Doyle Spillane Property Management Team holds a strong focus on building strong and lasting relations; we are the binding link in communication between our investors and the residents leasing their investment property.

National property management trainer and consultant Darren Hunter said ‘Property Managers sometimes fail to realise that both landlords and tenants need to be treated professionally’.
Here are the top three complaints they hear from tenants:

1. Disrespectful treatment

Mr Hunter said, “The property management industry has a culture where landlords are number one and tenants are number two. “In a way, of course, we do need to work in the landlord’s best interest, but it doesn’t automatically mean we treat the tenant as second best,” he told Residential Property Manager Magazine.

“The tenants of today are not the tenants of 20 years ago, where tenants only rented because they couldn’t afford to buy. People rent now for all sorts of reasons.”

2. Bad handling of maintenance and repairs

It is a property manager's job to ensure maintenance requests are processed quickly and in line with instructions.  However, at times the reality is that requests are often ignored or take a long time to be actioned.

“When choosing a property manager, landlords should ask what their maintenance procedure is, including expected timings for repairs to be completed.”

3. No written feedback

Mr Hunter  also added “Commonly I find that property manager will not leave written feedback for a tenant after a routine inspection. So the tenants have no feedback at all, not even a thank you, and so inadvertently the tenant now has a chip on their shoulder against the property, and the property manager did not even realise,” he said.

“Written feedback is so important, just even if you give them some appreciation by leaving a little bag of jelly beans, or a chocolate frog as a thank you.

"It just extends the good will in that relationship."

Source: darrenhunter.com & Residential Property Manager Newsletter