Hey, everybody. Matthew Whitaker here with another “Questions Owners Ask.”
Today’s question is, “My property manager isn’t sending me the rent when he’s supposed to. What should I do?”
So this happens a lot.
This is probably the first indicator of fraud.
We’ve talked to potential clients, they will call us and they’ll say, “Hey, the property manager has sent me my rent money. Their check bounced.”
Those types of things. So, this is an indicator that something is major wrong.
And what I would suggest doing is what people typically do which is the wrong thing. They get a lot of empty promises, a lot of hold out for one more month.
They get a little bit of money and they start to build up this huge balance with the property manager.
So, they have a lot of sunk costs with the property manager and they’re willing to wait on hoping for this kind of Hail Mary type miracle.
And that’s not the right thing to do.
Typically, that Hail Mary miracle never comes through and they’re left holding a even bigger bag of debt to the property manager.
This is a case right down the middle of a property manager stealing money.
What I suggest doing is to pull your properties as quickly as possible.
Terminate that management agreement, and move your properties to another professional manager.
And then that does not mean that that property manager doesn’t still owe you that money.
You can still pursue that property manager for that money.
But the best thing to do is to cut it off as quickly as possible.
That’s it. Matthew Whitaker with “Questions Owners Ask.” I’m with gkhouses.
Matthew is the CEO of Evernest. He is a student of the book Good to Great and is passionate about building the best property management company on the planet (and maybe even the universe if Elon Musk will hurry up). You can usually find Matthew at the baseball field with his son, at a dance recital with his daughter, or at his favorite restaurant with his wife, when he’s not in the office. And if you can’t find him in any of those places, it probably means he’s traveling.
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