Landlord Doctor’s website only went live June 2013, over the past few months I’ve signed up properties in NZ from Landlord’s residing in Melbourne, Brisbane, Canada and Hanoi. These Landlord’s have either been passed from pillar to post by numerous Property Management companies or they were not doing what they claimed to for the fees they were charging.

Landlord Doctor is a relatively new company and has already been approached by a larger Property Management Company to buy the portfolio. There are too many startup Property Management companies around that are building these portfolios to ‘sell’ rather than looking after their clients.

Some of my clients have asked to me to manage their portfolios because they have known me along time in the Property Investment industry, they know how I work, I work with honesty and integrity, I will treat their properties and tenants as if they were my own and mainly because I won’t sell them out.

My other clients have come to me because the larger Property Management Companies employ people to manage these portfolios that really have no interest or understanding of what they are doing.

Some of these portfolios I have taken over have substantial rent arrears and when the Property Managers were questioned about it not one of them went to the property and spoke to the tenant/s, instead the tenant/s kept promising and lying over the phone.

So exactly what are you getting for your money, well lets sum it up:

• somebody managing your portfolio that doesn’t have investment properties of their own
• somebody that’s not passionate about what they are doing
• somebody that’s started up the company in the hope to onsell it in the future
• somebody that doesn’t get off their butt and deal with issues when they arise

Do you really want somebody like this managing your portfolios?

Dear Sharon

Im writing to you as about a year ago you came to a property we are residing in, your company did some work but you asked about other maintenance required and if we were happy here etc.

It seemed as though you know the owner of this property in a personal capacity.

We are concerned that his property managers are not keeping their contract to him as we have been lead to believe that most of our requests for maintenance are not even getting to him and they are not getting attended to. The problem with this is that on numerous occasions their lack of care has resulted in damage to the property.

If we weren’t stuck in a fixed term agreement we would have moved by now as we are so frustrated with them. The things we can do we have done ourselves at our own expense.

As a property owner I would want to know my property was being looked after so this is the reason for my e-mail. If you are able to pass on my concerns to him that would be appreciated.

Regards

Above is a letter recently received from a tenant residing in a house I renovated for a client a number of years ago, the tenant feels that the existing Property Manager is not doing their job properly. Remember there are always two sides to a story, find out the actual facts and then act upon it quickly.

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