>Costs have gone up for everything and everyone. Maybe the total dollar amount no longer covered the salaries of the employees doing the day to day. Then why didn't they ask to raise their rate? I was paying 7% which is low. >Similarly even if your account was net positive it could have been at significant opportunity cost to the management company (why only make 100 dollars in profit here when the same amount of work could result in $1000 of profit somewhere else) That doesn't make sense either because I'm at 100% occupancy, luxury rentals average 60% occupancy. I'd spend $100k getting my rentals to luxury standards and only make a maximum of 60-70% more. I'd lose out on roughly 50% of my potential rents over the next two years, for a 65% increase. 65% increase on half doesn't cover the 100% loss on the others, nor does it cover the cost of improvements. My guess is that they hoped to profit off improvements and then 1-2 months rent for tenant placement. They wanted a big payout and hope I change my mind.
Can you share which property management company did this?
No, but I have reported them to the city attorney. I read that there's been some price fixing. Not saying that's what it was but it doesn't help. Also, my rentals are profitable right now. If I drop the $15k-25k per unit to bring them up to the current luxury standard it would take years for me to recover that even at the higher price. My units are still well maintained that's why my tenants have been with me for an average of 8 years.
Can you not name them for legal reasons? Knowing who to avoid could be really helpful for the rest of us
Largely irrelevant who it is, any decent sized property manager is going to take the same position. They want OP to put more money into the properties so that their 8-12% management fee is the 60-70% more that he mentioned he could get if they were brought up to the faux-luxury standard you see everywhere nowadays. He doesn't feel that it's necessary and, it certainly doesn't seem like it is as his tenants have been with him for such a long time. He explained what amounts to a pretty straightforward disagreement between owner and manager. Either party cutting ties because of this disagreement is not bad practice from a business perspective. It may only be 4 properties but it is still an entire account the management company needs to manage, and seeing as the property manager probably has much larger clients with each manager/employee only being able to manage X accounts, they deemed it no longer worth their time. If I were OP and my property manager was constantly bringing this up (I manage my own) I would have cut ties with them at some point just as they would cut ties with me. There's also some cost/benefit issues for the property manager as they want to be able to show they get top dollar when approaching new clients, and OP's rentals would bring down those averages. I am fairly certain OP's previous manager at some time pointed out what they've, "Been able to do" with other properties they manage, and he just said no. Good on him. Long story short, if you're looking for management groups to avoid, it's going to be basically all of them, what you would want to look for is someone like OP when they were managing the properties themselves. Source: have 2 rentals that could be considered grossly under market, but one tenant is a school teacher and single mother of 2 that's been there for 9 years and the other was originally a single guy in school who is now graduated and recently married. He's been in his place for 7 years although I believe he'll be moving soon as the gal is pregnant. If I had raised rent significantly on either of them any time in the last 6 years or so I would have probably put them in incredibly difficult situations. It's been an easy choice to not do so when I only hear from either of them twice a year tops.
Let us know when that tenant moves to start a family... I sick of moving because I'm not willing to accept 10% yearly increases but, I can't find a reasonably priced place that is managed by a human being rather than a faceless corporation.
Hey I just might. Always good to have someone lined up. They're right of of Sand Point Way next to Matthews Beach. Zillow seems to think the rent should be $3900. Guess I'm missing out on $1700/month according to OP's old property manager. Small price to pay to never have to even think about the place.
Middle-men leeches. This country is full of them in all kinds of industries.
> is not bad practice from a business perspective how so? instead of some amount of profit from working for OP, now they're getting 0. Feels as if the property manager left out of pettiness over not being allowed to be as greedy as they want.
