You’re probably asking yourself “Mmm…Will I save money putting a tenant in myself?”
In the short term maybe, but in the long run you’re taking a gamble on one of your biggest assets.
I can understand landlords trying to save money, as costs are always going up and DIY is all the rage.
Property Management Supervisor Julie Collins said “What we find is that people say they will put in a friend and start advertising on gumtree”.
There is nothing wrong with this but landlords don’t have the tools that agents have and go on only instinct or face value.
Now going with your instinct is a skill you pick up being in property management after several years but we ALWAYS do our reference checks regardless.
You would think that at face value a police officer in Seven Hills would be a good instinct and an easy choice for a tenant and one you would not be concerned about.
Well this is exactly what happened and it’s not an isolated incident. Some landlords don’t think it through when trying to save money.
Being a landlord/agent myself, I had a look at managing it myself and not though our office.
At least I researched all the laws and evaluated how much of my life/hassle it would take.
Here were my thoughts on renting out my granny flat in Seven Hills not though our office;
- If I found a tenant myself, I may end up having the property untenanted for 2 weeks or maybe longer than if you engaged the services of
a good property manager. If you are renting a place for $400 per week and it is untenanted for 2 weeks, that is a cost of $800 that you have incurred as a result of not using a good property manager.
- I would not get statements for tax purposes and the banks so if I wanted to get another investment property (some banks will not except non property management agency statements). I would have to still legally do my paper work anyway.
- Could end up with a tenant that calls about every little issue and also get calls at 2am about the water not working etc (wanted to stay in my nice warm bed), our agency has a 24hr emergency phone.
- I didn’t have access to “Bad tenant” data bases only a list of their own good ones.
- Good cop bad cop. I did not want to get emotionally attached to the tenants and make bad investment decisions. At least I can make the people in my agency have the hard conversations with the tenant when needed e.g. rent arrears, gardening, damages, kicking them out etc…
- The management fee of $30 per week is tax deductible so it’s only really $17 per week. I live closely as well, but am “detaching” myself from the property.
Eventually I decided against it.
It’s now set and forget, our property management deals with chasing money and repairs and I can have a friendly relationship with the tenants.
Now let’s get back to the police officer that trashed a house in Seven Hills that was found on gumtree.
Please take note we are happy to work with our landlords and find them a tenant, you can manage it after we have done all the paper work.
I do not advise it though, not just that I’m trying to sell our services, but it can still end up messy even after all our checks and paper work.
At least you would have an ingoing inspection report and a law enforceable lease.
We find many DIY landlords have “friends” move in. They don’t have a lease.
They cannot evict the squatters and collect the 6 weeks rent owed. This is a very bad situation!
Anyway we ended up taking on this property after this landlord realised they could not handle dealing with this while he went back to China to live.
Julie Collins said “we don’t normally take on clean up jobs like these.
The tenant was 6 weeks behind and it was going to be a lot of work to get it back, not mention to damages to the Seven Hills property”.
Julie’s diligence also found the owner was charging the full water bill to the tenant, not just the usage which is a big no no.
We had this corrected and many more issues, in fact Julie Collins said “the owner was in breach of Residential Tenancies Act 2010 in so many ways it was not funny!”
Now to the tenant side of things, you would think “He is a police officer, how bad could he be?”
Well as Julie was to take over this property she soon realised how much of a nightmare tenant he was.
The landlord said it was ok to paint a feature wall in a light neutral colour and the tenant ended up painting a dark colour.
Later the owner asked him to paint it back in a neutral colour, to which the tenant clearly didn’t finish.
Not sure why but there are plenty of holes in walls
My favourite photo is a massive pool of paint on the floor



As you can see this house was trashed.
We took the tenant to Consumer, Trader & Tenancy Tribunal which he did not attend.
Because our case was so well documented and the damage was so severe we were awarded full costs, which has never been done before given the age of the carpet/paint work.

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'I can find a tenant myself I don’t need an agent? REALLY…?' have 2 comments
January 17, 2016 Darryl Smith
The thing that frustrates me about using an agent is that when there is an issue the agent rarely takes responsibility. They promise
that all will be great if you use them and then for example a tenant does damage they ring up and ask you to pay for the repairs.
If they pick a poor tenant they do not wear the cost. Also they charge a percentage of the rent and then charge the earth for every little thing they do. The costs have now got really over the top. If I rent a property in my town I handle it but use a manager if it is not.
January 18, 2016 Michael Yardney
Darryl if that’s happening to you then you’ve got the wrong property manager