CITA Property Management

This letter is in response to a complaint made against CITA Property Management by a former tenant in one of our rental properties. This letter will serve to provide documentation and proof that this complaint is not valid and the tenant is not owed any money. After reviewing the documents you sent I noticed you were missing several pages of the lease agreement so this documentation will provide those missing pages as well to validate the contractual agreement signed by the tenant and CITA. The ID number for the complaint is ***.
The tenant signed a lease to occupy the property from Nov 1. 2018 to March 31. 2020. She chose to break the lease (see enclosed FULL copy) and was required to pay a reletting (subletting) fee for terminating the lease early. The tenant per the lease was not released from her obligations under the lease because of paying her reletting (subletting) fee. We simply allowed her due to a request to break her lease with the understanding that she pay this fee. She had the option of securing a new tenant and providing us with a qualified applicant that could replace her and she had the option of advertising the property for lease and finding someone on her own and she did not. Had she done that she would have been released from her obligation as soon as the new tenant moved in and replaced her. She also was told that we would need to show the property to prospective applicants prior to her moving out so we could minimize her obligations and pre-lease the property and she didn't want to allow those showings or approve those appts either. Due to her not being proactive and not allowing us to do our due diligence we had to practically wait till she was out to start marketing the property and it took us until June, 2019 to secure a new tenant. In addition, if she was not living there as she said she could have vacated the property sooner and not left it looking like a tornado hit it when we finally walked in. Unfortunately, the tenant who brought this complaint was responsible for the rent until the new tenant moved in. (see attached lease agreement).
Per the lease, since the tenant did not allow us to pre-lease or allow showings and she would not sign the tenant authorization form per our request she was charged a 500 fee which is stated on her tenant ledger. We would have done everything in our power to minimize her breach if she would have communicated and cooperated with us. We have had this situation in the past and have had success and have also had tenants show the property, advertise the property and bring us a qualified tenant which minimized their out of pocket expense and allowed us to have a tenant in place as soon as it was vacant. Per the lease we are committed to not costing our tenants any unnecessary expense if they work with us to create a win-win. In this case it was handled differently by the tenant although we went out of our way to help her and advise her. We did mention all of her options when she decided to break her lease creating a hardship on the owner.
We have always made it our practice to give tenants a right to terminate if they ask knowing that the lease states the consequences and we even ask them to read their lease so they are fully aware of the language and if they have questions we are available to handle those and respond. We will not hold someone against their will. We are held to the terms of the lease and had no other agreements outside that with the tenant. Every time we wanted to show the property we were denied and the one time we actually showed up because she wasn't communicating she had the utilities off which was a direct violation of the lease. (see lease agreement). We chose not to charge her for the trip charge/s we incurred although we had the right to every time. This was due in part to the penalty of 500 she had to pay for not allowing us access to the property. By having the utilities off she also endangered the integrity of the property due to the cold weather and she was liable for that. Lucky for her there was no known damage that occurred for her violating that condition in the lease.
In regards to her complaint about using the deposit in lieu of the reletting fee we are not allowed to use the deposit in lieu of rent or fees and we never touch the deposit until tenant vacates the property. It is kept in a secure escrow account at all times until the tenant vacates the property. Enclosed is a copy of her tenant ledger showing how her deposit was applied to the charges owed and currently shows she owes a balance of 771.57 after all monies are disbursed. We have not attempted to go after her for the money but do have the right to take her to small claims court if we choose. We are more than happy to work out a payment plan if she wants to show her account paid in full but at this point we have done everything we can.

The Documentation we have included is a FULL LEASE AGREEMENT (completely highlighted for you), and the TENANT LEDGER for your files. All money is accounted for and not one dime came back to CITA Property Management Company because we are not allowed to keep any of the deposit paid by a tenant. I hope this clears up the dispute and the tenant is able to move forward with full confidence that we are complete. When you break a contractual agreement unfortunately there are consequences and we hope this proves to be a learning experience for her and and an opportunity to maybe make a different choice next time she is faced with a decision that requires a loss of her hard earned money. We strive to have a great relationship with all of our tenants and we wish her well. Thank you for allowing us to respond to this complaint as we appreciate the chance to have our voice heard.

Have a great day,

***

CITA Property Management