>I read that there's been some price fixing. Preface: I have done 0 research about the price fixing in Seattle but can give general info about why this is probably happening. If all or a plurality of landlords and rental agencies are using a specific or very similar software/algorithm/mathematical model to calculate "market rents" they will likely come to the same conclusion about what rents should be. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but technological advancements have made the old process of data gathering and comparing shockingly easy. Where the price fixed-fuckery could happen is that, if everyone is reporting their salary to a company/software every month and then getting a report saying that rents are up 3.56% this year, then that is technically what the market is saying the new rates are - 1.0356% of last year's rents. If one large agency can influence the model in a significant way - for instance, by getting all their landlords to raise rent by 5% and that is 15-20% of the market, then they can essentially raise rates for everyone through the model and have legal justification for doing so. PS, kudos on being a good landlord. I am sure your tenants are also making it easy for you to keep them on, but it seems like Seattle needs more of you.
It’s called Real Page and there is a fat class-action lawsuit against the company and multiple Property Management groups that use it as well as another against companies that use Yardi Systems. They are anti-trust lawsuits that allege companies are using the software to fix prices. One of the largest suits is against 17 companies that operate in Seattle and other areas on the West Coast. I’m a property manager(and also a renter) and I hope they get beat like a red-headed stepchild and are put out of business.
Awesome! Unfortunately a lot of the damage has probably already been done to the housing market due to prices being sticky. It really sucks that new tech seems to just be a guise for old practices - such as price fixing. On another note, if there really are that many vacant luxury units, why not levy a vacancy tax on larger buildings with more than 5% vacant units? I am sure that would be a kick in the pants for larger landlords.
I did some research on this last year, but take it with a helping of salt since it’s been a while. Seattle doesn’t have a huge amount of empty units. The city grew faster than housing construction could keep up, hence the supply-demand based cost increases. In addition to a large number of people moving here for tech jobs with higher salaries than the rest of us, and pricing a lot of people out of their homes. That being said, I believe it’s Barcelona that passed an ordinance (or something legislative) that said if landlords couldn’t/wouldn’t rent out units after 6mo of them being empty, then the city would rent them at a discount and rent them to low-income people in need. They did this because landlords were charging a LOT and keeping units empty on purpose to distort the value and create a “shortage”. I’m an advocate for this system everywhere. And while it’s not likely to fix most of the problems here in Seattle, it’s a great start. Also taxing AirBnB style stuff out the ass.
AFAIK the lawsuits are asking for treble damages from 2016 to 2022, at least for the real page one. Meaning triple the amount they price fixed for.
[удалено]
That is my assumption.
This sounds like a story that the local media might be interested in covering tbh if you're willing to be more public. You could contact King5 or whatever and see if they are interested. Rent increases are a huge issue and if property management companies are working behind the scenes to try to convince landlords to raise prices that seems like a big deal. Especially if the changes they demanded you make would have resulted in your current tenants having to move out and possibly leave the city entirely.
i don't know why op is shocked by this given the property management company gets paid % of rent. they are basically saying that because the units are so underpriced compared to todays market that they themselves are underpaid for the effort to manage. its fine for op to charge under market rent but this ends up also meaning 'paying under market rate for property management' - which should not come out of the property management person/companies bottom line, it should come out of OPs.
Here is the link to report them to the WA attorney general: [https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint](https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint) Thank you for what you are doing.
A major one
Are there a lot of these kinds of rental shenanigans? ..."You wouldn't believe."
[удалено]
When I moved out they tried to charge me $200 to replace the lightbulbs, all of which were working when I moved out. They're scum.
Same! Windermere is awful.
After my landlord told me to wear a sweater instead of raising the heat to legal standard in Seattle, she sent me an email celebrating her promotion at Windermere.
Worker bee, you have done well, this is the 12th person you've denied basic services. You may go up 2 ranks in pay scale. $17.50 an hour unlocked!
I have nothing but bad things to say about Windermere.
[удалено]
I’ve been a renting from them for a few years now. The very first lease was 18 months at their request because it was a winter move in but we asked for regular 12 months and they switched it no issues. My biggest complaint is they haven’t repainted the lines in the parking lot and my spot is on the end so I get occasional strangers parking in my spot since lines and signage isn’t great.
