If you use a property manager, who would you recommend and why?

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alienara

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#165695 17-Feb-2015 18:13

G'day Geekzone family!

I'm considering getting a property manager to take over my investment properties. If you currently use a property manager, can you recommend a company and also let me know why you went with them? Also, some feedback on how they've been doing would be great too.

Thanks all!

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#1241095 17-Feb-2015 20:48

I did the same about 5 years ago.

we use www.lett.co.nz, amie.odonoghue@lett.co.nz

Our property has changed tenants 3x over 5+ years. twice untenanted for 2 weeks or so.
the other time the tenant left without notice, owing 6 weeks rent. Amie chased them down, took them to disputes and got the money.
I was pretty impressed by that.

She's easy to deal with from our side, and can be a hard arse with the tenants when she needs to.
Properties have been kept in good nick, with the rent flowing. I'd recommend her.

A long time ago we used one through a real estate agent. They did nothing but bug us over every little detail.
Not worth the time really.

alienara

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Geek
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#1241103 17-Feb-2015 20:51

Wow nice, thanks for that.

Forgot to mention also that I'm in Auckland haha.

How about maintenance issues? Does she organise everything for you? Sounds like quite a hassle-free type of arrangement.

CokemonZ

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#1241107 17-Feb-2015 20:59

We have an arrangement where anything less than $250 she can just do.
Over the past 5 years we've built up a lot of trust, I can't tell you when we started doing that.
It happens pretty infrequently though.

If there is a serious issue - we had the drains block and sewage leaking down the driveway.
She spoke to the tenant, decided it could wait till the next day so we didn't have to call an emergency plumber.
Cost about $180, and organized two quotes for pipe replacement.
Considering it's happened once in 8 years she recommended not fixing it, and well see if it reoccurs.
And as that's how she makes extra money - commission on services - her advice is generally good.

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#1241121 17-Feb-2015 21:13

CokemonZ: I did the same about 5 years ago.

we use www.lett.co.nz, amie.odonoghue@lett.co.nz

Our property has changed tenants 3x over 5+ years. twice untenanted for 2 weeks or so.
the other time the tenant left without notice, owing 6 weeks rent. Amie chased them down, took them to disputes and got the money.
I was pretty impressed by that.

She's easy to deal with from our side, and can be a hard arse with the tenants when she needs to.
Properties have been kept in good nick, with the rent flowing. I'd recommend her.

A long time ago we used one through a real estate agent. They did nothing but bug us over every little detail.
Not worth the time really.

that's the sort of people you need in life, really

alienara

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Geek
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#1241123 17-Feb-2015 21:14

Nice!

I currently have 3 properties and seem to be managing but I've heard that if I plan to expand, I'm going to need to think about getting a property manager because it's less hassle and I get more free time to myself.

Why did you make the change 5 years ago? What was the final straw that made you go "That's it, we need a property manager."

Also, I see that she has her rates fixed on her website while some others that I've been to seem to work by a % fee based on the rent amount. Some advertised between 4% and 7.5% being the highest I've seen. Do you find her rates fair for what she does? How often does she do rent reviews for you?

Sorry for the barrage of questions.

CokemonZ

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#1241237 18-Feb-2015 07:51

I made the changes for 2 key reasons.
Dealing with tenants without a strong understanding of whose responsibility was who's got very difficult.

More importantly I moved to America for work, and couldn't really manage them from there
When we came back she'd made life so easy I didn't want to take them back.

The rates are competitive. I like knowing my costs in advance.

The other unexpected bonus is that she has a network of tenants, which keeps downtime low.

New World

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alienara

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Geek
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#1241293 18-Feb-2015 09:17

Thanks Cokemon!

Really appreciate your thoughts on your Property Manager.

Still keen to see if anyone out there can recommend someone that they've been using so that I can do some comparisons =)

xpd

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#1241317 18-Feb-2015 09:38

Classic Property Management - will admit my mother (since retired) worked for them from the start and the owner is a family friend.... but apart from that, the staff there are great and Helen (owner) dosent let people get away with crap.

Give Helen a call and ask her anything you want to know - tell her Gavin says hi ;)

PS: Ignore the crap website... I whipped that up many moons ago before I learnt about PHP etc - must get round to convincing them to move it to a decent host so i can redo it....

XPD / Gavin

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alienara

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#1241489 18-Feb-2015 12:00

Thanks xpd!

I had a look at the website but it didn't give me too much info haha.

So besides them being family friends and Helen not letting tenants give crap, what else makes Helen or the company a good property management company that makes you recommend them?

As you can imagine, this being the first time I'm thinking about passing on my investment to someone else, it's important that I can trust them enough to let them take over (yes yes, I'm a bit of a control freak).

alienara

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Geek
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#1242284 19-Feb-2015 13:18

Also, I've found it interesting that no one has brought up the big players such as barfoot, ray white and quinovic.

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#1242288 19-Feb-2015 13:22

The big businesses are there to make money, not look after your property or your interests

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Horseychick

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#1242331 19-Feb-2015 14:09

We've just employed Quinovic on the the Shore to look after our 1 rental property. In the past we've looked after a previous rental ourselves, but we lived right next door to it so it was fairly easy to keep a close eye on it. Now we are moving away (not far) and our new rental is worth considerably more so we wanted regular check ups and someone else to take the late night/early weekend calls.

We went to Quinovic as my husband knew one of the owners - Roger. So far they have done a good job of finding tenants for a fairly high priced, slightly unusual set up rental property. We did disagree with their standard rental contract which wanted us to sign up for a year - amended that to 3 months and will see how we feel about them then. We also argued some of the additional charges they put on for collecting water bills etc so those were amended also.

I think you need to negotiate with any property manager unless their charges are very reasonable in the first place. Good luck, I know how much we debated going this route, but currently I feel good as it is one less thing for me to have to worry about on a weekly basis *fingers crossed*

CokemonZ

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#1242334 19-Feb-2015 14:13

alienara: Also, I've found it interesting that no one has brought up the big players such as barfoot, ray white and quinovic.

I mentioned them.
I won't say who we were with as it was ~6 years ago and it's not fair to throw them under a bus.

However they were a big company.

They bugged us for every little thing.
They made no recommendations.

Basically we were managing it ourselves and paying for the privilege.

alienara

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Geek
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#1242416 19-Feb-2015 15:34

Right sorry Cokemon, I was kinda looking more for good experiences haha.

Thanks horsey, you're right, it's something that we'll need to pay close attention to. If you were to change property managers, can you just drop them or do you have to give them like a month's notice or something?

Joker, sounds like you had a bad experience?

kiwitrc

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#1242424 19-Feb-2015 15:39

alienara: Also, I've found it interesting that no one has brought up the big players such as barfoot, ray white and quinovic.

I havent heard anything good about Quinovic. Cant comment on the others as we dont have them in Welly.

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