Realty Roundup, Inc.

Review: Due to lack of time to manage my rental property, my tenant took advantage of the situation and shorted me over $9,000 last year alone. In search of a good property management company, I was referred to [redacted] at Realty Roundup, Inc. in Elk Grove, CA. I called [redacted] and described the situation. He sent me an email with 5 large documents / contacts attached on 10/09/2015. I did not have time to look at the details so I left it alone.

Meanwhile, my Tenant gave me two checks that bounced. As I was advised by others, I gave the tenant a 3-day-pay-or-quit notice on Dec 18, 2015. [redacted] sent me a follow up email on 12/05/2015. So, I finally decided to hire him and his firm as he was strongly recommended to me. I called him and discussed the situation: the non-payments, etc. I emailed him a copy of the 3-day-pay-or-quit and asked him to either bring the tenant payment to current or ask her to leave and finish off the job I started.

He asked me to sign the contract and send it to him. The contracts were long and I just didn't have time to read every sentence but because of the referral I trusted him. [redacted] assured me that he will be on top of this and take care of it. After I sent the paperwork, I did not hear anything until I got an invoice from him and there was the monthly payment from the tenant, his upfront fee and monthly fee and an invoice for dishwasher repair. I called him and asked what the situation was and why is he not getting the past overdue of over $5,000 yet. He told me that he has made arrangements with the tenant to get payment to catch up with the past due. He said the tenant was supposed to bring her bank account statements to go over all the payments.

I travel a lot for my business so I did not call him until few weeks after the first call and I asked him whether he has got the money or has evicted my property. He said that he has asked the tenant through email for payment and has not heard back from her. He will talk to his legal department to see what he has to do to evict the tenant. Right after I talked to him I got the second invoice. I was outraged to see that he has an invoice for over $1,000 to repair “the leak in the laundry room” - an unauthorized repair without my knowledge. [redacted] could not explain every charge that made up the $1000, including the two items for $300 each for carpet cleaning on this same day ([redacted] admitted it that was a mistake and was double charged). I picked up the phone and call them again to see what the story of the repairs was. He calmly said just go read your contract - for repairs under $300, we don't have to ask for permission and don't need authorization. According to their own criteria and contract this is a single incident repair and it is over $300 ($1000). Then I asked him if he has a picture or any document to show the damage that they repaired. He told me “NO.”

Incidentally, [redacted] emailed me today (02/10/2016) and said that he is going to change the dishwasher for over $500. This is the same dishwasher I got charged to fix a month ago. They are just fixing things where the tenant is not even paying.

Talking to his supervisor and apparently the company owner, [redacted], did not help. All she did was remove the double charge for the carpet cleaning.

I hired [redacted] and paid the upfront fee and monthly fee for him to either bring the tenant up to date on the payments or evict her altogether. All he is doing is prolonging the situation to collect monthly fees and unnecessary, unauthorized repairs. [redacted] ignored all my requests on the phone conversation and through email correspondence. He did otherwise!!!Desired Settlement: We need to be credited all the unauthorized repairs which is over $1000 (They have already admitted that $300 is a mistake and double charged). Also we need the tenant to be evicted right away without any additional fees / charges as was promised to us originally.

Business

Response:

We entered into a property management agreement with Mr. [redacted] on 12/23/15 to manage his rental home that has a delinquent paying tenant in the property. Per our management agreement he was to fund his account with $300, which he never did. See paragraph 21. I’ve also included an owner statement of his account from the dates of 10/1/15 – current, showing we never received any payment from him. We were provided with a 3 day pay or quit drafted and served by Mr. [redacted]. The 3 day that was served was not valid on a couple items. Based on what he provided for his rent collections records it was spotty as well as it did not account for the automatic rent increase per his lease.. So we recalculated what the total amount would be due and served a 3 day pay or quit. Tenant disputed the amount and then provided us her accounting of payments. On 1/7/16, we received her payment history, which is attached. We did request from her to get from her bank, copies of all the cancelled checks for proof. As of date, we have not received her documentation, but have asked her on several occasions. To evict a tenant, you need accurate records of what is owed. At this time, there is not a concrete amount of what is due. The cost to evict a tenant is all on the owner. We do not pay this legal fee for the owner. As to the repairs: per our management agreement, which is attached, we will dispatch work up to a $300 work limit. If it goes beyond, we need owner’s approval. On 1/7/16, the tenant called in a repair. She came home to her laundry room flooding with water. We dispatched a plumber to handle the repair and a company to extract the water. First water extraction company went out, since we could not reach our normal person we use, they wanted to charge $2500 to do the job and they had already started to extract water. We stopped them immediately, but they still billed us for what they had done $300. Our other vendor was able to go to job and extract for $300. The total invoices for the flooding incident was $760, not $1000. I did agree to pay for one of $300 water extractions, since it was a duplicate item, after finding out what the first company was going to charge. Attached on the owner statement, on 2/11/16 it shows RRI depositing a check into the Mr. [redacted] account. So the net charge for the property flooding to the owner is $460. As to the dishwasher repair: on 1/28/16 the tenant called is and stated her dishwasher stopped working. We sent out an appliance company to assess what is wrong. They came back with a bid to replace of $549 or a repair of $437. This bid/repair option was sent to the owner on 2/4/16 for their review and decision on which way they would like to proceed. Nothing has been done as of this point in regards to the dishwasher. Also per the lease with the tenant, she has been billed for the first $100 on the repairs, see attached tenant ledger. We fulfilled our end of the contract. We have reimbursed the owners $300 for the flooding. We had authorization per my management contract to dispatch vendors, without consulting with the owner first. Never did we say we would pay for an eviction, that is an owners cost. We were diligently working on coming up with what the actual rent due was from the tenant before starting any legal proceeding, which of course the owner would have to pay for. Per our management contract we are not responsible for tenant or property repairs. My position is this has been resolved.

Consumer

Response:

I am rejecting this response because:Roundup Realty collects the rent and deduct all the expenses and deposit the rest of the money to my account. They have the money and can deduct the $300 like they did for all other fees and expenses. We hired [redacted] and his firm to either get the delinquent rent money from the tenant or evict her.To this date there is no accounting of how much the tenant has paid or not (almost 2 months into our contract - 12/23/2015 TO 2/2/12016).[redacted] never mentioned his legal department and extra fees for eviction, etc. The $300 they credited us is the $300 they overcharged us by mistake.We need answer to every item we raised in the original complaint and this response, which none is addressed in their response.More importantly we need to know after all these expenses and headaches what they are doing for the tenant to either pay or leave.

Consumer

Response:

I am rejecting this response because:I am not getting direct answer to my concerns one of which is unauthorized repair over $300. I need to be refunded the repair over $300 since it was unauthorized.I also need all the fees they collected for managing the property since they did not do what I asked and hired them to do.

Business

Response:

The owner was refunded one of the $300 for the water extractions from Ready Roundup. We did comply with the property management contract, so no other fees will be refunded.