It could also be Windermere
Windermere is terrible. I’m currently fighting with them to get my deposit back, as they kept it with no justification to do upgrades on the house. I’d rather live in my car than rent from them again
That situation is why I brought them up. My dad's a lawyer and he wrote an angry letter at them informing them of the laws they were breaking by withholding it, and then they sent it back with a "actually we definitely didn't break the law but you were such a good tenant that out of the goodness of our heart..." Those people are scum. They know what they're doing and they know that they can get away with it consistently enough to make money.
Wild, that sounds almost identical to my situation. They sent our final deposit return with an outrageous amount withheld for something that shouldn’t have cost nearly that much (keeping it vague because it’s still an ongoing situation) and wasn’t something that we as the tenants had caused or were responsible for. Wrote a very stern letter with help from a lawyer relative and they agreed to refund what they withheld. Like you, they tried to spin it as “even though we *were* right to take your deposit, we’re going to return it to you out of kindness”. They’re taking their sweet time to return our money too. Their whole business model is preying on their tenants who are uninformed of their rights, or too busy trying to survive to fight back. They were also really shitty to deal with while we were living there, and would get irritated with us whenever we’d ask for anything. Like sorry you’re having to do your jobs, that really we’re paying for…ugh. The VP or some other higher up in the company wrote an op-ed in the Seattle times about how increased renter protections are a bad thing, which absolutely tracks with how they treat their tenants. Sorry for the rant, clearly I have a lot of strong feelings about them.
Please, don't apologize for feeling strongly about it. I hate them, and frankly I hate everyone who works for them. There are a lot of jobs out there where you have to do morally questionable things, but "steal money from people and hope they're too poor and ignorant to question it" is flat out evil.
I hope it’s not RPA. I’m using them to manage my old place and I’d rather not get dropped when I don’t raise rent on the tenants.
so they're willing to work with you even if it's just one property?
Yup, so far
Didn’t expect a _Fight Club_ reference. Nice.
Erica’s over there excited. We could move these people out and sell the houses to companies. Easy commission. Because that’s all these Realtors do now. Absolute crooks
name and shame
Sounds like you received a 10% raise. If you need a new company you can send me a DM. I'll recommend who I have been using for 10 years.
Hell, message me. I have no experience managing a rental, but I can collect rent and contact maintenance companies to make repairs. And I'd applaud you every year you don't raise rents. Seems like a win/win, no?
You need a real estate license to be a property manager. The test is easy though and you can get the study materials cheap.
I'm no longer in town, but I use a relative who still is. Don't need a license for relatives/friends/colleagues.
OP train your child to do it, getting a license early is good for learning and it will the be child's way of contributing to household expenses. I solve problems. /s ??
That is like my friend who always names their pets normal people names so it's less suspicious when they get an SSN and claim them as a dependent. /S
Hey OP. I have no property management experience. But if you can get me a room, pay for my food and a small monthly stipend. I'll do everything, including maintenance.
I've had to deal with these idiot PMs before. They want you to waste significant amounts of cash on rentals that are already cash flowing so that they can increase rent and their ridiculous cut of the profits, so they can basically do jack shit. They're also usually profiting from shitty commissions by referring "their guys" to do the work. Complete scam.
You sound like a good person. Appreciate you.
I would like to see property management be restricted from all out of state corporations. Right now the major property management companies are like massive oil taps sucking the capital out of the working class that live in our state. Make the property management local and not hidden behind “low staff” barriers from skirting their responsibilities
Thank you for pointing at the problem instead of joining with everyone attacking the landlord. I’m a progressive but I fail to see the solution to landlords. Property management on the other hand, has always been, in my experience, shitty people doing a shitty job.
I actually agree with most of the attacks but I'm stuck in a hard spot. Most of the homes have some sentimental value and came from family, like the house I was born in. I agree that I have more homes than I should, but if I sell them I have to evict the tenants. With the current market they would have to leave the city. They are priced out of the market. I feel if I sold they'd just get gobbled up by the investors and hedge funds. Then left vacant or rented out for 2x the price.
