Diligent Property Management / Diligent Property Solutions

This is not true. The OFT did an audit of all the rents paid and sent their audit out to everyone. I have you the benefit of the doubt during the process after multiple chats to Martin and only changed PM when I was given 8 days notice to change PMs as the OFT would no longer collect funds.
In either case, the only way tenants could take advantage of it was because of your negligent account keeping. From what I heard, you were running your rental system off an excel spreadsheet. I run a small business and that's insane and was always going to fail.
So the question still remains, if my tenants paid rent and I never recieved it, where did the money go?? If you are saying some tenants took advantage of your lack of accounting and didn't pay - you had no idea if this was going on and my rent went to another landlord.
You either don't want to admit that people are owed money or you don't care. In either case, you shouldn't be allowed to have a real estate license again unless all moneys are paid back.
Complaining that you missed 46k in management fees makes me furious. I lost 3k rent because of your lack of "management". You don't deserve a cent and you shouldn't be able to get another license.

 

Im happy to post up pictures of my claims for both my Brisbane properties that have had to go to the office of fair trading to put in a claims. You seem oblivious that this has happened to your clients and I cannot understand why you don't admit that your clients are now out of pocket.

 

OK, I'm not really sure what has gone on here, but I've been on the receiving end of a dodgy PM who embezzled around $25k of my funds, so I'm going to add my 2c to this discussion.

Absolutely!

Fair question. I'm waiting on the answer to this one.

No, they don't! I know this from personal experience.

I understand perfectly.

But you didn't deserve to receive commissions during this period, so you didn't lose commissions. Boo Hoo, you had to get a job. That's life, buddy.

You keep banging on about your own loss. That is irrelevant. You are in Business to provide a service to your clients. That is your number one job. If you can't do that successfully, then you have no right to be in that business.

If you had popped your head in here and told the whole story & decided to open up Business again with a clean slate, with a commitment in place to pay back the people who are still out of pocket, then I would have respect for you. Even if it was some kind of payment plan, if this has wiped you out completely, I'm sure that your former customers would respect you for continuing to work through this and make sure they are not out of pocket due to your negligence.

As it stands, you command ZERO respect. You have left people out of pocket & clearly don't intend to pay them back.

Have you not read the above posts?

 

For the record and I've stated this before, I had no issues with the property management services from Martin or Renee during the 6-9 months before the saga began. If the slate was clean, I recieved all my payments and they fixed their accounting issues, I wouldn't have any problem at all and may never have changed PMs.
But for them to be on here without acknowledging or showing remorse for the people that they owe thousands from their negligence is just woeful.
I had plenty of buffer to ride this out without any issues but I feel sorry for anyone who didn't. There was a patch of no payments for 2 properties for 2 months for me thanks to this drama. That's more buffer than a lot of people probably keep.
I have no doubt this negligence would have caused defaulted loan payments for some of their clients.
@733 - if you want respect, PM me, I'll send you my claim forms and you can transfer the money I'm owed.

You say you have 9IPs. Do the right thing - sell one and pay the people you owe money.

 

We had a PM go bad, embezzled money. Took cash payments from tenants gave them hand written receipts and pocketed the cash. Fortunately our tenants kept the receipts, we worked with them (their bond affected) and made a successful claim from the fidelity fund through Fair Trading. Not an easy process and took awhile. Without the hand written receipts we would have received zero.

PM went to jail.

As has been said, where did the paid rent go? It came in, it is not there, so it went somewhere. Simple maths.

And under the circumstances, I am surprised you are able to hold a Real Estate Licence and start up again.
Marg

 

Zero from me as well!!Morally and ethically coming back on here playing "poor me" is sickening.Take some responsibility .

 

Totally agree.

Legally you may not owe money, but morally and ethically you do.

Actions speak louder than words. Don't just bleat empty words about "taking responsibility" without following through. Sell some of your IPs or liquidate other assets and pay back the money YOU caused your previous clients to lose.
Marg

 

Yep, my comment was sarcastic

 

If this was my business I would be too ashamed to show my face on the forums anymore, let alone try to make out I was the victim in it all.

 

Anyone that is owed money (including outstanding issues) as a result of a bankrupt or failed entity will lose total respect and will never be happy until the original issues are 110% ironed out and sorted.

Take responsibility and fully resolve ALL outstanding matters and then, and only then can a clean slate be even considered fair and reasonable by the wider community. Under new licence, trading name, systems, trust outsourcing, whatever!!!!, it is still the same people running the show which is all that matters.

Sort out all your dirty laundry, clean your hands fully, and then let all your clients and tenants decide on here and otherwise whether they are satisfied and are happy for you to continue to operate the same business as before in a so called re-invented way that the same issues are guaranteed not to happen again.

Yes I have lost money through negligent properties managers and RE principles that pass the buck. Not the way I choose to run my life and businesses. I always pay myself last after my clients. That is the ultimate cost and responsibility of running a business.

 

Being relatively new to this story, I hope none of you mind me interjecting in an attempt to clarify a few points here.


1. Losing only $46,000 in income over six months should not cripple the directors of a Property Management business.

Claiming to be crippled by such a small amount is particularly scary if you also own the 9 Investment Properties that Foxdan mentioned. If these exist and haven’t been sold or re-mortgaged then we can assume they’ve been performing poorly enough that you’re stuck with them.


