L
Lauralee22
Guest
I own a house in AZ, but live in MD now and use a property management company. I've had many, many problems with this PM, including a lease that was signed with the tenant for a term of 2 years when it was supposed to only be 1. That's no longer a problem because the tenant has broken the lease after 2 months. My most recent problem is this: I was assured by the PM that they inspected the property at the end of January when the tenant gave notice and everything looked fine. Then they did a walk through on 2/7 when the tenant moved out. I made several calls to the PM to see how it went and no one called me back. A few days after the tenant moved out, I received a letter of violation from my HOA for weeds in the yard that the HOA recorded on 2/2. I called the PM on 2/14 and they said they could hire a landscaper "if I wanted". I advised them, yes and take it out of the tenant's deposit since she did not maintain the property. (Tenant was given HOA CC&Rs). I told them per the letter from the HOA I had to have the weeds removed by 2/21 to avoid fines. I made a visit to my property on 2/18 and to my horror things were NOT fine. Not only had the weeds not been taken care of, there were other manjor problems. My bedroom windows on the ground floor were open and unlocked. There was a Xmas tree leaning against the front of my house, cable was run that wasn't supposed to be, part of my rug was burnt, belongings were left in the house, a trash can was overturned in the back yard, oil spots on the driveway, urine in the toilet and the water had been turned off, even though I had discussed the water being left on and charged to me until re-leased so that the drip system for my plants would work. With the water being turned off, some of my plants have died and the rest are looking pretty bad. There were other things damaged at the property also. Prospective tenants have been going out to view the home & it's no wonder no one has been interested. The weeds are so tall and so bad it looks as if the property has been abandoned for a year and I only moved out 3 months ago! What are my rights here? I feel as if I'm being completely taken advantage of. I just found out that the person who was assigned to manager my property specifically is no longer there and there has been a lot of turnover at the company in general. I hired them to manager the property...shouldn't the damages and filth and debri be taken care of by the PM and subtracted from the deposit?? I've already talked to the owner of the PM who was not at all cooperative. I'm ready to take legal action & I'd like to know if it sounds like I have a case. I want back all the money I've paid them and for my dead plants to be replaced and any HOA fines paid. I took 3 rolls of film of the damages and have "before" pictures to compare. If I have a case against them, do I obtain a lawyer in AZ or here in MD? If they rectify the problems, can I still bring suit against them for mismanaging the property and the trip(s) I've had to make out there because of this? Sorry for the length of this, but at least its not in caps! 