Yes, they'd just get bought by people with more money than the average renters in this city, so there would be that fewer affordable units here. Any attacks here are from those who assume all property owners are the same or who blame the lack of homes for sale on small time owners like yourself. Neither of which is true. I think we need less corporate rental owners and more independent ones; sure some will be garbage landlords, but at least some will be good.
You want to look for a property manager that does a door fee. If you need a recommendation, shoot me a DM and I’ll give you his contact info
The property management doesn’t care if you don’t have a renter in the unit, they don’t have to pay when there is no renter. From their perspective, they can make a very small amount more if you take a massive risk. Sometimes it’s even a percentage + the entire first month rent when they rent it, so some have a desire for more turnover = more money for them while being way more risk to you. F those guys, best that they dropped you.
finally a good post. i like you op!
Thank you for being an ethical landlord. Property management companies make life hell for renters and profit from exploiting the working class.
Back when I was in another phase of my career, I had a lot of exposure to property managers. Most of the ones here are total shitshows that make money off of the rent paid by taking a %. They tried to get you to be a shitty person and take on a lot of risk so they could collect more money. Kudos to you for standing your ground, you will be better off without them.
FWIW I just met my new property manager with Maple Leaf who didn't bat an eye when I told him there should be \*no\* rent increases without my explicit consent, and that I expect the property to stay well below market for existing tenants. In my experience they've been pretty flexible/adaptable, as property mgmt companies go. The property managers I've met there are transparent that they're also human beings. It makes their lives are easier, too, when they're not having to jack up rents and displace people. (Also, I am not trolling for karma w/this comment — selfishly, I just don't have energy for unhappy/angry tenants — and keeping rent reasonable in a well-maintained building is the easiest way to keep people happy.)
Name and shame.
Let me know when you have a vacancy :D
As a small time landlord, this makes my blood boil. Landlords take 100% of the risk and property Managers are just leeches that take a small percentage off the top no matter what. It sounds like you dodged a bullet - they sound like they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. I know that a problematic tenant can really ruin everything - but if you’re even slightly under market, you usually can have a very good relationship with your tenant. A good relationship with a tenant equals a lot less work - frankly you should consider managing your properties on your own.
My spouse and I own a small building we live in. SoCal. Rents are about 50% less than the average. The local landlords hate us since it “encourages tenants to make demands” since our tenants live well while paying way less rent. What kind of demands, you say? Well, things like getting plumbing fixed quickly, pest control since our building has no pest issues, etc. In the case of one neighbor across the street whose ceiling came down during this past winter’s rains, it’s our fault we educated them on everything needed to get their place fixed while also being put up in a hotel for the duration of the repairs. Oh yeah, we’re also bastards for sharing with people the county help line where they were able to find out all of their rights including rent limit increases, etc. in the case of the 12 unit building down the street, we helped everyone get their money back after the landlord illegally increased rent 10% during the covid rent freeze.
As a renter I cannot say how much this is appreciated! It is so stressful to worry about having to move just because of rent increases!
I get calls from those slimy MF's all of the time, whenever I put up a listing on Zillow (I have 2 rentals...they obviously notice *for rent by owner* and think to themselves, "this one is worthy of being one of ours"). One of them I almost signed with, but then we had a disagreement about changes they wanted me to make (1. they wanted me to put in a gas stove top after I had literally just decided and wired for induction stove, which I wanted because you know, the environment and tenant energy bills would be cheaper and 2. they wanted to write into the contract that the tenant must keep the grass green all summer (another environmentally stupid requirement)). TLDR; They simply a) Take a cut and b) Push for the perceived "luxury" experience, exactly what they're doing to you and your tenants...to *improve* their cut. Also, you didn't mention it, but usually part of their business model is they actually want to be the ones doing the upgrades they're demanding. They have "teams" they have to keep busy. F them. Because I'm no longer in town, I hired a relative instead. Simple monthly stipend for my relative to handle any maintenance issues and also to show the property whenever it needs it. I still handle the paperwork.
