You may wonder why we are choosing to share, we know its not the norm – but then neither are we.

If you’ve been in Property Management for a while you’ve endured one or two horror stories. I’ve worked with Shirley since 1998 and we often speak about putting all our experiences in a book when we retire, but recently I thought; why wait? Our team has over 300 years experience and we have some amazing and inspiring case studies and just a few horror stories.

We’ll start with an application story from a few years back. You see Property Managers are evaluating tenants right from the open inspection, making notes to send to the owner because that’s our job. I know people don’t always admit this but it’s like a job interview, so if your kids are running through the house, we note it, if you are rude to the Property Manager it is noted. This particular tenant, lets call her Helen, (Helen is not her real name) was lovely, well presented, personable and was instantly my favourite person at the open.

Her application was submitted the next day and while it wasn’t the only application, it was by far the strongest, or so it seemed. She had all the normal information, personal references and private Landlord Information to substantiate her rental history. Everything checked out perfectly, employment, employment reference, income to show affordability, personal references, license address matched the current rental address, and then the private Landlord provided the perfect reference. But here’s the issue, I’ve been at this a long time, and I have spoken to hundreds of private Landlords over the years. There is a way that they speak and a way that they just don’t, and this ‘private Landlord’ was just a little too perfect, gave me the answers just a little too quickly, everything was a little too positive, one might even say -rehearsed. Now on any given day this happens, and it’s why Property Management companies are reluctant to use private Landlord references, but in this case it would have been so easy to just tick the boxes, everything was perfect, and I know from working in the industry for so many years that for many, that’s what would have happened. But in this case, there was a little niggle on the back of my neck so I did what I always do, explained to the Landlord that I had a concern but I wasn’t sure what it was about this specific application and confirmed that we would sleep on it. The following day I called the ‘private Landlord’ again to ask some follow up questions but she didn’t answer. I let the tenant know that I needed to speak with ‘Janine’ again and it was met with ever so slight resistance. Not enough to alert anyone generally, but enough to inflate my already heightened suspicion.

Apparently Janine was now overseas on holidays. I had Helen let Janine know I would be calling and needed to speak with her, and when she answered the first thing I asked, by way of an apology, was, “what time is it there?” She avoided the question three times so I changed tact and asked some other minor details about Helen, and I then asked what hotel she was staying at. Again she avoided answering, eventually responding that she could not remember. I ended the call convinced that Janine was not the private Landlord but committed to finding who was.

Being in real estate I was able to identify the owner of the property and then through the good old white pages I found who I believed was the owner. By this time it was Sunday night and around 8pm when I called the owner, lets call her ‘Sharon’ and asked if she was the owner of xxx property. She acknowledged that she was and I asked if she had a tenant named Helen. She responded yes to which I asked, “is there a reason that Helen claimed that Janine owned the property and that I have been speaking to Janine for three days about the tenancy?” Sharon replied, it might be because she is a little behind in her rent. I asked, how far behind is she to which Sharon hesitantly responded about $8500. I remember feeling immense anger towards Helen and sympathy towards Sharon particularly as she explained how this had developed over a couple of years, the lies and excuses and constant delays and irregular rent payments.

I called Helen that night and I have to admit I wasn’t exactly polite. I was pretty annoyed at her wasting my time, providing a fraudulent application, and mostly the additional cost to the owner who could have already selected another tenant were it not for the near perfect application presented to them. The owner accepted another tenant the next day and all was fine but also the next day I had a call from Sharon asking me to help. I was chomping at the bit to take this property on, and called Helen as soon as I had met with Sharon and had authority to do so. I drove the hour to meet Sharon and was even more angry after seeing that significant illness plagued the family in addition to the financial burden of unpaid rent. After the previous nights call with Helen, I was super keen to chat with her again!

Now Helen, not surprisingly, was fairly unimpressed to find that she had a new Property Manager but, unlike some of the other horror stories in this series, this one does have a happy end in part. Helen eventually worked with me to address the rent arrears and became a very sound tenant, so much so that after several years she was able to use me as a reference for her new home. She completely reformed her rental history and it’s a feel good story that turned out well. That’s mostly due to diligent Property Management, being able to have tough conversations and develop strategies, and experience. My beautiful owners eventually sold and sadly, ‘Sharon’ passed away several years later but I always remember my first few conversations with her and how grateful she was for all the help. This story serves as a warning to Property Managers to go the extra mile and not to just tick the boxes. It is also a warning to tenants, in that we are finding better ways to screen applications and most likely will uncover anomalies.

This is the first in a series of case studies, some of which are less horror and more amusing, and some that provide hope when individuals change their destiny through action. Keep an eye out for the next one soon!