Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Making Property Management More Complicated

I've been so busy lately, or maybe I am just busy in my head.  On Thursday, I drove by my rental house to see if they had removed the foil from the windows.  I got a violation letter from the HOA and I sent it to my property management company who sends it to my tenant.  I could have the letter go straight from the HOA to the property management company but I like to know what is going on.  So, the foil was still up.  This is an east facing bay window and I felt bad about the window coverings that I hastily purchased for that room.  They were those matchstick roll-up shades and they don't block light at all.  I read about those honeycomb shades from Home Depot that are cheap and get great reviews so on Friday I raced to Home Depot at lunch and bought 2 shades (one for the middle window and the other to be cut in half for the 2 smaller windows) and one semi-circle fan shade for the window at the top.

After work, I stopped by the house not really expecting anyone to be home but a lady was home with her toddler.  I hadn't met my current tenants.  They were very nice and said that they had not received the violation notice from the property management company.  That is very annoying because the HOA only gives me 10 days to fix the problem.  She took the shades and promised to put them up.  She also told me that they hire a landscaper to trim the backyard and pull the weeds in the front yard (yay!) and they pay for a pest control company (double yay!).  I think I really like these tenants.

I drove by the house after work yesterday and the foil was gone, shades were up and they look nice even though Home Depot only carried light grey shades instead of white.  I hope the HOA doesn't get that picky.  I couldn't tell they were light grey from the street.  When I got home today, there was a letter in my mailbox from the property management company.  Inside was a printed copy of the violation notice.  Now I am confused.  They sent me a copy of the same thing that I sent them.  Did they even send the notice to my tenants at all?  What am I paying these people for?  Plus, it's been a week since I sent them the letter.  Are they really that slow?  These are questions that I will ask tomorrow when I give them a call.  It doesn't seem that complicated to me.  Send the violation letter to the tenant, not the owner.  If I didn't already know that I hate being a landlord, I would be tempted to do it myself.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How confusing! At least the tenant put the shades up!

Daizy said...

Yes, and they look nice too. I wish I had put those shades up to begin with.