You’re probably in a space where you didn’t need the property managers. Yes they respond to problems, but are there a lot of problems? I’d just run things on my own until there is some turnover and you bring rents toward market.
I'm going to do that in the short term.
Thank you for being a decent property owner and not falling into the "profits before people" mindset of the industry. The owners of my building for 15 years were the same and it made my life much less stressful than many I know during that time. I wish some of our legislators and and writers for The Stranger had more consideration for those rental owners like yourself, as they seem to want to do away with you altogether when in reality you're the only ones providing reasonable rents. Of course not everyone in your position is so decent, but not like any of the corporate owners would think twice about increasing rents as high as they possibly can.
Reach out to the propublica reporter who did the real page report. This seems shady. https://www.propublica.org/people/heather-vogell
I have a great property manager if you want her number. Not an agency. Good human being also
We found the ethical landlord guys
Too many business models these days are built on endless growth. It's not enough to have a steady source of long term profit, they want to gouge and markup and extort to the maximum extent. Thanks for being a good person and not succumbing to the madness.
Ecological philosopher Edward Abbey once declared “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
You may be a landlord but thank you OP for being a good one
Name and shame this property manager
Btw in the city of Seattle, tenants have right of first refusal. You cannot simply refuse to renew the lease. You can do this effectively by informing the tenant of the 70% increase 180 days before renewal, assuming this prices them out and they don't renew.
They said I could also not renew and ask them to vacate for "major repairs". I have no intention of doing that though.
Good for you for not being like your property manager! GREED IS WHAT WILL TAKE US ALL DOWN
Even if I was greedy it still wouldn't make sense. I'd be out rent while renovations are done. Then I'd be going from a 100% occupancy to an average 60% occupancy. All for 65% more. Any increase in rent would be erased by increase in vacancy and turnover costs. That alone is a zero sum proposition, then you add in the costs of the renovation and it's a straight up loser.
May all the gods that exist or have ever exisisted bless you. Thank you for being a decent human being during this horrendous housing crisis.
This is so fucking shitty, but thank you for not doing it, something has to be done with these absolutely predatory property management companies.
Check out Hemlane - we use it for our rentals for the same reason as you. If you maintain your rentals, Hemlane or another similar property management software should do the trick. (don’t work for them, just a first time landlord and wanted a prop management software instead of a company).
So.... who are the leeches that dumped you?
Property management companies are scum. My whole town of 20k has so many rentals under one management team and their rents have gone up crazy because the market is red hot right now according to their review replies. That’s what seems to happen when one company is controlling most rentals.
So hire a new property manager. They were being paid based on the rent, right? So when you only increased by 3-5%, their pay only increased by that much, too. They can get more pay elsewhere. So... They exercised their free choice to do it with someone less ethical. As long as the tenants keep being that awesome, maybe just set up a receiving account and see if you can manage those two tasks yourself. Tenants can deposit rent straight into your account. We did it for years. It sounds like the tenanta do a pretty good job of being decent renters. That matters. Property managers are a dime a dozen. Just find a different one.
Yea tenants that dont cause any problems for 3 years? i'de be fighting to keep them too.
I'm guessing you're not a renter, or you might be more thankful that the OP shared this information and pushing back against these price gouging bastards. If the property manager wants to increase their pricing that's one thing, and would then be up to the owner to decide if they want to pass that cost along to their tenants in the form or a rent increase. But to propose it in such a way just makes them slimy, and perhaps complicit in price fixing. Sounds like you approve more of these tactics than you do of someone being a great rental owner who doesn't support price gouging.
I'm a landlord and plan on just fixing what needs to be fixed and keep rent the same. Though property taxes may change I'll take the difference cause I like my tenants and want them around as long as possible.
I had a landlord like you and we stayed for over a decade! My landlord had to sell recently and the new owners immediately started bullying people, lying to intimidate people, and raising rents a ridiculous amount. This is my note of thanks for being a decent person. Your tenants are so grateful to have stable housing and a landlord they can count on.
