With absolutely everything from my property manager now being sent by email is it time to request that they stop charging me $12.30 a month postage and petties?
Many property managers add a fixed-amount "Admin fee" on top of the % management fee, so you can try questioning but I suspect if anything they would just rename "postage and petties" to admin.
Proactive agents are charging that as a technology fee now. I swear sometimes it would be cheaper to return to posting things ha! The software platforms make us much more efficient but they're not cheap. My thoughts are that what your agent charges you is a collection of fees totalling a sum where you either do or don't see value. For example, we're all inclusive at 8.8% but another agent could charge 5.5% plus a list of fees that equalled about 8.8% by the time you added it up. That said, I've seen plenty of agents willing to wipe that fee so it cant hurt to ask?
Here in Perth almost all agents/PMs I've contacted (about 8 or so) charge about 9-9.5% plus all other fees (admin, listing, letting, renewal, inspection etc). I have only seen all inclusive at about 11-12%. It seems excessive. You don't do Perth, do you?
Ouch that sounds like a Perth management fee. If it's GC you should be paying 6.6-7.7% with no admin fees and one week letting fee if they find you a new tenant. In Melbourne it's 4.4-5.5% with no admin fee and no letting fee
I often see a sundries charge each rental period. And an agent fee. And for some, an annual statement fee yet its just a generated email from the same software. There is also a creeping number of PMs who are now charging for inspections, tribunal attendance etc. One of the ones that varies wildly is a letting fee. Some charge hundreds ($700-$1100) and others is $50.
A $50.00 fee is not going to be a letting fee. It's a 'Lease Preparation Fee' or a 'Tenancy Agreement Fee'.
Years ago my PM in Sydney used to charge the $2.50pm on the rent statements - they said it was for postage (to post the statements) and tel calls. I said everything was by emails and they did not call me, only me calling them. So they deleted the charge. But now it has been creeping back on the rent statements for no reason ...
The old admin fee/statement fee/postage and petties has been replaced by a technology fee. As Tom said above, the software stack required to manage a property properly is hugely expensive and is far in excess of the fee that owners get charged.
Well they managed to print out statements and post them before all this technology and email is pretty much free these days. If the property manager wants to buy hugely expensive software to print out statements and email them why should they pass that onto the property owner. The whole purpose of this software is to make the manager more efficient so they can service more clients and hence increase their profits. Charging the owner for this clearly wrong.