2. In order to apply for a Real Estate License, you must complete an exhaustive course comprised of a set of modules relating to the different facets of owning and running your business. By far the largest, most difficult and most important module is the Trust Accounting Module. There is no excuse for not having a thorough understanding of the following at the completion of your course;
- Operational, Record-Keeping and Audit requirements.
- The absolute severity and seriousness of complying with the requirements.
- How utterly incapable excel is of complying with the requirements, particularly when there are so many brilliant and very affordable software packages out there.


3. There are discrepancies in the story regarding the location of lost funds. Your reasoning is that many tenants took advantage of the issues to fall into arrears. Short of being told that you’re no longer keeping track of their rent, the only tenants who would have done this are those who were already prone to falling into arrears, which should be well under 10% of the portfolio.
In extension, you say that over the six-month period you worked tirelessly to assist the owners. What about following up arrears?

 

You have made this accusation before Renee and your memory is letting you down as last time you accused us of 10 weeks vacancy...the figure seems to be rising every time you bring it up (and for what purpose, I don't know). Frankly, it is a childish and unsubstantiated claim on a single property and we're tired of reading it. Why, at this stage of the game, you're bringing our company into this is just beyond me as it only serves to validate everyone else's postings in this thread.

For clarification, in the particular case you're talking about the vacancy figure was exactly five weeks as a direct result of previous management, with many aspects needing attention for re-letting. Upon file collection, we poured significant time and resources into rental arrears to recover literally tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent as a result of zero arrears follow up. This means we were doing work that should already been done.

What I can definitively guarantee is that that particular client had absolutely no problem with the added few weeks of vacancy for problem rectification after their previous experience. This is because we did exactly what we were supposed to do and what we promised we'd do - professionally managed their property.

 

I'm on the same boat with @Foxdan, but less damage in terms of $. So I'm not sure how the money can be recovered as there is not enough amount according to OFT.

I wasn't aware all this saga until the OFT did an audit and send notification to change PM immediately. When I called & emailed both Martin and Renee, I got the assurance everything will be all right as the tenant hasn't paid.

Even I found out Martin and Renee advising tenant to deposit rent money into wrong bank account, which complicated the OFT audit as the tenant legally has paid their rent.

Lesson learn, I need to run more DD regardless whether the services provider active in this forum. Trust quality is very expensive to maintain, and hard to recover from this condition once you cross the line.

 

^^This is the most relevant. Simply because someone spends their time posting here and soliciting for business does not improve the odds of receiving better service.

 

Valid point, but if someone has a real estate license, there's an assumption that they will be providing appropriate services and financial management. I don't check if my mechanic has checked out the updated specs for any future car I drive - I assume he knows what to do when he takes my money.

 

I called, emailed and texted Martin on many occasions and was continually reassured that everything was fine and this was part of a standard random audit (apparently due to a competitor or client complaint). Even when we recieved an emailing from the OFT giving us 8 days to change PM, Martin assured me that it was all fine and he had no idea why the OFT was saying they were insolvent.
Hopefully we all recover some money from the OFT. As annoying as all this was, the damage is no more than each property being left untenanted for a few weeks which is all part of normal property investing. I wasn't even that phased until I saw posts showing them operating again and zero remorse for the people they owe money.
Again, if the tenants have paid and the landlords never received it. You have to ask where is it?

 

Many, many years ago now, we had a Business that was losing money. A lot of money! We didn't sit on our hands, we didn't claim bankruptcy, we dealt with it by selling our PPOR, and moving into the family into the cockroach infested oven of a unit at the top of our Business premises. We traded until our lease was finished, hubby got a job in Hornsby & commuted there from Wollongong 5-6 days per week, while I ran the Business during the day, we both worked at night. On Saturdays we both worked from 8am until around midnight, the kids worked all day. On Sundays, I did telemarketing while he ran the Business with the kids.

We had to cook our meals in the pie oven, as the kitchen in the flat was unusable, we used the canteen area as our dining room/living room & basically only went upstairs to sleep. We endured this for almost 2 years, all the while hoping we would get out intact at the end.

I can hold my head up high. We could have gone under, owing lots of creditors lots of money, but we didn't because we took action and made sure that the only people that were hurt financially in all of this was ourselves. Sorry kids, if you're reading this (I know one of you is), but I think that those terrible years taught you both a lot of character.

From what has been said here, a mere 6 months of hardship while having to go & work elsewhere, pales in comparison to what we went through.

Man up! Do the right thing & pay the people that you have left in the lurch. Or don't........ and go away with your tail between your legs. Don't make excuses for your mistakes. Don't come here with a hard luck story & expect people to use your services.

 

):

 

I posted with the intention of closure to share our dreadful experience that impacted on many to aplogise. And to post as an investor moving forward.
The old business was bankrupted. We are starting with right systems and no pot of funds as all our savings were lost in the business.
There is no more I can share. I just wanted the courage to go online for closure to a sad outcome for all parties but with a view to applying my learning moving forward in my life. I will continue to post as a member keen to learn and share experiences..

 

So are you going to pay me back? You may have no savings but you have assets.
Doesn't seem ok that you get to keep your assets while u jeopardized mine.
If you want closure - pay back the money you owe.