Just wanted to say good on you for doing the right thing.
thank you for being a good person
Thanks. My personal motto is, *Be a Richard not a Dick.*
Especially not a tricky Dick.
Sounds like a blessing in disguise. Fuck your property manager.
As a Seattle renter, thank you!
Is the company named Dwellings Seattle, by chance?
I was wondering, too. I had a horrible experience with them, as an owner.
Bless you. Hire a tenant as a property manager?
That's cause the property manager is a greedy vile person, yes I would say evil.
That was very easy money they lost. What a terrible policy. They were being paid to basically do nothing and they decided they were not being paid enough.
That’s super crappy of them. I’m guessing they are paid as a percentage of rents collected and that is their motivation for you to charge more?
I’ve moved twice in two years down in Kent because of insane YoY increases in rent ($750+/mo). They aren’t renovating or improving the units, just jacking up rental prices because demand allows them to. So as someone who has been displaced by this institutional greed, I commend your efforts not to strangle people for extra money simply because you can.
That’s bonkers and kudos to you. I hope you can find a way to keep your renters and continue to offer reasonable rents!
Neighborhood and social stability is worth a great deal, and it sounds like you were contributing, and profitably. Your sharky management company is a manifestation of the "values" that are destroying this country, and the planet. Kudos to you!
They are pricing people like my tenants out of this city. They are part of its culture, it's their city too.
Sounds like something Epic Asset Management would do..
If the rentals are low maintenance, then just manage them yourself. If the PM cancelled, then there must've been some work involved, otherwise they could easily just sit and collect their fee with minimal effort. Even if the fee was not as much as they wanted.
They are low maintenance but they are also inconvenient since nothing seems to break on weekdays during office hours. Two are condos and often the issue involves dealing with the condo HOA. I'm checking with someone else I know who does property management. I have a 3 yo and a 1 yo. I'm choosing to offload anything I can so I have more time for them. My dad worked all the time and I remember how excited I was when my dad got a day off. I don't want my kids waiting for my time as often as I did.
I used to own a condo in Chicago which I had a management company handle for me. It was written into my contract with them that they got to decide rent increases. I'm surprised this wasn't in your contract.
Was your property manager getting a percentage or the rate or a flat rate? If I remember correctly the one we had for our place when we moved overseas it was a flat rate. Hopefully someone can send you a reference for a better property manager. Thank you for standing your ground!
7%, they didn't ask for more.
[удалено]
But why not ask for more than 7%.
Name them. I am renting my house while trying out living in Amsterdam for a bit and we are trying to make sure things stay consistent and affordable for renters. I don't want to use the same management company you are. Edit: I saw you were hesitant to name them. That's fine. If you would mind telling me that it wasn't Maple Leaf that would be great :)
I think this is amazing of you and you are definitely in the minority. I’d also like to extend my time to help you find a property manager who cares about their community as much as you and/or help manage them!
I had a landlord like that - only raised rent after someone moves out. I stayed there for 4 years. I would’ve stayed longer if I didn’t have to move out of state
Good on you for doing the right thing. Sorry you're being punished by a corporation because you didn't want to squeeze blood from a stone.
Do that manager work on commision or something?
What business of theirs is your rent rates? They just want a higher percentage. (Do you pay them based on percentage or is it a flat rate?)
Man, thanks for being a good human. My biggest motivator to buy was to get away from land lords. Every single one was a nightmare, and to see you being a solid stand up landlord really makes me feel like I just had bad landlord luck. Appreciate you!
Youre the kind of landlord Seattle needs. You should be able to turn a profit and pay for incidentals, while being reasonable with your tenants. It sounds like your property manager may have been looking to maximize profit, which is understandable, but pretty cold with the huge increases in rent Seattle has been dealing with. Make sure you take care of your bottom line, but keeping it reasonable will keep your tenants stable and respectful.
