Once Flint was an industrial center. Everyone worked for the auto industry in a union job that paid a family wage. Then NAFTA, then the factories closed...now it is a shell of its former self. My husband's people left the farm for the factory. Some family members did both - kept a farm and worked in the factory. By the time my husband graduated high school there were no opportunities. My first impression of Flint was surprise at how many churches and pawn shops there were. My husband cautioned me about how I needed to lock the doors in the car all the time and pointed out the bullet-proof glass at gas stations. He took me through a drive-through liquor store once (we were underage) and the clerk asked us if we wanted him to open the beers for us before we drove off. Once during a visit with a friend from high school, the friend's uncle was eating bologna on celery - it was later explained to me that he was a crackhead. Every time I went to Flint it was surreal in some way. I tell these stories as a prelude to the main story - how Innovative Property Management (IPM) is a shitty choice for your property management needs.
It's hard to encapsulate so many years of annoyance and drama, but I will try. So...nine years ago we contracted this company to manage this property. (Yes, I have nine years of stories, but I swear I will only talk about the recent past here.) Apparently in that contract it said we agreed to pay them $1000 in realtor fees if we sold the property to a buyer they found. That's 10% on a property that is worth $10,000 when any other realtor in the world would charge 6%. Ok, fine, we signed the contract that was on us.
So for the past seven years the same tenants have lived in the house and they have been really good tenants. With our recent decisions to simplify we offered the home for sale to these tenants on a land contract. We offered the house for $7,500 and IPM "reduced" their fees to $800 - 10.67% of the sale price. I am seriously tempted to put a copy of the purchase contract up here for you to see because, for $800 we received a hand-written fill in the blank contract which was riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies almost a full three months after we proposed the deal! There was some delay on the part of the buyers in terms of saving up some money for closing, but I am confident that mismanagement on the part of the management company also factored in (for example: long stretches of time went by without responses to our emails). A very clear example of mismanagement: when the day finally came for the closing documents to be overnight mailed to us, though I confirmed, via email, our address with IPM - it was undeliverable as addressed because it had our old zip code and new address. We had to take an hour trip to a nearby town to pick up the package from UPS on a Friday night, find a notary and a credit union open on a Saturday AM, and get the thing back in to UPS for closing on Monday. Monday (yesterday) came and went and not a word was said. They neither acknowledged the receipt of the documents, nor did they let us know that the deal was done. Last night I wrote them an email and asked if the house closed. This morning I heard that it had. That's what $800 will buy ya!
Today we asked IPM to refund us the money they are holding in our maintenance account. They said, "I will take this as your 30 day notice to close your account with IPM..." WHAT!?! Uh...we've been working on selling this house to the tenants since May....this was the only property they managed for us and now it is sold and they have received their $800. Why in the world wasn't our account closed with the sale of the house? They said it will take a couple more weeks before they will refund our money.
Going back over the past few years I have to mention the terrible management of repairs. The picture above is from 2010. One example to illustrate it all: At some point in the past that overhang in the front started to sag and leak. We have always been willing to fix things so we asked for estimates - they only provide one estimate (that has happened over and over with many repairs). We've always had to fight with them to get a second estimate. So we approve the repair to remove the overhang and patch up the siding. Their contractor just does the demolition and then leaves the house without siding for god only knows how long until the tenants complain. Then IPM contacts us and tell us we need to pay for siding!! This happened over months. In that case they were able to get the contractor back out to finish the job after we had a total fit. It was completely crazy... we have a lot of the past chaos documented in emails. We've had to go back through emails many times to figure out the chain of events related to various repairs.
During the time IPM was in our lives we managed our other rentals ourselves and often compared the Flint house to our other rentals in terms of the multitude of repairs it seemed to need compared to the others. During the entire time we rented the Flint house we have been nickel'd and dimed for small repairs. The contract allowed them to handle small repairs without our approval. Every month there would be some vague description of "hardware - $30" or "plumbing - $45" or "window repair - $25".....Someday, now that IPM is out of the picture, I will look for an opportunity to present all of the various repairs to the buyers and see if that work was actually done on the house. I have doubts but no proof.