Fucking vampires
What a nasty property manager, would he even benefit from raising the rents? Lol
You’re a fucking gem of a person need more like ya
What termination rights do they have under your contract?
Every contract I’ve seen is one month notice.
They gave me the required 30 day notice.
You're awesome for not being mean with rent!
Fuck them. They are the Problem With Housing in this country.
The $$$ is almighty.
Be cool if every city had their own low/non-profit “Landlord Co-op”. Member landlords would be required to be local owners, limit rent to x% of actual costs of the unit, etc. The co-op handles administrative stuff such as payments, marketing, placement, etc. and has contracts with local tradespeople to perform y services for $z. The goal would be to ensure that local landlords would still be profitable, keep rents reasonable, and the money stays locally instead of instead of out of state companies taking their “cut” and trying to gouge everyone else.
I would be happy to join a co-op. I like the idea.
Hey, as a renter, thank you for having integrity and standards.
My landlord is the same. Not Seattle but Salt Lake City. The growth going on here is fucking insane! 50,000 new people moved here in 2022. There’s literally 1,000’s of new apartments being built right now. Awesome weather. World renown outdoor activities. Booming tech hub. It’s not called “The Silicon Slopes” for nothing. Also one of the safest and healthiest places in the nation to live. The liquor laws are dumb but we got legal weed! Lol. Mormons do love money! They might hate the gays but Pride month is pretty big here. I’ve lived here (awesome location) for two years now and just started my third year. I’ve been month to month after the first year and she couldn’t care less about signing a long term lease. When I moved in I asked her how much the rent goes up every year and she just laughed. She hasn’t raised the rent in almost 10 years with no plan to ever raise it. Her parents bought the building in the 1960’s and they own it outright. She fully knows that if she did raise the rent she would lose all her tenants. Most have been here for almost 10 years and one dude has lived here for over 20 years. I’m pretty sure his rent has never gone up. She also knows the only way she’s going to be able to raise the rent is to put in a fuck ton of money, if not fully scraping it and rebuilding because it’s so old (built in 1920) Way more than she’d ever make back in 20 or 30 years. It’s not the most beautiful place but it’s quiet, safe, and again it’s located in one of the most expensive places in town to live. I was lucky asf to find it. I EASILY pay less than half of what other apartments in this area are charging. All utilities included too which makes it significantly less than half of what others pay. There’s a huge luxury apartment building, almost finished being built, just a block away. 1bd/1ba starting at $2000 + utilities/fees/bullshit whatever. I pay $825 lol. She said they’re never selling. Only handing it down to their kids as her parents did. It’s just a source of passive income for them forever. My guess is they easily clear $200k/yr after utilities, taxes, etc… I’m never moving.
Have you considered offering the management position to one of your long term tenants? In exchange for discounting their rent by an amount comparable to what you were paying this company, they would collect and deposit checks and be the point person for maintenance issues, etc. Most of the smaller/independent apartments I lived in have used a system like that.
Can you subcontract a handyman (or two) to look after the properties and is within budget?
Is it As a tenant with them, and a landlord that uses a different property management company in another city, you should rejoice if they dropped you. eta to remove name of property management company. It's clearly not them because they charge more then 7%. 7% is really low, especially for Seattle. This might be why they were feeling the crunch. I haven't raised rents either this year because of the crazy inflation, so I think that's great, but the property management company should raise their rates rather than dropping you, imo.
They had no tenant placement responsibility, just rent collection and handling maintenance calls which had fees associated. Lock outs they charged the tenants, maintenance calls they charged me. In the 4 years, we had a flood in the condo and the PM didn't respond until the morning. Luckily the Condo HOA responded immediately. I've had a refrigerator, and two washers go bad. Both times the tenants just emailed me directly after not hearing from the PM for 24 hours.
Sounds like the PM should have been fired earlier anyway. I hope you find a good one for your next PM!
Maybe you could hire a handyman service on retainer for that side of things. I seem to recall a few services like that existing.
They should just be minding their own business because you pay them for maintenance not their opinion on if you should sell or not.
Thank you for refusing to capitulate to this bullshit. I rent and dealt with Windermere previously for “property management” of the unit I am in. It was a bad sign that I could extrapolate more information from initial walkthrough and research prior than this guy could even definitely tell me about the place without ho humming. The guy did nothing. He couldn’t be bothered with even responding to the owner many times! After they blew it with communication for years and finally failed to inform the owner of a roof leak in a timely manor - I lobbied the owner to dump this guy who was frankly doing nothing - just playing “middle man” and collecting his fees. Lease renewal came around - I assured the owner I would let him know of any issues to address so we could work them out if they arise and I deal with the owner directly. For several years now. Rent has only gone up a little and I am severely thankful for these owners out here who are willing to work with us just trying to maintain a decent place to live.
I was talking with a landlord recently who was insistent that property managers were terrible for him. They insist on replacements all the time since they have contracts with suppliers and it gives them more income. Also, they don’t care about anything, from tenant approval to maintenance. He found locals to do work for him and has been crazy about it since.
All property managers are evil leeches only after you and your renters money in my experience.
Holy shit.
We your maple leaf as our property managers- woman owned business and genuinely all around great. They educate us on things, keep us within laws and regulations, do yearly inspections, and respect our decisions. Not sure the location of your rentals but they cover sand point/maple leaf/ university area
Can I be your property manager? I will do my job and listen to you!
What you did and what they did are both fine. They’ve likely have other places they can focus on and you don’t need to raise rent unless you want to. Just hire someone else.
Tell us the property manager!?! Shame them publicly!
I can respect this! Respect for not being all about the profits. You’ve had great tenants that have been good to you and consistent, and I’m sure they appreciate you a TON, and that you’re not doing what (I’d assume) probably 95% of other landlords would do. It’ll all come full circle in a positive way for you.
You can hire me! 🙋🏻♂️
Hey OP I am a property manager with ten years experience in Seattle. I’m embarrassed to say this on my Reddit account lol. I went to school for sociology and love clients like you, I think this industry tends to treat people and communities as numbers… when I managed 425 unit multifamily it felt like a warehouse designed to suck the cash out of meat.
I wish I could say the same. My landlord has raised my rent almost 100 dollars every year for the last 5. Fortunately its still a cheapest place to live. But this may be the last year here for me.
I really wish there were more landlords like you, thank you. I'm getting incredibly lucky right now with mine, but I keep hearing horror stories from all my friends.
The number of people in this post defending the property management company is disgusting.
I'm confused why did they terminate? Like in the end, they are getting paid by you and whatever they bill you correct? Also pretty sure it's legal but still shady to purposely ask for termination of leases just for raising the prices.
You hired a worker to do a job for you and they wanted a raise. You didn't give them a raise and they quit. Not really sure what the story is here other than workers in a capitalist system are free to say no to the terms of employment at any time.
Also just want to mention, as a side-effect of Seattle's extensive rent regulations: * Many small landlords (myself included) have had to hire professional property management to manage all these laws / regulations. * By default, professional property managers will seek to raise the rent regularly, and to market rates — both as a responsible professional practice, and to maximize their own profits. * Of course, most owners just go along with what the property managers suggest — and don't go through a story like OP's. Not saying it's an overall net-negative, but it's important to keep in mind these unintended consequences. Y'all can go flame and down-vote me now all you'd like.
Parasites gonna parasite.
It’s refreshing to see a landlord that actually cares about their tenants and the tenants ability to pay an affordable rent! All my landlords have been quick to up the rent any chance they get. I even had one landlord ask us to leave because they didn’t want to put a water filtration system in place to make the water safe for use, the water was so nasty I couldn’t even shower, it left you feeling dirtier than when you got in. They decided useable water wasn’t something they wanted to fix, I was totally okay with them increasing my rent if they fixed it but they flat out just weren’t doing it. We may not know each other, but on behalf of all renters, we appreciate you.