The silver lining in all this is that we have heard, albeit through IPM, that the former tenants, now buyers, are very happy to own their home. We have a very short term land contract and I look forward to the day it is paid off and we can give them the warranty deed. I am especially happy that I never have to speak to anyone at IPM in the future. That was a relationship that needed to be terminated long before now. It seemed like a necessary evil that we just had to deal with because we are out of state and didn't have the time or inclination to arrange for a new management company.
Bottom line is that in June we owned four houses and today we only own one!
It's hard to encapsulate so many years of annoyance and drama, but I will try. So...nine years ago we contracted this company to manage this property. (Yes, I have nine years of stories, but I swear I will only talk about the recent past here.) Apparently in that contract it said we agreed to pay them $1000 in realtor fees if we sold the property to a buyer they found. That's 10% on a property that is worth $10,000 when any other realtor in the world would charge 6%. Ok, fine, we signed the contract that was on us.
So for the past seven years the same tenants have lived in the house and they have been really good tenants. With our recent decisions to simplify we offered the home for sale to these tenants on a land contract. We offered the house for $7,500 and IPM "reduced" their fees to $800 - 10.67% of the sale price. I am seriously tempted to put a copy of the purchase contract up here for you to see because, for $800 we received a hand-written fill in the blank contract which was riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies almost a full three months after we proposed the deal! There was some delay on the part of the buyers in terms of saving up some money for closing, but I am confident that mismanagement on the part of the management company also factored in (for example: long stretches of time went by without responses to our emails). A very clear example of mismanagement: when the day finally came for the closing documents to be overnight mailed to us, though I confirmed, via email, our address with IPM - it was undeliverable as addressed because it had our old zip code and new address. We had to take an hour trip to a nearby town to pick up the package from UPS on a Friday night, find a notary and a credit union open on a Saturday AM, and get the thing back in to UPS for closing on Monday. Monday (yesterday) came and went and not a word was said. They neither acknowledged the receipt of the documents, nor did they let us know that the deal was done. Last night I wrote them an email and asked if the house closed. This morning I heard that it had. That's what $800 will buy ya!
Today we asked IPM to refund us the money they are holding in our maintenance account. They said, "I will take this as your 30 day notice to close your account with IPM..." WHAT!?! Uh...we've been working on selling this house to the tenants since May....this was the only property they managed for us and now it is sold and they have received their $800. Why in the world wasn't our account closed with the sale of the house? They said it will take a couple more weeks before they will refund our money.
Going back over the past few years I have to mention the terrible management of repairs. The picture above is from 2010. One example to illustrate it all: At some point in the past that overhang in the front started to sag and leak. We have always been willing to fix things so we asked for estimates - they only provide one estimate (that has happened over and over with many repairs). We've always had to fight with them to get a second estimate. So we approve the repair to remove the overhang and patch up the siding. Their contractor just does the demolition and then leaves the house without siding for god only knows how long until the tenants complain. Then IPM contacts us and tell us we need to pay for siding!! This happened over months. In that case they were able to get the contractor back out to finish the job after we had a total fit. It was completely crazy... we have a lot of the past chaos documented in emails. We've had to go back through emails many times to figure out the chain of events related to various repairs.
During the time IPM was in our lives we managed our other rentals ourselves and often compared the Flint house to our other rentals in terms of the multitude of repairs it seemed to need compared to the others. During the entire time we rented the Flint house we have been nickel'd and dimed for small repairs. The contract allowed them to handle small repairs without our approval. Every month there would be some vague description of "hardware - $30" or "plumbing - $45" or "window repair - $25".....Someday, now that IPM is out of the picture, I will look for an opportunity to present all of the various repairs to the buyers and see if that work was actually done on the house. I have doubts but no proof.
The silver lining in all this is that we have heard, albeit through IPM, that the former tenants, now buyers, are very happy to own their home. We have a very short term land contract and I look forward to the day it is paid off and we can give them the warranty deed. I am especially happy that I never have to speak to anyone at IPM in the future. That was a relationship that needed to be terminated long before now. It seemed like a necessary evil that we just had to deal with because we are out of state and didn't have the time or inclination to arrange for a new management company.
Bottom line is that in June we owned four houses and today we only own one!
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